Yanis Varoufakis in a post on his blog today does a good job of dealing with claims of consciousness for Artificial Intelligence. His strength is an ability to apply relentless logic to any question he tackles. As many others have pointed out recently, Varoufakis identifies the most urgent issue to be the ownership of the technology and who is or could be the biggest beneficiary. The conclusion is that the people need to come together to take control of the political process which the billionaires are currently dominating with vast infusions of capital.
Beyond the macro-political strategies there are individual actions which people can employ in their daily lives to resist the AI behemoth which has been incorporated in so much of what we do in front of our screens. One easy tactic is based on the fact that much of AI's power is based on routinely feeding us only what we want or are prepared to hear and "like". The danger of that, of course, is that we become blind to what is really shaping the world around us.
A useful opening move is to use the option in the browser of your choice to open any news links in a private window or tab. What you then get is not a selection items catering to your past choices and prejudices, but a more balanced view of what is happening in the world.
One browser with a strong focus on privacy, DuckDuckGo, has gone a step further toward individual empowerment by offering the possibility of blocking all those irritating targeted ads that pop up when you try to access a YouTube presentation. That platform will undoubtedly strike back with threats and countermeasures. In the meantime, though, people have the opportunity to experience the pleasure of reasserting individual control over the technology.
