Authored by Charles Hugh Smith,

The risk that AI transitions from Servant to Master is dramatically appealing--Skynet!--but the real risks are in the mundane realms of the socio-economic order. As I explain in my new book Investing In Revolution, technological revolutions share the same dynamic: those profiting from the innovations push them pell-mell, without regard for future consequences, as the goal is to expand as quickly as possible to achieve market dominance.

This is entirely understandable, as pausing to assess potential pitfalls will effectively cede control to competitors.

Society--all of civilization that isn't reducible to financial data--bears the consequences, but over a timespan far longer than the initial expansion of the technology. In other words, the immediate rewards of the technological revolution go to the fast-moving innovators while the broader consequences--both the benefits and the downsides--impact the socio-cultural-political realms over a much longer time frame.

This creates a time-response lag, where society must absorb and assess the consequences years or even decades after the initial expansion of the technology. The organizational tool of innovators is the corporation, a financial structure with a single goal--expand revenues and profits by any means available--and a quasi-military command-control-communications (a.k.a. 3C) hierarchy.