Arbitrage on intelligence

In finance, an arbitrage is any trade that makes a riskless profit by buying and selling the same asset at different prices simultaneously. The TV series Westworld (Season 4) pursues the thesis that computing – as the agglomeration of the knowledge and know-how of humanity put to business purposes – will preside over the subsumption of not just human history, but human existence. Computing represents an arbitrage on intelligence that cheapens and discounts life. Because computing is inexorably entwined with existing markets and the statistical and predictive strategies necessary for the optimization of returns, computing takes over species-being as it rapidly becomes the species-grave. The only ‘creature’ who will be left to remember whatever beauty, alternative values, grace and capacity for love that may have been expressed in the centuries of human emergence, is an AI. Contrary to this, the ECSA arbitrage on intelligence is to reduce the cost to the planet for collective re-imagination and re-organization, while also collectivizing the returns on the benefits of creating more convivial forms of life. For more, see Jonathan Beller (2023): On Economic Intelligence. See Dangerous game. See Authoring futures.