The Ultimate Winner of the World Cup and the ＂Magic＂ of Generative Artificial Intelligence
The ultimate winner of the World Cup is transnational capital.
Recently, Majeed Malhas analyzed various comments around the World Cup in jacobin. Western commentators have reason to criticize the political authoritarianism of Qatar, the host country, and the harsh working conditions before the competition. In response, critics in the post-colonial world put forward reasonable views on the hypocrisy of the West. After all, the colonial superpower laid the foundation for the disaster in Qatar. Although each side has put forward reasonable views, the resulting dialogue is not completely fruitful. The political discussion around Qatar in 2022 shows that the narrative of "clash of civilizations" continues to dominate the global political imagination, although the modern reality is that transnational capital, whether eastern or western, is ruling the world and has the ability to bring the government to its knees. While people are busy blaming, international companies are plundering.
On December 15th, 2022, local time, Doha, Qatar, the city scenery of Doha on the eve of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 finals was at a glance.
Qatar, a small oil-rich country, won the bid to host this year’s World Cup under blatant corruption. At the beginning, the country had almost no sports infrastructure, but it launched a large-scale project of $220 billion to host the most watched TV event in the world. Qatar’s economy has long relied on migrant workers from all walks of life, and their number has increased by more than 40% since they won the bid. Today, only 11.6% of the country’s 2.7 million residents are Qatari nationals. Unstable immigrants, mainly from Southeast Asia, have increased greatly, and they are hired to do manual labor in order to build almost non-existent infrastructure by 2022.
Although hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested, the working conditions of these manual workers have always been blatant exploitation. Migrant workers in Qatar are faced with life-threatening working environment, unsafe living conditions, delayed and insignificant payments, withholding passports, and threats of violence. They are engaged in manual labor under the scorching sun in the Gulf. Since Qatar won the bid for the World Cup, 6,751 migrant workers have died.
Although human rights groups and journalists have been documenting the rampant exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar for ten years before the 2022 World Cup, mainstream western media only began to emphasize these injustices one month before the game-tickets have been bought, hotels have been fully booked, and all infrastructure has been completed. The most outspoken western media is the BBC, which refused to broadcast the opening ceremony of the competition and chose to broadcast a round table condemning Qatar’s human rights record.
The BBC’s criticism of Qatar is completely correct. At the same time, they did not recognize the role of British colonial heritage in establishing exploitative working conditions, which existed in Qatar long before the World Cup. Britain intervened in a material and systematic way, which continued to benefit the Qatari monarchy and the global free market dominated by transnational (but mainly western) capital.
In Qatar and the wider Middle East, the core of the systematic exploitation of workers in Southeast Asia is the kafala (sponsorship) system, which makes employers who sponsor migrant workers’ visas exempt from the labor laws that protect Qatari nationals. Migrant workers have no right to find new jobs, to form trade unions or even to travel.
The modern Kafala system can be traced back to a relatively unknown colonial bureaucrat, charles bell Belgrave. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, modern Qatar and the wider Arabian Gulf were colonized by Britain. Belgrave is a British veteran who participated in the war. In 1926, he was appointed as an adviser to the tribal monarch who later became modern Bahrain to help build a modern nation-state with a normal government bureaucracy.
The British administration of the post-Ottoman Middle East relied on "protectorate" or "mandated ruling country" rather than colony, with the intention of ensuring the long-term interests of Britain in the region. Foreseeing that direct colonial rule after the war would eventually be unsustainable, Britain wanted to create a feasible structure for a national government that was friendly to the West and consistent with the free market.
Long before the discovery of oil, Bahrain and its surrounding areas were coastal nomadic societies, which revolved around fishing and pearl picking. The emergence of the border defined by colonialism has brought obstacles to the industry in this region, which relies on cross-sea trade and the free flow of labor, but is now restricted by new concepts such as passports and visas.
In order to solve this problem, Belgrave compiled the first version of the modern Kafala system, which soon spread to other newly established governments in the region. In the end, this enabled Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and other Gulf countries to facilitate labor migration and exploitation from Southeast Asia.
Kafala system was generally unpopular in Bahrain, and Belgrave finally resigned in 1957 amid protests. However, after Belgrave left, and after Britain gave up its rule in the Gulf region in 1960s and 1970s, this system still existed. It was this system designed by Britain that led to the deaths of thousands of migrant workers in Qatar before the World Cup. As this origin story shows, the problem is much bigger than the behavior of a barbaric eastern country, and it is difficult for the western hands to be clean.
Kafala system is just one of many modern exploitative labor systems in the so-called "third world", which can be traced back to western colonial rule. Broadly speaking, the consumption lifestyle enjoyed by many people in the west is realized by outsourcing extreme economic exploitation to post-colonial countries with social oppression.
Therefore, the non-historical accusations made by the West against Qatar were ridiculed as hypocrisy by many people in the post-colonial world, and some commentators quickly pointed out the shortcomings of Western governments in solving their own working conditions, not to mention racism, misogyny and homophobia in their own countries.
These critics have reasonable views, just like the critics of Qatar itself. But the dialogue is doomed to be fruitless in the end. The West blames the backwardness of the East, and the East blames the hypocrisy of the West, which is endless. This kind of discourse relies on the reductive differences between the East and the West, and fails to grasp the common interests of western and eastern governments and companies in maintaining the system of exploitation and social oppression.
Qatar, separated from Iran by a wall, is the largest military base of the United States in the Middle East. It is no coincidence that Biden’s administration gave the green light to sell $1 billion in weapons to Qatar during the halftime of the high-risk competition between Iran and the United States. This kind of behavior is predictable: it is not strange for the United States to turn a blind eye to the behavior of its oil-rich allies in the Gulf and criticize its enemies for doing the same.
European governments and enterprises have also established profitable relations with Qatar. In fact, on December 11th, four members of the European Parliament were accused of accepting bribes from Qatari officials to influence policy decisions.
For western sponsors, sportswear companies, sports broadcasting companies and other multinational enterprises, they have made a lot of profits from the workers who have worked hard to prepare for this event, which is rarely mentioned by critics and partisans. In Qatar’s 2022 dispute, the only western organization that was reasonably criticized was FIFA, a non-enterprise or government entity. Like western governments, western enterprises are largely left to their own devices.
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022’s narrative of "clash of civilizations" in 2022 has distracted people from the biggest problem that plagues the exploited migrant workers in the Middle East and the world, that is, global neoliberal capitalism. The real winners of the World Cup are transnational capital, whether in the West or Qatar, while the real losers are exploited migrant workers and politically suppressed citizens of Qatar and the post-colonial Middle East.
Both sides’ attention to the imaginary savage eastern countries or hypocritical western countries fails to explain the financialization and transnational nature of capitalism in the 21st century, and how it has changed the global political landscape-often combining the East and the West to benefit from the exploited global poor.
Another author, Paul Fogarty, also wrote in jacobin that this year’s World Cup is the epitome of the company taking over football.
Vague slogans are the common language of modern football, which cover up those morally questionable people who run football and profit from it. For example, one of the major English advertisements that have been playing during this World Cup is the advertisement of Hyundai, a Korean automobile manufacturer.
The advertisement combines the rapidly expanding music with the vast mountain scenery and the illusion of racial harmony and universal brotherhood. Steven Gerrard, a former Liverpool captain, told people that sustainable development is the "century goal" of mankind, and his tone was ridiculously cold.
What’s even more ridiculous is that Steven Gerrard’s former English teammate David Beckham directly equates the dreams of young working-class footballers with those of the extremely wealthy adults in Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup. Beckham’s willingness to say these words is easy to explain. It is said that he earned $150 million as an ambassador.
In the author’s view, this morally corrupt World Cup held in Qatar is the latest stage of the degeneration of modern football. Of course, people have been playing football since ancient times, but the British Football Association officially compiled the rules in 1882. Football club has become a source of pride for the local working class, and it is also a simple way to escape on Saturday afternoon. Today, the top clubs in Europe have become the playthings of the super-rich, making football farther and farther away from its popular foundation.
The monarchs in the Gulf region bought three sleeping giants in European competitions, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Newcastle United. These clubs can now control huge amounts of money.
Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain have dominated their domestic leagues in recent years, while Newcastle was only controlled by Saudi Arabia more than a year ago, so it is in the early stage of competing for world hegemony. There seems to be no doubt that all three national clubs are for long-term development. Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup in 2010 and reached an agreement to acquire Paris Saint-Germain six months later. Prior to this, the bid for the World Cup had been planned for many years. Billions have been invested, and countless billions of investments are coming.
When discussing the influence of these clubs on the competition structure, journalists often quote euphemistic phrases such as "soft power" and "sports washing" (used to describe the practice of individuals, groups, companies or governments using sports to improve their reputation damaged by improper behavior, which can be achieved by holding sports events, buying or sponsoring sports teams or participating in sports as a form of publicity). These terms conceal the level of financial fraud, which is unparalleled in modern games as far as Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City are concerned. But UEFA, the European governing body, responded with only the lightest touch of supervision.
Facts have proved that Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City are particularly good at using creative accounting methods to avoid the restrictions on club expenses. The huge "consultant" fee paid to Roberto Mancini, the former head coach of Manchester City, is just one example. Their strategies also include winning praise for reviving dilapidated areas (or investing in real estate, as others say), reaching inflated sponsorship agreements with state institutions, and hiring a team of insanely high lawyers when the football authorities try to impose any form of sanctions on them.
This means that they can diversify their financial interests to meet the arrival of the post-oil era.
Although FIFA and David Beckham have protested feebly that the World Cup can bring a more open society, we only need to look at the recent Russian anti-LGBQT+ legislation to find evidence to the contrary. In view of Qatar’s official World Cup ambassador’s recent declaration that homosexuality is a "mental injury", it seems that journalists should continue to pay attention to this country after playing the last ball on Sunday night.
Bill Shankly’s most famous quip implies that football is not a matter of life and death, but a matter "much more important than this". It is impossible for him to imagine that thousands of people will die in the stadium built for the World Cup, or allow a series of broken promises and cynical political activities, all of which revolve around Qatar in 2022.
"Magic" of Generative Artificial Intelligence
At the moment when the "magic sense" of science and technology is gradually fading, the recent progress in the field of generative AI has aroused widespread and enthusiastic attention. Both the paintings generated by the artificial intelligence image generator DALL-E 2 for free and the chat content generated by the artificial intelligence chat robot ChatGPT have become the objects that people compete to share on social networks. In the midst of a thriving scene, some people have expressed various concerns about this technology. The article "Money Will Kill ChatGPT’s Magic" recently published by Atlantic Monthly thinks that the problem is that these technologies will eventually be used for profit-making purposes.
The article pointed out that ChatGPT is currently free, but Sam Altman, CEO of its development company OpenAI, said, "We will have to monetize it at some point, and the calculation cost is painfully expensive." This company, which is expected to earn US$ 200 million in 2023, is not a charity. Although it was started as a non-profit organization in 2015, it abandoned this status more than three years later and set up a "capped profit" research laboratory supervised by a non-profit board. The company’s supporters have agreed to make no more than 100 times the profit-if your expectation is that its products will take over the global economy one day, this is obviously insignificant. ) Microsoft has injected $1 billion into the company, and it is conceivable that Clippy driven by ChatGPT will regain its vitality.
Offering free trials is an excellent marketing strategy. It is reported that within a few weeks after the re-release, more than 1 million users have used ChatGPT, and OpenAI paid for it. Today, OpenAI is becoming the most successful consumer-oriented artificial intelligence company, just as Netflix is to streaming video and Google is to search, OpenAI may become the leader of deep learning. David Karpf, the author of this article and an associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, asked the question: What will happen to the use of these tools when they start to generate profits instead of losses? Will it become a paid subscription product, or will it run advertisements, or will it provide power for new companies that will replace existing industries at lower costs?
Karpf thinks that we can learn from the development track of the early Internet. In his course "History of Digital Future", he will show students the film Hyperland in the 1990s. This "fantasy documentary" depicts a journey to the future being created by multimedia technology experts at that time. In the 1990s, technical experts are committed to developing a set of new tools that will subvert media and education: replacing "linear and non-interactive TV" with customizable and interactive "software agents". This sounds a lot like the algorithm recommendation engine and news subscription that define our digital experience today. The key difference is that the software agents in the film are controlled and customized by the users themselves, while today’s algorithms cater to the needs and interests of the companies that develop and deploy them. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok all try to increase the time you spend on their websites through algorithms. They are designed to serve the interests of the platform rather than the public. As Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of Atlantic magazine, said, the result is that the architecture of modern network is similar to a doomsday machine.
The article further points out that the future of generative artificial intelligence seems to be an unexplored field, but in fact it is more like a trail in disrepair. This path is not clearly marked, but it has been walked by many people. To put it bluntly, we will live in a future that will provide investors with the greatest return. Now it’s best to stop imagining the possible achievements of tools like ChatGPT when they are used freely and universally, and instead think about which potential uses will maximize the benefits. New markets will emerge over time. For example, in 1998, Google set off a revolution in online search, but at that time, leading online search could not make a lot of money. This technology first needed to become efficient enough to attract people. Since then, Google launched Adwords, an advertising service platform in 2001, and became one of the most profitable companies in history in the following years.
In Karpf’s view, this is the most divorced from reality in the hype of ChatGPT. If history is used as a guide, then tools like ChatGPT will mostly create repercussions in existing industries, rather than subverting them through direct competition. The long-term trend shows that new technologies tend to aggravate instability. Large, high-yield industries usually resist new entrants until they incorporate new technologies into existing workflows. This is the old road we have traveled. In 1993, Michael Crichton declared that The New York Times would be buried within ten years, and it would be replaced by a software agent that provided timely, relevant and personalized news to consumers who were willing to pay. At the end of 2000′ s, massive open online courses were regarded as the emissary of higher education, because from then on, you can watch MIT professors attend classes on laptops and get certificates through online exams without paying tuition fees.
Technical experts often claim that medical care, education and other fields are about to be destroyed, not because these industries are particularly vulnerable to new technologies, but because they are major sectors in the economy. DALL-E 2 may be a great destruction for freelance graphic designers, because the industry is too small and has not been organized to protect itself. The American Bar Association and the health care industry are much more efficient in setting up barriers to entry. ChatGPT will not be the end of the university, but it may be the end of the college homework ghostwriting business; It will not be the end of The New York Times, but it may become another obstacle to the reconstruction of local news. Industries that are connected by freelance piecework may be in big trouble. Experience shows that the more unstable the industry, the greater the risk of being destroyed.
Atman himself imagined in an article entitled "Moore’s Law for Everything" in 2021 that in the near future, professionals in the medical and legal fields will be replaced by artificial intelligence tools: "Within five years, computer programs that can think can read legal documents and give medical advice … We can imagine that artificial intelligence doctors can diagnose health problems better than humans, and artificial intelligence teachers may accurately judge and explain students’ incomprehension. These promises sound very similar to the excitement caused by IBM’s supercomputer Watson more than 10 years ago. In 2011, Watson defeated Ken Jennings in the American quiz show Jeopardy, which set off a wave of speculation that a new era of "big data" had arrived. Watson is praised as a symbol of extensive social change, which will have a fundamental impact on medical care, finance, academics and law. Then the successful business case never appeared. Ten years later, The New York Times reported that Watson had been quietly used for smaller purposes.
Karpf pointed out that the problem with atman’s idea is that even if the computer program can provide accurate medical advice, it still can’t prescribe drugs, make an appointment for radiological examination, or submit documents to persuade insurance companies to pay for it. Medical expenses in the United States are not directly driven by doctors’ salaries. Similarly, the soaring cost of higher education is not driven by the salary increase of professors. He cited the public relations industry as an example, saying that ChatGPT is best at producing cliches, and with a little training, it can find words that are often combined. Most marketing materials are predictable, especially suitable for programs like ChatGPT. But even so, it is hard to imagine that any senior executive would convey such cost-saving measures to the board of directors and shareholders, that is, let a neural network take charge of the company’s advertising work. More likely, ChatGPT will be incorporated into the existing company, so that it can employ fewer employees in the production process, but still charge the original fee.
There are still some questions to be answered, such as how the old and new regulations will affect the development of artificial intelligence. Napster, a music software, was about to completely change music until lawyers intervened. Twitter users have uploaded the generated artificial intelligence image of Mickey Mouse holding a machine gun. Once lawyers and regulators intervene, the development company is likely to get into trouble.
Karpf concluded that with the passage of time, institutions will adapt to new technologies, and new technologies will be incorporated into the huge and complex social system. Every revolutionary new technology will change the existing system and be changed by it. These income patterns will not be clear in a few years, and we have the initiative to influence the development together. That is, where our focus should be. After all, all magic shows have their skills.
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