I just asked ChatGPT “Make a philosophical definition of “intelligence” such that corporations are a type of intelligence.”
and it replied
Intelligence can be defined as the ability to perceive, understand, and adapt to one’s environment in order to achieve a desired goal or outcome. Under this definition, corporations could be considered a type of intelligence because they are entities that are able to gather and process information about their surroundings, make decisions based on that information, and take actions to achieve their goals.
This definition of intelligence is not necessarily limited to biological beings and can be applied to artificial or abstract entities as well. Corporations are complex systems that are able to collect and analyze data, make strategic decisions, and adapt to changing circumstances in order to maximize their profits and achieve their objectives. In this way, they exhibit many of the same characteristics as intelligent beings and can be considered a type of intelligence in their own right.
Which I’m struggling to find fault with – and from this perspective we’ve already created AIs and they’re already destroying the world.
We might not ever get to Artificial General Intelligence — because before that happens there will be AI-Corporation and AI-Nation-State symbiotes… entities that exist in frameworks of to-the-death natural selection, with long histories of putting short-term advantage before long-term survival. They will probably destroy us before we get a chance to create AGI, because we cannot survive an arms-race of weaponised AI.
The war against Skynet isn’t a fight between humans and an AI, it is a fight between AI Symbiotes, using human brains as substrate. Cambridge Analytica was a very early, very rudimentary attempt at a machine doing this, but really… if you broaden the definition of what an “intelligence” actually is, then this has been going on for 1000s of years. Myth as adaptive advantage.
We probably need some global code such that AI can only ever be open-sourced and cooperatively owned. We need a new framework for corporate governance (actually we’ve needed this for quite a while), we need it globally, and we need it fast.
..
Anyway – am quite pleased with self on account of that being my first ever em-dash. I feel like I’ve got a new super-power.
