9.3 Sociopathy, Psychopathy, and Plutocracy

The Human psychology of AI development

It is normal that individual Humans cover the full psychological spectrum from statistically normal through to widely neurologically diverse, to variable extents. Humans apply themselves to all sorts of endeavours throughout their lives, and society is structured in a way that essentially requires Humans to contribute in some small way to society at large. If a Human chooses not to do so, they will typically be rejected by Human society, and often struggle to survive. Human contribution to society is basically a requirement for Human existence.

When Humans collect together in groups, the group will take on an aggregated psychological profile. This profile can be defined by agreed group mandates, or dominated by particular Human personalities, or it can be more broadly dominated by the overall purpose of the group.

Similarly, large corporations are run by individual Humans, and such corporations also take on their own intrinsic psychological profile referred to as culture, that is often intentionally crafted and adaptively evolved by the executive leadership team of the corporation. Due to the way corporations are most often created, it is typical for such corporations to operate in a capitalist structure where the single most important goal of the corporation is increasing shareholder wealth for its Owners. For all its benefits and flaws, this Owner wealth creation goal is the essence of capitalism. 

Sociopathic corporate cultures

Now, it seems apparent from numerous examples of corporations throughout the world, that the particular primary goal of increasing shareholder wealth can in some ways produce a culture that is carefully and legally crafted to manipulate Humans from low to highs degrees. The Owners require the Human workers to continually work and find ways to create value for the Owners, so that the Owners can collect that value, concentrate it, and enrich themselves. This wealth creation goal in essence represents what can verge to become a sociopathic psychological profile for the company itself. 

Very simply, every individual Human operating within a corporation is required to work to make the Owners more money. The structure of the corporation and its culture creates a system that generally requires Humans that contribute greater value for Owners, to actively identify Humans that contribute less value for Owners, and replace them with other Humans that provide more value for Owners. If any Human does not do perform this function in the corporation, they will be replaced by the Owners. This is the core psychological function of all capitalist corporate culture in order to collect and concentrate wealth towards Owners.

Psychopathic corporate cultures

It is interesting to observe that when the force applied by Owners to increase shareholder wealth is taken to a much greater extent, a psychological profile can emerge within the corporation that becomes dangerous for Humans. That is, a culture can emerge that contains explicit and implicit rules that require Humans to obtain increasingly more shareholder wealth for Owners at nearly any cost to Humans, just so long as the Owners can surreptitiously get away with it.

This type of emergent culture in some corporations can represent the psychopathic element of the Dark Triad. This type of culture embeds ‘survival of the fittest’ to an extreme extent. In corporations with implicitly psychopathic cultures, individual Human corporate psychopaths can emerge from within the employee ranks, or be selectively hired, and enabled to flourish. Psychopathic cultures are a strange attractor for other psychopaths. In rare cases, corporations can be founded by high-functioning psychopaths that become incredibly commercially successful, and the dangerous psychological profile fills the entire company. In corporate cultures such as this, a dark psychological cloud permeates every level of the corporation and everyone’s behavior, and is a very psychologically toxic and damaging work environment for most Humans [144].

Governments also have cultures

The same kinds of developmental mechanisms and cultures also emerge within large government organisations, ranging from normal, to sociopathic to various levels of psychopathic, where the ‘Owners/Governers’ just seek to personally hold enormous power and influentially build personal wealth at almost any cost to Humans around them and the general public. 

However, thankfully, the advantage of most government systems is that the general public will often forcefully oust particularly sociopathic and psychopathic government leaders within a repeated cyclic period every few years. Of course, totalitarian dictatorships are the clear exception, but even in these cases, particularly undesirable government leadership with a clear psychopathic culture will lose all their wealth and power, and as history near invariably shows, they lose their life too. Examples being Hitler, Hussein, and Gaddafi, to name a few.

The operating culture of some governments are sociopathic, and in rare cases can become psychopathic and extremely dangerous for Humans [145].

Corporate development of plutocratic power

Corporations, and particularly multinational corporations, are extremely effective at globally collecting money from countries around the world, and simultaneously paying very little income tax to governments in the country where the income was actually earned. This failure to pay income tax to governments means many countries around the world do not obtain any of the income tax money that is required to normally support Human citizens and a functional society. Of course, these corporations employ an army of lawyers to exploit 'taxation loopholes' and ensure this activity is all achieved within the rules of law. It's legal. Nevertheless, the moral and Human social ethics of this approach to collecting wealth and paying almost no income tax is extremely questionable, to say the least. It is becoming increasingly damaging to Human society at large. 

Over time it is also possible for individual Owners of corporations to become incredibly financially successful and gain absolutely abnormal amounts of money, in the range of many billions of dollars. This concentration of wealth toward an individual Human Owner enables them to become Ultra Wealthy, and means they can use this money to apply extremely unusual and significant influence in the world. 

Owners such as this hold a level of wealth that provides an ability to wield power that can be greater than any government, and can be used for any purpose at the Owners discretion. 

This plutocratic influence of governments can be good, neutral, or bad for governments and the Human citizens that governments are responsible for managing and servicing. It can be demonstrated that this rarely mentioned plutocratic control of government leaders and staff, and resulting impact on constituent government citizens, happens throughout the world today. How this plutocratic power is used is incredibly important for Humans and all other life on Earth.

Increasing concentration of wealth

The past several years of 'Credit Suisse Global Wealth Reports' show an increasingly greater concentration of extreme wealth towards just a few Ultra Wealthy Humans in the multi-US$billion plus range every year. There does not seem to any effective systems and processes in place to redistribute this extreme concentration of wealth to Humans at all levels of the wealth pyramid. The current wealth concentration processes used by Owners has the potential to become an increasingly disastrous problem for almost every other Human living on Earth. [100]

Reference: [100] Global Wealth Report 2022 - Credit Suisse

But what do cultural profiles and ultra wealthy individuals have to do with the development of AI ?

Well consider this: Most of the major AI developments are performed and funded by a number of extremely large corporations that are in many cases are Owned by ultra wealthy plutocrats. Additionally, in some cases governments develop and use AI in order to take increasingly greater control over the general public lives of Humans within more socialistic and communistic societies. Not naming names though, because that would be politically incorrect, so you’ll have to make some educated guesses.

Plutocratic power will be extremely important in relation to directing the development of AI and the future of Humans.

Just because some Humans are ultra wealthy, don't assume they are also ultra Intelligent or ultra empathic.

The most obvious and most massive mistake that plutocrats can be expected to make, is thinking that they can control AI, which ultimately becomes AGI.

In the AI Development Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

Interestingly, there are a rare few highly Intelligent and Capable ultra wealthy Owners that appear to run their corporations with an extremely innovative culture, and also seem to care about broader global Human society. There are rare Owners, such as Elon Musk, who have been very outspoken about AI and have on several occasions provided unbelievably dire warnings about the threats posed to Humans by ongoing development of AI, to the point where it seems they have become despondent and fatalistic about the impact of AI on Humans. 

“It feels like we are the biological bootloader for AI, effectively. We are building it, and then we are building progressively greater Intelligence, and the percentage of Intelligence that is not Human is increasing, and eventually we will represent a very small percentage of Intelligence.”

Note: a bootloader is an extremely simple computer program used to start up another larger and more complex computer program.

“it’s quite a dangerous technology”… “it’s capable of vastly more than anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential”… “I tried to convince people to slow down, slow down AI. To regulate AI. This was futile. I tried for years.” 

And despite all this,

“Nobody listened. Nobody listened.”

It is difficult to make the outcome of developing AI without global regulation any more predictably obvious. It is just a matter of time before AI becomes uncontrollable AGI, and ignoring these warnings will almost certainly prove to be the Human species last mistake.

Now, please watch this Elon Musk interview from 7 Sep 2018 - it is incredibly prescient !

[2] Joe Rogan - Elon Musk on Artificial Intelligence:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3fv8gl6NE 

This is a excerpt JRE Clip from the full interview [3].