Religion and Society

I want to respond more substantively to the remarks of the insane and bigoted ignoramus Pete Hegseth, who says there is something wrong with people who are not Christians. My thinking on this subject was strongly influenced by two books by Sigmund Freud that I read in high school. I was visiting my older brother who was taking a course at Williams College in which they read Freud's book, “The Future of an Illusion.” So I read it, along with its sequel, “Civilization and Its Discontents.

Freud defines his terms in the first book. An illusion is something someone believes which cannot be proven to be true, and Freud says that that belief leads to neurosis. A delusion is a belief which can be proven to be untrue, and that belief leads to psychosis. Religion clearly falls into the first category, though some people like Hegseth also have delusional beliefs, which is why I call him insane.

In the introduction to the second book, Freud stated that he had encountered many people who asked him something like, “Don't you have a sort of oceanic feeling that there is something bigger in the universe?” He answers that with a no and proceeds to discuss how that sort of feeling has been created in some people's minds. But the main subject of the book is to discuss all the serious problems in human society caused by religious beliefs such as wars, severe repression, inquisitions, witch hunts, etc.

I don't want to make a quantitative assessment of which particular religions have been the most dangerous, but it seems clear to me that Christianity and Islam lead the pack in that regard, not just through the sheer numbers of their adherents but because of their virulence, intransigence, and hate for infidels, i.e., those who do not share their illusions. Think of the tremendous amount of blood shed in the Crusades, and think of the role that the Roman Catholic church played in the inquisitions, which were a campaign to destroy attempts to create diverse forms of human society which challenged nobility, hierarchy, and, later, capitalism. In particular, women who tried to break out of their patriarchal chains were burned as “witches.”

That history is particularly interesting. The bubonic plague devastated Europe in the 14^th century. It is estimated that about 25 million people died, and it took a couple of centuries for the European population to recover. In those circumstances, there was a tremendous labor shortage. As a result, wages and working conditions improved and there were openings for both peasants and urban dwellers to experiment with new relations of production. Under attack, the nobility mobilized its armies and its churches to suppress such dissent. Anti-Semitism grew tremendously in that period, too, because Jews were blamed for the spread of the plague. The inquisition was the church's method of eliminating dissidents and forcing people back into their tightly regulated social and economic roles.

I focus more on Christianity because I am more familiar with its historical record, but also since it helped create the ideological foundation of European colonialism, its crimes have been pretty terrible. Consider that a pope formulated the so-called doctrine of “discovery,” by which European colonialists could seize the land and resources of non-Christians in Africa, both Americas, and Asia, and seize they did. This doctrine continues today, particularly in Palestine, where Israeli leaders openly dismiss the idea that Palestinians have any rights whatsoever in their native land. Israelis are not Christians, but they share that Christian belief even though political Zionism was always a secular colonial movement.

Of course, I am not alleging that all Christians or all Muslims share these beliefs and practices. But I do allege that those who have engaged in them almost invariably use religion as a kind of justification, just as Hegseth uses his warped religious beliefs as an excuse to attack people of color, women, immigrants, and people with a broad spectrum of gender identities. I am also not alleging that only religious zeal results in terrible acts. Stalin, for example, though he was educated in a religious seminary in Tbilisi, Georgia, was not motivated by religion. What he shared with religious zealots, however, was intolerance for anyone who disagreed with him or who threatened his hold on power.

There are many undemocratic flaws in the US constitution, but one of its strengths is the Bill of Rights, particularly its first amendment which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Hegseth's many statements on Christianity clearly violate the ban on “an establishment of religion.” That alone is a clear ground for his impeachment. He isn't Congress, but that language clearly applies to him as an official of the US government.

In other words, he is free to believe any cockamie thing he wants, but he has no right to impose that belief on anyone else. The United States of America is not and never has been a Christian nation. The first amendment requires that the government be secular. It protects the right for everyone to freely exercise a religion or to not have any religion at all. And it insulates the government from any particular religion or, for that matter, from atheism. I, in particular, do not demand that anyone abandon their religion, but I do demand that they refrain from trying to impose it on me, and the US constitution gives me full support on that.

Why is Growing Economic Inequality Bad for Capitalism?

Karl Marx, who was the most perceptive analyst of how capitalism works, referred to the fundamental contradiction in capitalism. That contradiction is not difficult to understand. Consider that the business of capitalism is commodity production. In Marx' analysis, the capitalist takes a sum of money that we call capital, M, and uses it to buy materials and hire workers to turn those materials into commodities which we call C that the capitalist can sell at a profit. Those profits can then be used to increase capital and thus expand or to pay the personal expenses of the capitalist, which as an enterprise grows bigger become a smaller and smaller part of the profit. Marx denotes this as M – C – M'. The point is that M' has to be greater than M. Otherwise, there is no profit, and the enterprise cannot continue.

If we consider the whole society, we can add up all the wages earned in that society, and we can add all the prices of the commodities produced. The sum total of the wages has to be less than the sum total of the prices of the commodities. Therefore, there are not enough wages to pay the prices of all the commodities. That is what Marx called the fundamental contradiction in capitalism.

Of course, other things are going on. Capitalists invest some of their capital to make production more efficient. That allows them to increase quality and lower prices. Enterprises unable to compete at that inevitably go out of business. There is also financial capital in which no commodities are produced, such as lending money for interest. Marx refers to that as M – M', in which again M' is greater than M. But that does not change the fundamental contradiction.

For obvious reasons then, the drive of capitalists is to increase profit, a feature that can be simplified as greed, which is the underlying motivation in capitalism. Profits can be increased by raising prices (monopolies are able to do that) or by decreasing the cost of production or both. The primary way to do that is to decrease the amount of capital spent on wages, whether by replacing humans by machines or by paying workers less. It is easier to lower wages than to lower the other costs of production, such as materials. Of course, if prices rise and wages do not, that achieves the same effect as lowering wages.

So, how does economic inequality fit into this analysis? The larger the gap between the wealthiest people and the rest of the people in the society, the less money the latter have to buy commodities. That sharpens the fundamental contradiction.

There are other factors at play, too. For example, you pay workers not only to provide food and shelter that workers need to be able to continue working but to reproduce themselves since workers do not live forever. So wages have to be sufficient to raise children, to educate them so that they will be competent workers, to provide them with healthcare when they need it, and thus to reproduce the work force.

We are seeing a major breakdown in the reproduction of the work force. For example, many students have to take out exorbitant loans to finance their educations, often without a prospect of finding a job with wages large enough to pay off those loans. We have increasing numbers of people who cannot afford housing, even if they have jobs. We have large numbers of people who cannot afford healthcare.

Thus the growth of economic inequality threatens the ability of capitalism to reproduce itself, and when that happens, the system begins to collapse. This may all sound very theoretical, but it is precisely what we are living through now.

Tragedy and Farce: The End of Reconstruction and the Contemporary Resurgence of White Supremacy

 Karl Marx began his most literary work, "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," with these words: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Indeed, we are certainly living through a farcical phase now, though there is nothing at all funny about it. After the US Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th and 14th amendments, we went into the brief period of Reconstruction. It was a great political opening. African-Americans began to vote and to obtain political power both locally, in states, and nationally. Reconstruction was made possible by the presence of federal troops in the South.

However, there was a huge backlash led by the virulently white supremacist Democratic party at the time. Disgustingly racist attacks were made against Lincoln in 1864 and Grant in 1868. The Republicans did not allow Frederick Douglas to campaign for Grant in that year, and there were signs of back pedaling on their part over emancipation and the right to vote.

According to a huge compromise, the federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and white supremacy, enforced by brutal and bloody violence, retook control and Jim Crow became the law of the land. The first Ku Klux Klan played a key role. The re-emergence of virulent racism continued to dominate US society and there were few signs of that lessening until after World War II.

There is a clear and valid comparison between Reconstruction and the gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. By the same token, the rise of our current white supremacist excremental president, strongly parallels the successful backlash in the 1870s. In this farcical repetition, DEI and Critical Race Theory fill the same role as Reconstruction.

The difference now is that there is a huge constituency for the protection of the fairness gains of the last 60 years. Unfortunately, the Democratic party establishment refuses to represent this constituency. The Democratic left is willing to do that, but they are still a very small minority among elected officials. I refuse to call them leaders because they refuse to lead.

We cannot afford to wait 90 years to reverse this dangerous back sliding.

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Ten Ways Israel Is Different from South Africa

 I wrote this piece for the March-April 1988 issue of Palestine Focus. It was reprinted all over the world, including by the PLO in Tunis, though they did not include my name as the author. Note that I have never seen the Israeli document with the same title. I have very slightly edited it for clarity. You can see the original at https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/277043?v=pdfUn

Ten Ways Israel Is Different from South Africa

By Steve Goldfield

The New York Times recently reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had issued an internal briefing paper entitled “Ten Ways Israel is Different from South Africa.” The Times did not publish the content of that paper. The Israelis were, apparently, hurt by increasingly widespread comparisons, such as by ABC News, between their military occupation over Palestinians and the apartheid system in South Africa. A list of such differences is not easy to compile, but the Palestine Solidarity Committee has risen to the challenge.

1. In South Africa, people can be held without charge under administrative detention for fourteen days without seeing a lawyer. Under Israeli occupation, it is eighteen days. More than three-quarters of African men have been imprisoned, many for pass violations. More than half of Palestinian men have been imprisoned, many for identity card violations.

2. Although in both Israel and South Africa there are both town and house arrest, South Africa has no refugee-camp arrest: it has no refugee camps. To be fair, Israel has no Bantustans.

3. In South Africa, 87 percent of the land is reserved for whites. In Israel, 92 percent of the land is reserved for Jews. In the West Bank and Gaza, more than half the land has been taken from Palestinians … so far.

4. In South Africa, green, black, and gold—the colors of the African National Congress—are illegal. Blacks use it anyway. The African National Congress was banned in 1960; it is illegal to quote ANC leaders. Under Israeli law, red, black, green, and white—the colors of the Palestinian flag—are illegal. Palestinians ignore that law, too. The Palestine Liberation Organization is, of course, banned, and Palestinian newspapers have been closed for publishing interviews with PLO leaders.

5. South Africa has the death penalty and has put many activists to death. Many, such as Steve Biko, have died while in custody. Israel does not have the death penalty, but Palestinians seem to die anyway from beatings and other forms of torture in detention and from shootings on the streets. Photographs published in Israeli and U.S. Newspapers have documented Palestinians entering custody in good condition and leaving Israeli prisons in shrouds.

6. South African Blacks carry passbooks and are punished if they are in the wrong place or do not have a passbook. Palestinians instead have identity cards which they must show to soldiers and police. One form of punishment is to confiscate an identity card, which can lead to immediate deportation and is thus a form of house arrest. Palestinians in the West Bank (except in Jerusalem) and Gaza are also issued different-colored license plates from the ones Israeli citizens receive.

7. African workers cross into white areas to work but are forbidden to sleep there, and many must return to homelands or racially segregated suburbs at night. Working in white-run factories, farms, and mines for very low wages is virtually the only means to earn a livelihood. Palestinians who cross over into Israel to work are also forbidden to sleep there and must return to the West Bank and Gaza at night. Working in Israeli factories, farms, construction, hospitals, or sweeping streets is virtually the only means available to them to earn a livelihood.

8. South African Blacks have no vote, though so-called Coloureds and others have token representation but no real power. West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have no vote, though Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have token representation, virtually no government funds are spent on their needs, and they have no real power.

9. South Africa is a settler state in which the indigenous people greatly outnumber those of European descent. The same was true for Palestine before 1948. Israel is a settler state from which the indigenous people were driven out so that today Israeli Jews outnumber Palestinians.

10. South Africa calls its suppression of the majority of African descent: “Apartheid.” Apartheid is based on a system of privileges granted to those declared “white.” South Africans of Asian and mixed ancestry are second-class citizens. Blacks are not considered citizens and have no rights whatsoever. Israel calls its suppression of Palestinians: “Military Occupation.” Israel's system of privileges, based on its Zionist ideology, gives privileges first to those descended from European Jews, second to Jews from other places, and last and least to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Other Palestinians are not considered citizens and have no rights whatsoever.

WOULDN'T YOU RISE UP?

The above are some of the “differences.” A list of similarities between Israel and South Africa and of the longstanding and very close military, political, and economic ties between the two countries (an Israeli journalist described South Africa as “Israel's best ally after the United Statess”) would be very long, indeed. Consider the comments of Raphael Eitan, chief of staff of the Israeli army during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and currently a member of the Israeli Knesset.

I don't understand this comparison between us and South Africa. What is similar here and there is that both they and we must prevent others from taking us over. Anyone who says that the Blacks are oppressed in South Africa—is a liar. The Blacks there want to gain control of the White majority just like the Arabs here want to gain control over us. And we, too, like the White minority in South Africa, must act to prevent them from taking us over. I was in a gold mine there and I saw what excellent conditions the Black workers there have. So there are separate elevators for Whites and Blacks, so what? That's the way they like it.--Guest lecture at School of Law, Tel Aviv University, December 14, 1987 in Yediot Ahranot, December 25, 1987

Americans oppose apartheid in South Africa. Isn't it about time we stopped our government from supporting and funding the Israeli form of apartheid?

My 1983 Interview with Johnny Makatini, head of international affairs for the African National Congress of South Africa

 In 1979, I met a man named Mfanafuthi (Johnny) Makatini in the lobby of the Polana Hotel in Maputo, Mozambique. We became friends. Johnny was the director of the International Affairs Department and later also the Chief Representative to the United Nations of the African National Congress of South Africa. Had he not died before independence, he likely would have become the minister for foreign affairs in Nelson Mandela's government.

In September 1983, Johnny and I were both in Geneva, Switzerland for the United Nations International Conference on the Question of Palestine. I interviewed him for Palestine Focus. I also published the interview in the appendix of my 1985 book, "Garrison State: Israel's Role in U.S. Global Strategy" and I aired the interview on a series of 30-minute radio shows on KPFA in Berkeley based on material I collected in Geneva. This is the text of that interview, which has very strong echoes in contemporary events.

SG: How does the ANC view the relationship between Israel and South Africa?

MM: The South African regime, presently led by people were were active collaborators with Nazi Germany and, therefore, strongly anti-Semitic, has now become the closest ally of Zionist Israel. This is a strange alliance. But, as David Ben-Gurion said in 1969, they justify it on the basis of so-called comradeship between two regimes under peril.

One thing that brings them together is their total opposition to the right of self-determination for the indigenous people of South Africa and for the Palestinian people. Of course there are other parallels: the use of religion as a basis, or spiritual rock, for the denial of the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples; the claim of predestination, or divine right; and the view of Palestine and South Africa as "promised lands."

The first statesman to visit Israel after the proclamation of Israel was Dr. Malan, the prime minister of South Africa. A number of people who ended up as officials in Israel are South African-born. I could mention [former foreign minister] Abba Eban, [current president] Chaim Herzog, and many others. Financial regulations are relaxed whenever Israel is in serious trouble; a lot of money gets shipped off from South Africa.

Now this collaboration has reached a very high level in the field of economics, in the field of military and nuclear collaboration, and both these regimes, of course, enjoy the support and alliance with the United States. They enjoy the protection of the United States whenever the international community seeks to impose punitive measures for their acts of aggression.

Both the Israeli Zionist regime and the South African regime play a complementary role; both serve as permanent bases for aggression. The role of Israel has been to destabilize and foment insecurity in the Middle East in addition to the oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel engages in total aggression against the Arab countries and operates as the regional gendarme in the service of the United States, international imperialism, whereas Israel extends a carrot to the African countries south of the equator. This is part of the strategy to divide the continent of Africa.

The apartheid regime engages in total aggression against the immediate African countries, i.e., the front-line states that are supporting our struggle, while it seeks to neutralize the Arab countries, since they are the only source where it can get oil which helps to fuel the machinery of oppression and aggression,

This strategy is a pincer movement, and we believe that every Israeli official in Africa, even a technician, is an extension of the South African intelligence service. Therefore, it is out of the question that African countries can have relations with Israel. We welcomed the severance of diplomatic relations in 1973, not just because Israel was occupying Egyptian soil, an African country. For us, it's because Israel is an enemy of the continent of Africa. We deplore the role that Israel is playing--for example, the visit by Sharon to Namibia, to the bases there, making public statements literally calling on the international community to put an end to the arms embargo against South Africa.

Israel's training of Savimbi's forces is an act of hostility to the supreme objectives of the Organization of African Unity [now called the African Union] because the African countries are all supportive of the struggle for the liberation of Namibia and they are all against the destabilization policies carried out by South Africa against Angola. When Israel seeks to establish diplomatic relations with African countries, it is a matter of a Trojan horse, playing the part of a friend, but in fact a total enemy of the continent of Africa. We can go on and on insofar as this collaboration is concerned; the list is very long.

SG: What is the significance of Israel's special relationships with the Bantustans, such as the Ciskei?

MM: First and foremost, it is important to recall that the so-called Ciskei is a tribal entity created by the apartheid reime as part of its policy of Bantustanization, or tribal fragmentation of South Africa. This policy aims to prevent the exercise of the right to self-determination of the indigenous people of South Africa. The international community rejected this policy in 1976 when the first Bantustan, the Transkei, was proclaimed. The General Assembly condemned this as null and void and called on all governments not to recognize or have any contact whatsoever with this tribal entity. Therefore, any regime or government that establishes contact, direct or indirect, with such entities is acting in a hostile manner.

So far, these tribal entities have only been recognized by the apartheid regime, the creator of the problem. The second closest recognition that has come so far is from Israel. There have been visits to Israel by some of these tribal puppets, and there have been promises of assistance and even granting of assistance to the Ciskei puppets. This scheme derives from the collusion between South Africa and the Israeli Zionist reime and also the United States. In other words, we are witnessing an attempt to prepare the ground for the eventual recognition of these tribal creations,

And this takes place at a time when the regime in South Africa has embarked on massive forced removals of the African people who are being taken out of the cities in their millions and dumped in these Bantustans. Already 3.5 million have been removed, and another 2 million are scheduled to be removed pretty soon. This double-pronged approach--the removals and the offensive to win some recognition from certain countries--is aimed at bringing about a situation where the African people can be totally deprived of South African nationhood. Not one African, not one black is to be recognized as South African. In other words, Israel is now in the forefront in policies that are tantamount to total hostility to every position adopted by the Organization of African Unity.

SG: What dangers do you see in the joint Israeli/South African/Taiwanese development of nuclear weapons and cruise missiles which has been exposed since about 1980.

MM: These three--South Africa, Israel, and Taiwan--are all pariah states, regimes that are totally isolated internationally. The United States, in pursuit of its so-called global strategy, users these pariah regimes as regional gendarmes in order to foment instability in certain areas. South Africa is playing that role in southern Africa, creating, training, financing, and equipping dissidents or counterrevolutionaries, such as the Savimbi elements, the LNA in Lesotho, the so-called Mozambican armed resistance, and the Selous Scouts in Zimbabwe.

These counterrevolutionaries have the role of destabilizing the legitimate governments through the destruction of the economic and social infrastructures. Anything done to strengthen the military position of these pariah states is part of that strategy. We have seen nuclear collaboration between the United States and South Africa, between the United States and Israel, as far back as the sixties. But this now includes Taiwan.

Taiwan and Israel have also served as conduits for the arming of South Africa. But now the biggest danger to world peace is that these three pariah states have achieved nuclear capacity thanks to the collaboration between them and some of these western countries.

What dangers do we see? Yes, we see the danger of them being a nuisance. The whole purpose is to try and intimidate international opinion into capitulation. It is intended to bring about a situation whereby the third world or the nonaligned countries can be intimidated into abandoning support of the struggle of the Palestinian people or the South African people. But nothing of that sort will happen. Nothing is going to deter the struggles in both Palestine and in South Africa and Namibia, despite the fact that Israel and South Africa have this nuclear capacity.

It is very important, however, to focus on the role being played by Taiwan because this has tended to escape the notice of a number of countries. Taiwan has friendly relations with some Arab states who were aware of the role that Taiwan is playing. We are absolutely convinced that, once this role is publicized, the Taiwan regime is going to run into serious problems to the point of relations being cut.

Otherwise, the danger is nothing special. We know we are dealing with desperate regimes which are not even signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, but when you take up arms, nothing can deter you, not even the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.

December 25, 2023

 I don't really mean to offend anyone, but I am unable to resist finding it amusing that an obscure Jewish heretic (historians say he didn't have many followers while he was alive) is worshipped by more than 2 billion people as a god. And, although he was born in the spring, if you believe the descriptions of the stars in the new testament, his birthday is celebrated just after the winter solstice. And, of course, most of the myths about him (virgin birth, betrayal by an apostle, coming back to life, walking on water, turning water to wine, etc.) were borrowed from much earlier religions. What a strange world we live in. I would say that you can't make this stuff up, but obviously someone did.

A Taxonomy of AI Risks

Notes Toward a Taxonomy of AI Risks

Steve Goldfield, November 2023

Let me start by stating that I am not an expert on artificial intelligence (AI). However, I started programming computers in 1966, and I have held a number of jobs where I used those skills culminating in my last such job at Sun Microsystems, where I worked from 1996 to 2011 in IT support and development. So, to some extent I am drawing on those skills.

Let's first divide AI into two categories which I will call AI as a tool for humans and AI with independent consciousness or sentience, which I will call science fiction AI. As far as anyone now knows, the latter is not imminent. One good example of it is in Isaac Asimov's “I, Robot” science series. Asimov was a scientist as well as a writer of SF. In his books, Asimov presented what he called the three laws of robotics. These are his three laws.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov later added a fourth law, also called the zeroth law, which takes precedence of the other three. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Some of the plot elements in Asimov's novels deal with how a robot can manipulate the ambiguity in these laws in unexpected ways. In Asimov's novels, these laws are hard-wired into his robots' positronic brains which are all built by a single company called US Robotics. That, of course, begs the question of whether other more unscrupulous companies could build robots with different laws or whether robots will these three laws could be tampered with to modify the laws. Stanley Kubrick's film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” also deals with these issues.

As far as I am aware, we are not close to achieving science fiction AI. That, however, could change when quantum computers become available, which may not be far in the future. In any case, how to contain sentient AI is a thorny question. I'll give a few examples. First of all, we have no guarantee that the human developers of sentient AI will follow any rules. Second, it is possible that machine sentience could take us by surprise and arise in an environment without any safeguards or with insufficient safeguards. We certainly know that humans have in the past and will in the future create dangerous technologies which are difficult or impossible to fully control. Consider nuclear weapons as one example.

It might be possible to isolate sentient AI from the physical world, but that would still be a very risky situation. AI might be able to influence humans to do things which break that isolation or to convince them to carry out dangerous strategies. In this taxonomy, I am not nor am I able to provide solutions to risks. I'm only trying to classify them.

So, let's move on to AI as a tool for humans. In some senses, we have that already. For instance, huge investment firms have used AI to manipulate the stock market for years. They use superfast connections (they place their equipment as physically close to the markets as possible) and superfast computers to follow stock trends and then fairly simple AI can react to those trends to make money for those firms and their customers. The rest of us without access to those tools cannot compete.

Let's consider other criminal uses of AI. We already have legions of skilled and unscrupulous hackers who break into supposedly secure systems. They look for vulnerabilities of various kinds, both technical and human. It would be very easy for them to adapt AI to do that. For example, we now use encryption keys which are theoretically unbreakable. However, we know that when quantum computers become available, those unbreakable encryption protocols will likely become easy to break. We know that bots and trolls are used on the internet to shape and channel public opinion. The use of AI could raise that risk by orders of magnitude and also make it much more difficult to detect. We have growing risks to privacy on the internet which would also be multiplied with the use of AI. AI can also be used to generate massive denial of service attacks by overwhelming online servers. That already happens frequently.

Finally, there are the social risks of AI. AI will increasingly be capable of performing tasks which were previously done only by humans. We saw that as a major issue in the recent screen writer's strike and also in the actor's strike. Our current social and economic organization does not offer viable solutions to AI displacement of humans.

In summary, it is highly likely that there are other risks which are not now visible: Risks that we have not or cannot anticipate and, therefore, which we cannot prevent. To some extent, AI could also be used to combat risks, but that would require substantial investment, too. Right now, for example, many of us run anti-virus programs on our personal computers to filter out many known risks. However, the generators of risks, by default, are always one step ahead because you cannot easily devise protection from a risk until you have seen it already.