IT’S THE CRACK COCAINE OF THE LEADERSHIP CLASS: Artificial Intelligence is the crack cocaine of the digital age.

AI certainly could prove very useful in many critical areas such as medical technology, transportation, energy, space travel and business analytics. Yet it’s economic impact may not be much better than the social media revolution: as Northwestern economist Robert Gordon notes, it has not notably boosted productivity, unlike the strides made by such things as the development of steam engines, electricity, jet propulsion and nuclear power. Recent measurements of further productivity decline do not suggest that the algorithms are making businesses more efficient.

Much of the problem is that the tech oligarchy sees its big money by developing ephemera. The leading AI chip designer and first trillion dollar semiconductor firm, Nvidia, has, for example, grown largely on endeavours such as video games and crypto-currency. Rather than a focus on solving real world problems, the tech giants thrive on surveillance, titillation, and social ‘engagement’. AI could push them – and therefore us – further along that road.

AI may become the crack cocaine of the digital age, offering the highs of facility and speed to the masses without giving most of us anything good. Meanwhile, the dealers – the tech giants and autocratic regimes – will become ever more rich and powerful.

Rather than a boon, the current trajectory of AI seems to be that it will most likely function as a force multiplier for bad things. Its usefulness for enhancing social control makes it a favourite priority of Chinese super-snooper regime while tech firms happily sell their designs to enhance that country’s ever-expanding surveillance state. In the West, AI could well allow tech firms to gather and use private data in ever more pervasive ways.

There are already lawsuits aimed at stopping AI companies from conducting pervasive personal data ‘scraping’, allegedly also including also on the information of children, for their programs.

This is concerning since we already know social media’s impact on young people has been less than positive. New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, and Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, have demonstrated the extraordinary psychological problems associated with social media use, particularly among the young.

(Should we treat tech companies like tobacco companies? Or like asbestos companies?) But beware, leadership class. As AI gets smarter, you’ve been getting visibly dumber. Maybe it’s not the proles who need to worry about being replaced.