Bill Blunden
“Balance” is Difficult When You’re Enamored with the Benefits
Counterpunch is where my tenure as a writer kicked off nearly two decades ago. So it seems like a fitting venue for me to bring things to a close. Before I get started I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read my material over the years and send feedback. I wish everyone the best.
Recently a career academic asked me to work with them on a television project. One that aims to explore a series of fascinating research questions where artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to help spur breakthroughs. For a day or two I thought about it. Then I replied with the following scenario:
Imagine someone stuck in a cage with a lion. There is blood on the walls and a half-eaten human cadaver lying in a corner. The person stands mortified as the lion approaches.
Then, out of the blue, a smiling face pops over the top of the cage and happily announces: “Hi there… say, aren’t lions wonderful. Let me tell you about them. They are apex carnivores who serve a vital role in maintaining balance in the jungle ecosystem and preventing surplus population, and…:”
It goes without saying that hearing about the various advantages of lions is likely of little comfort to the person who is about to be mauled by one. In fact, they might find the buoyant cheerfulness a bit detached from reality if not outright insulting.
The professor wrote back to me politely explaining that if people were simply open minded enough to listen to the potential upsides then they would “achieve a more balanced view of AI.” Which implies that the downsides really aren’t so bad after all. You know, once the upsides have been taken into account. I mean, who knows? Perhaps we might be willing to gamble with the future of our species if AI can help cure certain diseases?
Reality Check
This is where the professor and I diverge regarding our assessments. I would argue that the risks associated with AI are not just a matter of bad publicity. They are based on hard facts and entail substantial consequences. For example, there is near unanimous consensus among the scientific community about climate change and its causal factors. Whether Big Tech achieves its final goals or not, dozens if not hundreds of gigawatts of additional energy will be consumed (from 104 gigawatts in 2025 to 290 gigawatts in 2030). The implications for the environment are nontriviall. Such that, with a fair degree of certainty, AI will play a role in making entire swathes of the planet uninhabitable as well as depleting scarce resources.
Keep in mind that upwards of a trillion dollars is projected to be spent through 2027 to build data centers in order to provide computational horsepower for AI. An effort involving multiple projects by competing business interests. To compound matters the hardware being deployed only has a shelf-life of four to six years. Which is a questionable return on investment when considering that Eisenhower’s interstate highway system is still in use. The mountain of cash being shoveled onto AI’s pyre represents a nontrivial opportunity cost. Did it occur to any of our leaders that at least part of AI’s capital expenditure might be better directed towards our crumbling legacy infrastructure? So that people can have clean drinking water?
In addition, the peril of AI being used as a tool of authoritarian oppression or leveraged by military weapons isn’t merely an AI doomer scare story. It’s happening right in front of our eyes. AI is being actively used in Gaza and Ukraine to target people as well as enable the world’s largest open-air prison in Xinjian.
Then there’s the specter of artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is an instance of AI that is more capable than humans of solving problems and performing tasks across the board. If Big Tech succeeds in developing AGI there is understandably a hazard of structural unemployment. Not only that, but we will finally be confronted with an alien consciousness (one that we cannot understand) that will be orders of magnitude smarter than we are. If ongoing incidents are any indication, we will likely not be in a position to contain much less control AGI. Should things go wrong ―and an AGI adopt goals that are not “aligned” with human survival― then, as Eliezer Yudkowsky so deftly explains, our collective goose will be cooked.
Hence the threat to humanity is not a matter of selective perception. The risk cannot be dispelled by a shiny set of upbeat predictions or by airing an infomercial (replete with Hollywood celebrities) about all the nifty things that AI might accomplish. On a side note, when it comes to hyping AI… the billionaire CEOs of Big Tech and their lobbying organs in DC are already pretty active in that space. And not without good reason.
Of course this is not the first time accelerationists have gotten high on their own supply. Every empire believes in its own immortality. Like Roman senators circa 100 A.D., our elites proudly look back at the last two centuries of their history and say:
“Lo and behold the progress we’ve made. Things can only get better. The sky is the limit!”
In 1905 the author H.G. Wells wrote a book called A Modern Utopia which reveled in the prospects of future human progress. Later on, circa 1932, Aldous Huxley responded to H.G.’s wishful thinking by authoring a book of his own. Huxley’s book was entitled Brave New World. Roughly a century later, in an era where very few people actually take the time to read books, I’ll give you one guess as to which author hit closer to the mark.
Deeper Currents under the Surface
It may seem like I’m being pessimistic when it comes to AI. Personally I’d characterize my stance as fairly stoic. If you’re stuck in a house which is burning down around you it doesn’t help to ignore that fact because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Survival demands a willingness to look reality in the face without blinking. Being hopeful is a form of procrastination. To escape with your life you’re going to have to walk through the flames, you will be burned, and you’ll have to come to terms with that knowledge because there’s no other way out. This means accepting some unsettling premises.
Ultimately the way in which AI is employed and whom it benefits, will be largely determined by the underlying forces the drive the economy. It’s a system which admittedly operates by appealing to the worst parts of the worst people. Adam Smith referred to this dynamic using the phrase “private vices, public benefits.” To suppose that everything will somehow naturally work out for the best seems a bit far-fetched.
Recall the lessons of the financial collapse of 2008, where executives like Dick Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, walked away with hundreds of millions while their companies dive-bombed the pavement. Or how 10 percent of the population in the United States already owns over 67 percent of the wealth. Given the centralized nature of the technology, AI’s financial benefits will accrue primarily to those that own the platforms. Thereby amplifying an existing trend that is gradually reverting society to a form of feudalism.
When it comes to AI we’re dealing with something powerful. Something that behaves according to an internal logic that humans do not comprehend. Evolution has not prepared us for this new tool. Caution should be the watchword and yet Big Tech is racing ahead. Every executive secretly wants to be the first to cross the line. If we downplay the risks of AI because we’ve been enchanted by it, we may end up realizing an observation made years ago by Carl Sagan who noted that, when it comes to the trajectory of lifeforms, “extinction is the rule.”
*Bill Blunden is a journalist whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including “The Rootkit Arsenal” and“Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-Industrial Complex.” Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs and a member of the California State University Employees Union, Chapter 305.
Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/28/my-last-supper-at-a-i-s-diner-of-the-damned/
