Jevons Paradox Of Love And Hate

Commenting on the exponential ramifications for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry following the Chinese technological breakthrough which created the advanced language model of DeepSeek, at a fraction of the cost of its competitors, the CEO of Microsoft , Satya Nadella , invoked the spectre of the Jevons Paradox .

Formulated 160 years ago by the British economist William Stanley Jevons, the counter-intuitive paradox shows that technological advancement in the use of any given resource leads to an increasing, and not a decreasing, use of that resource.

Jevons based his theory on how the better utilisation of coal during Britain's Industrial Revolution through the invention of the steam engine led to a greater demand for coal, and increased instead of lowering its consumption.

Similarly, the construction of more roads and highways to cut down on driving time can have the unintended consequence of increasing the volume of vehicles, leading to congestion, delays and traffic jams.

More efficient electrical systems lead to a greater demand for electricity and therefore increased consumption of power.

Nadella expressed the apprehension that the advent of DeepSeek could augur an uncontrolled and uncontrollable proliferation of AI usage , both for benefic purposes such as medical research, and for the malefic creation of deepfakes and propagandist misinformation.

Can the equivalent of the Jevons Paradox obtain in the non-material realm of the psyche? Can it work in the realm of the antipodes of love and hate?

Time and time again, history has shown that given a conducive environment which promotes it, the destructive energy of hatred thrives and feeds on itself to grow to monstrous proportions, as witnessed in Nazi Germany, in the Red Terror of the Stalinist purges, in the McCarthy witch hunts in America, and in the ongoing and escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Collective hate, the systemic 'otherisation' of those who belong to a different country, religion, or ideology, is indeed a self-generating, constantly renewable resource, with universally tragic consequences.

Can the same claim be made for hate's composite polar opposite of love and compassion, a combined resource of the spirit that our environmentally endangered and strife-ridden planet so desperately needs?

By its nature hate divides; by its essence compassion, manifested through empathy, unites. Even as the hate-driven wars of antagonism divide, the empathy-inspired crusades against hunger and poverty, and against environmental degradation, unify through commonality of purpose.

The resource of divisive hate is created and propagated by rabble-rousing demagogues and dictators. The resource of unifying compassion is generated and fostered by scientists seeking cures for disease, by philosophers and ethicists in search of universal verities that sustain all humanity, by poets and artists who help us to see the familiar world with the startling newness of unfamiliar vision.

As in the case of 19th century coal, or 21st century AI, the timeless human resources of hate and compassion are subject to the Jevons Paradox; the more they are used, the greater is the demand for them.

While hate perpetuates a vicious circle of anti-evolutionary descent, compassion creates a virtuous spiral of ascent.

And AI is the new, perhaps ultimate, frontier where the two age-old and highly resourceful adversaries will contend to define what it is to be human.

Authored by: Jug Suraiya