Member-only story
Current world problems are complexly entangled; yet populists dream of simple solutions
Watching games from the FIDE World Chess Championship currently being played in Singapore has caused me to muse about present-day geopolitics.
Chess play is a very focused activity, dominated by expert human players and even more expert and formidable artificially intelligent players. Amateur players can play the game, but no one would put them in charge of the sport. Chess is a remarkably friendly but tiny oasis in our troubled world.
Geopolitical problems of economics, politics, warfare, illness, and our environment are obviously much more complicated and multi-dimensional than chess. Problems in each of those areas are tackled by specialists; yet specialists seem unable to come up with effective interdisciplinary solutions that seem likely to help us avoid looming global catastrophes.
So people in many countries are following leaders who are amateurs in most of the component problems that face us. They seem to believe that “bold”, “decisive” actions by those leaders, perhaps combined with current “AI” technologies, offer paths to global solutions.
If so, the people who follow such leaders are dreaming what will likely tun into nightmares. The current state of generalized artificial…
