Zuckerberg’s manifesto on AI revives the spirit of Philadelphia

In a Trump-ravaged and battered America, Zuckerberg’s manifesto on AI is a sensational coup: 6,500 words that resurrect the spirit of Philadelphia. The backbone of “The future is for everyone” is the idea of Publius – the collective pseudonym of Hamilton, Jay and Madison, the latter of whom became the fourth President of the United States – namely, to multiply the factions. The more numerous the centres of decision-making, the more they check and balance one another, and the less likely it is that any one will impose itself on the others. Rivalry is the immune system of liberal democracy. “Hoping that an absolute power, however enlightened, will look after the good of humanity has never led to certain results,” writes Mr Facebook. The alternative to the “responsible” paternalism of Altman and Amodei – who argue about everything except the principle that the development of AI should be guided by them – is to place it in the hands of billions of people. Not in the hands of a few companies or a government. So that everyone can use it for what they consider important in their lives. It is the pursuit of happiness translated into the language of Silicon Valley. Whether we like it or not, it is ours too. In practical terms, Meta is committed to making the basic versions of its AI agents free, and to selling advanced features through a “dynamic auction mechanism”.

The new superintelligence will not merely be a search engine of prodigious scope, but a presence that follows you and gets to know you over time – a tool for ‘creating what one wishes to see in the world’. Power today does not stem solely from the quantity of financial and energy resources, but from the ability to process information in unexpected ways. Those who will succeed are those capable of identifying the problems of the moment and formulating the right questions. The answers, however, will increasingly come from AI. The important thing is that they are not tamed. They must not be aligned with the ‘ethical’ standards of programmers, but with the urgency and rigour of the questions posed by each of us, however thorny they may be. This is the essence of the manifesto, and it is no small matter.

Zuck’s shortcoming is to believe that widespread technology will increase leisure time. Marx and Keynes believed this too: a fifteen-hour working week by 2030, the English economist claimed. The opposite has happened. Since the 1980s, idleness has ceased to be a status symbol, and those who earn the most work the hardest. Faced with exponential growth in production, every minute of rest is a liability. AI levels out initial inequalities as no political revolution could ever manage to do and – as Tocqueville explains in his American report – in a society of equals, no milestone is a ceiling. The more power is available to everyone, the more they want. Appetite comes with eating, and the general who widens the front by promising his soldiers leave is lying, knowing full well that he is lying.