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Americans are now embarked on what is likely to be one of the most demoralizing presidential elections ever, a retrograde campaign that will be largely divorced from any debate about the future perils facing humanity.
If things go as expected – and it is nearly impossible to imagine another scenario – President Joe Biden will face former President Donald Trump in a rerun of the 2020 race for the White House. As a result, there will be lots of talk about age (when the next inauguration rolls around, Biden will be 82 and Trump will be 78). Trump will still be yammering about a stolen election last time around – a totally bogus issue – and Biden will be warning about the death of democracy if Trump is elected – a significant, but likely exaggerated, fear.
There will be plenty of noise about border security, but little intelligent discussion. A lot of competing statistics about the economy will be bandied about, but no one will admit that the president’s influence on economic matters is much less significant than people imagine. Climate change – arguably the most pressing crisis of all – will, at least on one side, be reduced to complaints about gas prices and trash talk about electric cars.
If there is any actual debate about artificial intelligence, it will be a shock. There is no evidence the disturbing challenges inherent in AI have even registered in Trump’s narcissistic mind and the abstractions of the issue are too hard to explain in campaign slogans, so Biden is unlikely to make it part of his pitch.
Thus, the Big Tech billionaires will continue their race to build an ominously powerful artificial consciousness that could pose an existential threat to humanity, unfettered and largely unobserved by our political system.
Democracy can probably survive even the chaos and villainy of a second Trump administration, but it will certainly fall if the robots decide it is time to take control from human beings too shortsighted to save themselves from their own creations.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
Editor’s note: Seattle Times Opinion no longer appends comment threads on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many comments violated our community policies and reviewing the dozens that were flagged as inappropriate required too much of our limited staff time. You can comment via a Letter to the Editor. Please email us at letters@seattletimes.com and include your full name, address and telephone number for verification only. Letters are limited to 200 words.
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