http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/21/apocalypse_soon?wp_login_redirect=0
You almost got the essence. Almost. But halfway you just stopped thinking.
Machines are created with purpose. Machines are devices that manifest the values and interests, not of the people that create them – but of the people that pay for them. Our whole world i about embedding financial interests of investors. It is as if the memes, values, goals and desires of the most rich people are becoming embedded in to the metaphysical substrate of this planetary crust.
That won’t necessarily save these investors – the hyperintelligent, self-directional machine infrastructure they instill in our world may very well end up so causally psychopathic that these investors end up the victims of the systems they want implemented. In other words – the hyper rich may very well end up the victim of machine systems as ruthless as they have been evolved to be.
But will that save anyone else? Hell no.
The thing we should do now is put up a fight. The fight about conscience and laws. If laws protect us against robustly enough predation, there is a fair chance these laws trickle up and down from our legal documents and infuse the same machine infrastructure we are creating. Money talks, but for now money is still somewhat subservient to the Law. It won’t be for much longer – there will simply be too much money, and the Law, Democracy and Government will be swept aside.
But if we all wake up now, we may instill the values of humanity, human rights, dignity and protection in to this metaphysical bedrock of reality. Without these safeguards, in essence exponentially concentrated wealth signifies an existential risk.
http://www.scoop.it/t/concentration-of-wealth-existential-risk