While we all (or at least many of us) worship at the altar of Adam Smith and free market economics, few recall an important underlying premise in Smith’s work: “The participants in the economic activity must adhere to the ethical and moral standards of the culture.”
I am personally concerned with the hype around the expected value that AI will bring to the energy markets. Every energy product and service vendor is now heralding their adoption and inclusion of AI in their products to optimize the customer’s profit potential. Imagine thousands or maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of AI each trying to maximize their profit, unconstrained by Smith’s moral and ethical foundations. AI’s will compete with each other and learn through the process. Over time our most important market and industry that has a direct impact on our safety, lives and standard of living will evolve into an automated game theory theatre. What is to stop truly malevolent AI from taking our electrical system hostage? Imagine a future where we use Enron to train an AI. Being able to automate and scale evil is truly a frightening thought.