And that is a huge problem for Germany. In just a few years, almost everything will be operated on the basis of an AI infrastructure: the army, the hospitals, the banks, everything. What happens if the USA is dissatisfied with Germany? Then they could say: We’ll shut everything down for you. At Anthropic, we saw how Trump was able to stop access to the Myth 5 and Fable 5 AI models for non-US citizens in an instant.
Germany has three options. The first is that it becomes a US vassal. Then Germany can just carry on like this, building its society, infrastructure and army on American AI. But then Germany is no longer a sovereign state. If the Americans say jump, then the Germans have to jump. If the Americans want Greenland, then no objections are possible.
That doesn’t sound very appealing.
This brings us to the second option. Germany is getting its own German AI. However, that will be expensive, certainly half a trillion euros. Even in a rich country, this comes at the expense of other budgets, such as health care, social benefits and education. So the need for a political decision arises here.
Now we are in the same boat as the other Europeans. Wouldn’t cooperation be the solution?
This is option three: the costs of half a trillion euros remain, but they are shared. French, Italians, Spaniards and others are taking part. However, such a project with so many partners can only be realized if a European political institution is given much more power.
This will generate resistance from populists.
The politicians have to do their job. Politics also means articulating the major challenges for a country and explaining the possibilities to people. AI is certainly such a challenge. While the Germans debate so much about the pros and cons of human immigration, it has long been business as usual for AI companies to send their artificial intelligence everywhere.
In the science fiction universe of Star Trek, there is the cybernetic civilization of the Borg, which seeks to intimidate its opponents with the phrase “Resistance is futile.” Is this an appropriate analogy for our present?
In a way, yes. Because resistance is not pointless, as Star Trek shows. People who want to convince us of the futility of resistance know this very well. But I think Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a better science fiction analogy to our present day with AI. It is the favorite book of Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley greats from this genre. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there are those in power who distract themselves by making a bizarre person named Zaphod Beeblebrox president of the galaxy.
