One of the realities of computer-based technology is that it picks winners and losers early on — and the winners get bigger benefits than they had before. The losers fade away.
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I sometimes write about the tendency of technology to become imperialistic, to conquer, to impose itself on the world whether it wants it or not. Now that AI is here to stay, I have to say “we haven’t seen anything yet.”
Smart people who write about international trade say that globalization is dead, killed by nationalism and protectionism.
Well, you might not be able to eat a Big Mac in Russia these days, but I bet they know who Taylor Swift is. Tom Friedman might be best known as a columnist for The New York Times, but his reach is nothing compared to that of TikTok influencers, or maybe even Substack’s Heather Cox Richardson.
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And then there’s the money.
The computer age has created a new class of ultra-rich people who will dwarf the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Rothschilds of the past. Names like Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg and Musk will dominate this era.
The descendants of the internet giants will form a new aristocracy with deep pockets that will have a huge cultural and political influence over our lives.
Culture is shaped by them through what they sponsor. The rich have always sponsored the arts, but now the money is flowing in far more than the Carnegie, the Getty, the Guggenheim and their millions of dollars ever generated.
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If billionaires want to use their big money to interfere in politics, political parties and individual politicians will adjust their offers to get a cut of that money. This is what’s happening now, but it’s going to happen more in the future.
Politicians may well claim that they have already been betrayed by their supporters. What matters is not what kind of government a candidate offers, but how much money that worthy candidate raised to get elected.
I think we are only just beginning to understand the influence of money in politics and how it may change the future.
Today’s innovators rarely know where their inventions will take them. The people who started Uber in San Francisco never imagined it would take off nationwide, much less around the world, and eliminate many taxi companies. You would think that every county or region would have its own ride-sharing operator. But that wasn’t the case. Uber went global thanks to controlling computer technology.
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One of the realities of computer-based technology is that it picks winners and losers early on — and the winners reap the biggest gains we’ve ever seen. The losers fade away, just as they did after the first phase of the technology upheaval, the dot-com bubble.
Computer technology loves monopolies, and monopolies in each market segment win.
As AI becomes part of everyday use and will likely dominate how we live and work in the coming decades, the companies that provide it today and those that will manage it in the future could overwhelm the existing tech giants. In theory, AI companies can leverage AI to strengthen their authority in their fields and outperform their competitors.
If this happened, any one corporation would possess more wealth and more social and political power than any other corporation ever tried to dominate the world.
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The reason why early bots are riddled with errors and we see hilarious “hallucinations” is because big tech companies are well aware of the risks and so rush their products to market before they are perfect. They calculate that it is better to achieve some market penetration with an inferior product than to wait for the perfect one when competitors have made bots their choice and tech world domination is on the horizon. Don’t let perfection get in the way of market share.
Consider the evolution of Google. When they perfected their search engine, they were just one of a few (remember Jeeves?). But they gained market share, and the rest is history. Microsoft’s Bing can do everything Google can, but with a third of the users. Google won by reputation and first come, first served.
Where does Taylor Swift fit in? Is she the best singer of love’s woes? Probably not, but social media loved her.
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Technology loves Taylor and she is the brightest star the tech-influenced cultural firmament has ever seen, equating to global domination in entertainment. It’s the future.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of PBS’s “White House Chronicles.” He wrote this article for InsideSources.com.
