‘We should be very clear that decision-making, even when we are confronted with its sometimes dramatic and urgent aspects, must always be left to the human person.’
The Pope, speaking to the G7 on 14 June 2024
During the week when the three largest tech giants jostled for the top spot, each with a market capitalisation of over $3 trillion, the Pope chose to follow up the AI conference in Seoul on 21-22 May with last Friday’s detailed speech to the G7 on artificial intelligence. Here's the full text, and I challenge anyone to deliver such a comprehensive review as this of a complex subject at the age of 87.
In it he describes how humanity has developed and used tools throughout its long journey, and he sees artificial intelligence in that context, albeit very advanced in character. However, he understands fully how this tool could easily get out of control — hence his clear statement on the need for human decision-making. In a sense, his guidance echoes that of Jesus when he said, ‘The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).
Looking beyond this warning, however, he calls for artificial intelligence programmes to be instruments for building up a better tomorrow: that they must always be aimed at the good of every human being and must have an ethical ‘inspiration’.
His speech ends by saying that it is up to everyone to make good use of artificial intelligence, but the onus is on politics to create the conditions for such good use to be possible and fruitful.
You won't find much about artificial intelligence in the party manifestos for the forthcoming UK General Election; but, as our survey introduction states, there’s quite a lot of other longer-term logic that you also won't find in this parade of repetition. While the Labour Party does its best to dodge making any commitments and the Conservatives try to convince us that they really can be trusted after such a long sequence of upsets, the Liberal Party imagines that we might find Ed Davey’s media stunts entertaining, and the Reform business (it’s not technically a political party: Reform was set up as a limited liability company, with Farage as its majority shareholder and honorary president) appeals to basic self-interest in much the same mould as Donald Trump.
But the deployment of artificial intelligence over the coming decades ranks alongside climate change as something where our reactions to it will either enslave or benefit humanity, and we need to weigh up the options for controlling it carefully: so it would be good to hear what are the political views on this subject.
Nothing, for example, has been said in the party statements about the system of Universal Basic Income (UBI) which could be introduced if AI automation removes employment opportunities on a wholesale basis. Perhaps that’s because UBI is a very unattractive outcome for most people: can you imagine how you would feel if, after your employment options were taken away by automation, a ‘Big Brother’ government were to set your monthly income using taxation drawn down from these tech giants (that is, presuming that they would agree to pay it over)?
Welfare subservience is an awful prospect compared to the alternative of participation in ownership and control: what we call ‘Stock for Data’.
The six largest tech giants — Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet (that's Google), Amazon and Meta Platforms — have a combined market capitalisation of over $15 trillion (that's about the same as the combined GDP of all but the largest 27 nations). There are about 4.5 billion humans aged 25 or more living in our world: so as a rough rule of thumb and presuming it were possible for all to take part, that would suggest there’s over $3,000 of tech giant value per person aged 25 or over.
Of course, it's not as simple as that and in any case the tech giant entrepreneurs and investors must remain motivated by retaining an appropriately significant interest. Also, it would take years to put ‘Stock for Data’ into widespread operation, requiring extensive debate about entitlement, data protection, administration and regulatory processes, as well as considerations such as longevity of holding and international application. But the principle of enabling widespread ownership of these huge businesses which harvest our data and our creativity is surely worth pursuing as an alternative to UBI.
When we posed the fourth question in our survey at a Z/Yen seminar in 2021, 62% of respondents voted for ‘Stock for Data’ compared with 32% who opted for anti-trust regulation and just 6% who wanted no change. That was when data harvesting was the principal source of revenue for the tech giants — at that stage, artificial intelligence was just a gleam in Sam Altman's eye.
How things have changed in less than three years.
Artificial Intelligence is being taken very seriously now, following the Bletchley conference last autumn and the AI Safety gathering in Seoul. However, we should also applaud the Pope for bringing the issue into the G7 gathering last week, and I hope he will endorse our exploration of the ‘Stock for Data’ alternative so that this amazing human tool can be developed for the good of every human being, as he advocates.
In the meantime, we’ll study the outcome of your Share Radio survey responses carefully and, whatever answers are given, we’ll report on the findings over the next fortnight in the run-up to the General Election. If you’re attending any hustings over this period, please feel free to challenge the candidates on some of these longer-term issues which struggle to get a look in.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio