Star Trek, Big Government, Ecotopia & Mad Max

When considering our AI future, the new human era of human-machine integration, there are numerous scenarios we are obliged to evaluate. Robert Costanza, an ecological economics professor at Portland State University, offers up some of the most interesting.

Costanza, recognizing that the 21st century will be transformative of human society (one way or another), conceived a 2x2 matrix of possibilities, along two axes: Technological Optimism/Skepticism, and Free Market/Communitarianism. The matrix, then, is

Costanza looks back from each quadrant, describing the view in hindsight from 2100:

Star Trek

The Default Technological Optimist Vision. Much like the science-fiction franchise, this scenario is built on an energy-rich economy, foreseeing the development of fusion power. The switch to fusion power meant a clean-up of the atmosphere and general reversal of humanity’s attack on the climate and environment – but with cheaper food production and a greatly-improved global economy came a population surge. There came a push outward, to space colonies in orbit and on the moon. Exploration of the solar system began in earnest, and back on Earth a leisure culture prevailed.

Mad Max

The Technological Skeptic’s Nightmare. In this scenario, oil supplies dwindle before alternative energy sources are meaningfully developed and deployed. Energy prices soar, crippling the global economy, and environmental damage makes food production and clean water problematic, sparking unrest and political turmoil in many nations.

Economic upheaval and pandemic cause a population downspiral, and water wars begin erupting. National governments are increasingly ineffective at mitigating the collapse of international institutions and alliances. After decades of this, the majority of the global population exist in loose communities occupying abandoned buildings, and the few with truly useful skills serve a miniscule elite. What order remains is maintained by corporate security forces.

Big Government

Public Interest Trumps Private Enterprise. Corporate greed led to a bungling of the release and proliferation of all-electric cars in the US, resulting in a doubling-down of federal regulation. The government/private sector relationship shifted in the former’s favor, but regulatory caution slowed the development of fusion power, resulting in high fossil fuel taxes to control greenhouse gas emissions – an economic burden. Increased federal power also resulted in population control, with the government supporting female choice, education, and contraception. Population stability made food and water distribution easier. The inequality gap decreased. The environment, overall, improved globally.

Ecotopia

The Low-Consumption Sustainable Vision. Ecological tax reform among the most developed nations led to sustainable development initiatives worldwide, and public support for government leadership of those efforts emerged from the gradual realization that transnational corporations were never going to truly act in the public interest. Emphasis on sustainability led to cultural pushback against the long-prevalent consumption cultures of the Western world, and a new emphasis on equality and efficiency began to grow.

Taxes on natural resource depletion, in combination with negative income tax to prop up populations while incentivizing work, curbed environmental and economic damage while giving people a new focus on quality of life. Fossel fuel costs increased, triggering a proliferation of alternative forms of transportation. Bicycles made a comeback, and mass transit and car-sharing between families became norms. A migration from urban communities to collectives of 200 or so people occurred. The work week dropped to 20 hours, and unemployment plummeted, while people everywhere enjoyed greater leisure.

Costanza, in his paper, is pushing Ecotopia – his own personal valhalla. His reasoning is loaded, but that’s okay; his matrix still informs our consideration of the automated future and its social and political branchings.

He states that his Ecotopia scenario is the one most favored by those he has surveyed, with Star Trek coming second. His argument for the former, rather than the latter, as best choice of the four is that the fusion-powered, energy-rich economy of the Trek scenario is a pie-in-the-sky wild card: we may or may not ever have it.

But this thinking discounts AI’s contribution to that problem. AI is already a massive advantage in many areas of research, as it can sift through possibilities far faster than humans, evaluating them more accurately as it goes. The rapid discovery, testing, and deployment of vaccines during the Covid-19 epidemic, for instance, was aided by AI. It might have taken years, but only took months.

When Constanza wrote his paper, long before the pandemic, AI wasn’t nearly as sophisticated – so it’s no surprise he short-changed that possibility. But AI can both hasten research into clean fusion power and trouble-shoot (and co-design) the development and deployment of massive-scale solar power now – and it can manage that power far more efficiently, once it’s in place, than it’s ever been managed before.

Constanza has two other misses. One is his assumption that, given an energy-rich economy, little government push-back and technology enabling a leisurely existence, people will begin to breed like rabbits. We are now very clear that this isn’t true.

The other miss is his assumption that regulation will only surge in his scenario dedicated to that topic. But both his Star Trek and Ecotopia scenarios will depend heavily on the reigning-in of corporate behaviors, which are historically self-interested to a catastrophic fault. As we discuss elsewhere in this book, if we don’t put a harness on capitalism and its generals, the proliferation of AI will be our undoing, rather than our salvation.