What does carbon capture and AI have in common?
Or how innovation fails to realize its potential when we misuse it.
We live in amazing times.
Things that we used to read in science fiction novels are now part of our day-to-day reality. We speak to each other on our watches… perform surgery without incision… travel in cars without drivers. We have robots working shifts… drones fighting wars… and computers who can think better* than humans. We’ve even found a way to reverse global warming by extracting carbon from the atmosphere.
Innovation is great. Or, at least, could be.
But there’s an ambient tension whether we are witnessing dreams coming true or nightmares in the making.
Take carbon capture — an ingenius process of extracting man-made carbon from the air and burying (aka “sequestering”) it in material like cement, where it can’t contribute to global warming. In fact, this process is so effective, it may actually help reverse climate change, which is threatening our very existence.
To actually reverse the irreversible.
But instead, what’s happening is large corporations are buying carbon credits to offset their own carbon footprint. Basically, buying compensation so they can carry on without having to address their environmental impact.
We are facing a similar dilemma with artificial intelligence.
AI calculates the most probable outcome based on a database which grows with every processing action, ultimately allowing it to calculate possibilities without human input. (I will not address here the folly of a database that begins with human input but eventually is diluted with the additive content generated by the AI itself. “Am I reading AI’s version of Hemingway? Or AI imitating its own imitation of Hemingway?”) This is a powerful tool that more efficiently scans mankind’s cumulative knowledge on a given subject than is humanly possible by any individual. Which can be an invaluable aid to people who want to spend less time calculating and testing and more time putting their energy and talent into subjective things like relationships and creativity.
But when carbon capture and AI are used to compensate instead of elevate, the prospects are dystopian.
Innovation and Prosperity
In a 2014 McKinsey Quarterly Report titles Redefining Capitalism, Eric Beinhocker and Nick Hanauer write:
“If prosperity is created by solving human problems, a key question for society is what kind of economic system will solve the most problems for the most people most quickly. This is the genius of capitalism: it is an unmatched evolutionary system for finding solutions.”
So what is AI solving?
AI is able to deliver the most probable response to a question. It does it by scouring an enormous database of historical data much faster and more accurately than a human can. Which is not to say it’s superior to a human. Because the probable answer is great for objective things like math and money and physics. It’s not great for subjective things like writing and acting and music. Things upon which human culture is built.
So no thank you, ChatGPT, I don’t want your screenplay for Die Hard 7.
Which is the great fear that prompted the strikes in Hollywood: AI being used to provide a quicker, cheaper, easier pipeline of content. Notice I did not include the word “better.” But no one in the boardrooms gives a shit about better. All they care about is ownership and margins.
Which is the same reason companies in every industry are licking their chops at artificial intelligence: profit. If you can reduce your payroll for a computer who will work its ass off 24/7, why wouldn’t you do it?
Because it’s petty, shortsighted and destructive. Shareholder Capitalism at its worst.
The real potential — or Capitalistic genius — of AI is that it frees up humans to do what we do best. Which is to create. And the more time and energy we devote to creating, the more innovation comes to market and the more prosperity is realized.
A virtuous circle.
And what is carbon capture solving?
Reducing carbon in our atmosphere, dummy. Right? Well, no… not really.
There is an entire economy called carbon credits, where companies can pay for carbon capture and sequestration as a way to offset their books and corporate ethics without changing how they do business.
This is why carbon-generating industries like petroleum and computing are gobbling up carbon credits like there’s no tomorrow. But it’s nothing more than accounting shennanigans, because they’re still doing business in a way that’s detrimental to planetary health.
One step forward, one step back. A corporate sleight of hand that’s robbing the ingenius process of carbon capture of its problem-solving glory, which is to reverse the environmental damage mankind has done since the industrial revolution.
And when you stop an innovation from doing what it was created to do, and divert its genius for bottom line benefit, you throw a wrench into the beautiful machine of Capitalism, which is “to solve problems.”
Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
What we are talking about is what type of Capitalism will drive the very innovation it creates. Shareholder Captialism or Stakeholder Capitalism? Wealth extraction or wealth generation? Exclusive or inclusive gain?
A question of our collective soul.
Will AI be used to enable more human flourishing? Or will it be used to marginalize human involvement?
Will carbon capture be used to save the planet? Or will it be used to mediate unconscionable corporate practice?
There’s no algorithm that can answer these questions.
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I’m a Mad Man. Not a scientist or software engineer. But I’m constantly alarmed by the reckless agenda I see as company after company pursues profit above all else. So I use my skill at simplifying complexity into compelling ideas that demand a response. At least that’s what I’m trying to do. Feel free to share any thoughts with me brian@bemeaningful.co
