Soros: Can the democratic system survive under multiple crises?

We lived in a turbulent era, and too many things happened too fast, which made people feel puzzled.In fact, Adam Tooze, an economic historian of Columbia University, uses Polycrisis to describe this situation and make the word popular.

There are many causes of multiple crises.In my opinion, the primary cause of multiple crises that plague the world today are artificial intelligence (AI), followed by climate change, Russia ranked third in Ukraine.Of course, there are many other reasons, but I will focus on these three points, hoping to help reduce confusion.

Artificial Intelligence

When Microsoft passed a related company called Openai in November 2022, and provided ChatGPT to the public for free, AI shocked the world.ChatGPT constituted a durable threat to Google's business model, and then strived to release a product as soon as possible to compete with it.

Soon after that, Geoffrey Hinton, who was regarded by everyone as the godfather of AI, resigned from Google, which allowed him to publicly talk about the risks brought by new technologies.He changed his past position and held a very negative view of AI, saying that it might destroy our civilization.

Xinton took the lead in developing neural networks that can understand and generate language and analyze data learning skills.As the amount of data increases, the ability of AI's so -called large -scale language models is also increasing.

This has caused a great impact on Xinton.He pointed out that "maybe these systems are actually operating much better than the human brain", but claiming that they will also become more dangerous because they are becoming increasingly strong. They also tell people that they must be alert to those weapon systems that are completely independent -he calls it calling it.For killer robots.

"We have entered a completely unknown field. We have the ability to create more powerful machines than ourselves, but they are still controlled by us. But what if we develop a smarter machine than ourselves? ... Artificial intelligence probably probably probably probably.It takes five to 20 years to surpass human intelligence ", and" it will soon realize that if it becomes stronger, it can better achieve its goals. "

Xinton's words left a deep impression on me.In fact, AI reminds me of the apprentice of Goethe's poetry magician: apprentices are learning magic, but they do not fully understand what Master teaches him.Master asked him to sweep the ground. He used a spell to make the broom to work, but he could not stop the broom from stopping the water and washing, and finally flood the entire house.

I grew up before AI.This makes me a loyal believer.I realized earlier that I understand how difficult it is to understand the world I was born, and rely on reality to provide me with moral guidance.

Humans are both participants in this world of our lives and observer.As a participant, we want to change the world and make it good for us; as an observer, we want to understand the true colors of reality.These two goals interfere with each other.I regard it as an important understanding of me to distinguish between and wrong.

AI destroys this simple model because it has nothing to do with reality.AI creates its own reality, and when this artificial reality cannot correspond to the real world (this situation often occurs), it will be regarded as an illusion.

This makes me almost instinctively oppose AI. I fully agree with those experts who think they need to supervise it.However, these supervision must be enforced globally, because the motivation for cheating is too powerful; this can give those who evade the unfair competition advantage of regulations.

Unfortunately, this global supervision is not possible, because the world is dominated by the conflict between the two completely opposite governance systems.There is a completely different view that the two need to be supervised, and why the supervision needs to be supervised.

I call these two governance systems as open society and closed society.I define the difference between the two as: In an open society, the role of the country is to defend individual freedom; in a closed society, the personal role is to serve the interests of the ruler.

AI is developing forward at an extraordinary speed, and the wisdom of ordinary people cannot fully understand it.No one can predict where it will take us.But we can determine one thing: AI can promote closed society and pose a fatal threat to open society.This is because it is particularly good at creating control tools that help close social surveillance to monitor their subjects.

This is why I instinctively oppose AI, but I don't know how to stop it.Others do not know at present, but most AI developers are aware that they need to supervise them.The same is true of the government of the US Congress and President Biden.But the development speed of AI is much faster than the government's official action.The Biden government has taken some administrative actions, but Congress will be difficult to issue things like the artificial intelligence rights bill.

However, this is not a problem that can be resolved in the future.The United States will hold a general election in 2024 (Britain is also likely), and AI will undoubtedly play an important role (and it is most likely dangerous).AI is very good at creating false information and deep fraud, and at the same time there are many malicious actors.What can we do in this regard?I have no answer, but I hope this question can get the attention.

Climate change

The second factor of multiple crises is climate change.The global climate system has been disturbed by the increase in human intervention, especially the large -scale use of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.The goal set by the Paris Agreement in 2015 is to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the level before industrialization.This boundary will inevitably be broken; although it has made various efforts to cope with climate change, the heating rate is actually accelerating.

Two respected climate scientists, former British government chief scientific consultants David King and the Johan Rockstr of Johan Rockstr?It will trigger the critical point and cause the earth's life to collapse.

Special Committee of the UN Intergritish Climate Change said that the current climate policy will increase the temperature of the earth by 2.5 degrees Celsius to 2.7 degrees Celsius in 2100.Scientists say this will be a disaster.It will exceed the hottest temperature of the earth over the past 4 million years, which leads to the completely melted ice sheet of Greenland, Himalayas and Southwest Polaria, and increases the sea plane by 10 meters.

Rockston said: "All large biological communities on the earth -rainforest, many temperate forests -will collapse, permanent frozen soil thaw, marine ecology completely collapses, and the availability of a large part of the earth on the planet is available.Will change.

"More than one -third of the surface of the equatorial area will not be suitable for humans, because the temperature in these areas will be higher than the health threshold of about 30 degrees Celsius."

Unfortunately, when confronting the livelihood of climate change, people want to protect the latter.Farmers in Germany and the Netherlands are opposed to controlling nitrogen -containing gas emissions because these regulations make them unable to raise dairy cows.They have mobilized, won many elections, and shake the EU.

I should also point out that major oil companies' desire for continuing profit.

We far behind the plan in response to climate change.We should start implementing everything that climate scientists think of the necessary — in -depth and quickly to reduce emissions, remove excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and refrigerate the Arctic region.To do this, we must be recognized by the indigenous community.All of this must be completed as soon as possible.

The War of Russia against Ukraine

This leads us to the third component of multiple crises.Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought a negative impact on the world, disrupted food supply, and led to a major geopolitical reorganization.But despite this, the actual results are much better than expected.The Ukrainian army has made heroic resistance and reversed the situation with the strong support of the United States and Europe.It turns out that the Russian army is a paper tiger that only commands and extremely corrupt.The private mercenaries of Wagner Group supported the invasion of the invasion, but in the end they failed to defeat Ukraine.

As a result, Ukraine is now ready. Once all the equipment promised by the West, all the equipment can launch a counterattack.Biden has even agreed to provide F-16 fighters to Ukraine.

I believe this counterattack will be successful.The goal will be the base camp of the Russian Navy of the Crimean Peninsula.By destroying the damaged mainland bridge with Russia, Ukraine can turn a strategic asset into strategic liabilities, because Crimea has no water, and after the mainland bridge is destroyed, Crimea can only rely on Ukraine to supply water.

Many parts of the Russian Federation have been anxious and restless under President Putin's authoritarian regime, and the development of this situation may cause them to completely resist its rule.The Russian Empire, where Putin dreams to revive, may fall apart and no longer pose a threat to Europe and the world.

The end of the Ukrainian war will bring a positive impact on the world.This may provide Biden with an opportunity to ease the tension between the United States and China, and that China itself is in a economic recession, which may make Xi Jinping, President Xi Jinping easier to accept reconciliation with the United States.Biden did not seek to change China's regime. He only hoped to reconcile the current situation of Taiwan.

Russia's failure in Ukraine and the ease of tension between China and the United States can create space for leaders in the world to focus on cope with climate change, because it is threatening our civilization.However, because there is only a narrow and twisting road to this result, it can indeed give a question mark on whether the democratic system can survive in multiple crises.

(Author George SOROS is the founder and chairman of the Open Social Foundation. He has recently been to defend the open society (In Defense of Open Society)

English Original: Can DEMOCRACY SURVIVE The Polycrisis?

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