Dear Editor:
At the recent council meeting on August 18th, citizen Ken Dolsky brought up the subject of a local resolution to prevent any AI facilities in Parsippany, and to do so as soon as possible, before any developer presents a proposal. Parsippany perhaps stands vulnerable due to its “over development in need of redevelopment.” Parsippany’s past history of chasing the corporate tax rateable has, in the long run, brought the town to this situation of nowhere to go but housing mandates, warehouses, and now AI.
Parsippany’s water situation alone should negate any AI facility allowance. However, in today’s economy, which seems to ignore ecological factors, living in a vacuum outside the laws of nature, one cannot be sure.
AI presents other dangers to what remains of our Republic, and to life itself.
Technocratic oligarchy by the few is not democracy. Look at the people who are behind this fake world, or reality made to their engineered life system, that exists outside the laws of nature. To these billionaires, nature is just a chapter in a microchip. Human beings and remaining nature are erased from the equation.
Algocracy: a system of government or social control where computer algorithms, artificial intelligence, and automated data analysis make core policy and social decisions.
Cyberocracy: a theoretical form of government where power and authority are held by those who control information and information technology systems. (This is similar to a religious belief that a savior died over two thousand years ago for all of us, and there is nothing left but obedience to authority, as all the work has already been done by this savior who somehow rose from the dead in his physical body.)
AI is metaphorically a return to the plantation, master-slave paradigm. The master is the controlling subject or authority that initiates commands, and the slave is the controlled object or system that obeys and responds. This model applies to philosophy, social structures, and technology.
Human welfare will regress, and humanity’s ecological footprint will increase.
To keep the machine vital, nature will continue to be consumed as a mere commodity, earth as real estate rather than the gift of ecological services: air, water, soils; water for the thirst of the computers. We see in our times private property, especially corporate real estate, standing as the enemy of community, and of nature, as never before.
Machines have no soul, and money has no sentiment except to the monied class, the Silicon Valley technocrats.
A people who honestly cared for each other, and for the world we share, would have ended poverty, despair, and injustice long ago. In a land of no love, and war as economy, violence is a given, and waste, fraud, and inefficiency are an inherent part of our corporate replacement of government as it was intended.
Will AI change any of this? Most likely not. If anything, it will make these political flaws a social norm of law and order, as in endless wars of choice.
Human welfare will regress, and humanity’s ecological footprint will increase. If many today cannot decipher lies from truth, facts from fabrications, it shows a lack of a wholesome educational system. AI cannot remedy this; only a humanitarian remedy, a hands-on approach to nature from a genuine human heart and brain, may.
The worst aspects of artificial intelligence for democracy include the mass production of deepfakes and synthetic misinformation, the creation of fake public consensus via bot swarms, the erosion of public trust in elections, and the expansion of automated state censorship and surveillance.
The election of rogues and corporate criminals like Donald Trump and his administration, in their destruction of government as it was intended, shows we are not an enlightened, properly educated society, and AI would be the final step down for a future democracy. Why do billionaire technocrats, rich beyond any economy, need our tax dollars at all? The whole system is upside down. AI is not freedom, it’s privatization.
Nick Homyak
