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This is very concerning

There are reports on the internet that the US government may seek to nationalise Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as soon as it is attained.

What is AGI?

It is considered the threshold where AI reaches or surpasses human intelligence in the areas of cognitive tasking. In effect, it happens once AI systems become capable of reasoning on their own, rather than simply re-organising masses of training data.

If we do attain AGI and the company or companies that reach this point are effectively seized by the US government under the provisions of "eminent domain", the world may enter a very dark period in terms of rights and freedoms.

How ironic would it be that the government of USA, the land of the free and the home of capitalism, might resort to facist strategies to fulfill their penchant for exerting control over their citizens.

It's pretty much guaranteed also that where the USA goes, the rest of the world will follow.

We're already seeing this herd-mentality in respect to age-gating social media and other parts of the internet. As soon as one country decides its a good thing, others jump on the bandwagon -- not because it's going to protect the children but because it enables an enormous level of surveilance and control of the general population that would not otherwise be possible.

A government that has a monopoly on AGI would be a horrible thing.

No doubt it would mean that "public servants" would have an easy life. No more thinking, labouring away or putting in the hard hours for the betterment of the nation. Instead, they'd simply craft a few AGI queries each day and let their confiscated electronic brains do all the work for them.

It's likely that AGI would become illegal contraband in private hands with penalties applied to those who would dare break the government's legalised stranglehold on the technology.

I can see an overly zealous government applying this new AGI tech to anything and everything they could -- all in the name of "efficiency" of course but likely with very little in the way of checks and balances.

The potential for disaster here would be enormous.

If *you* need access to AGI then that's not a problem, a slightly dumbed-down version will almost certainly be available to the private sector, as a service, for a fee. You'd need to be very much aware however, that any data, queries or other material you submit to the government's AGI will be carefully scanned, scrutinised and checked for potentially harmful content -- all in the name of national security and protecting the children of course.

Perhaps *this* will be the genesis of Skynet? (only half tongue-in-cheek).

I really do dispair at the direction our world is headed, as governments increasingly roll out these draconian surveillance and age-gating measures. It's almost as if we are sleep-walking into exactly the future that men gave their lives to protect us from, just a few short generations ago.

Carpe Diem folks!

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