People fear artificial intelligence for all sorts of reasons. To me, it’s not a matter of “fear” so much as profound disdain. I don’t foresee AI itself going rogue and killing everyone. I see human beings using AI to destroy cultural heritage and spiritual connection. Such technologies are paving a road to dehumanization and the Greater Replacement. Developers justify this transformation as “necessary” due an AI arms race they created.
It’s not that I don’t take the supposed existential risks seriously. Anything is possible. But the most immediate threats are mass surveillance coupled with psychological and behavioral manipulation; unchecked AI-dependency leading to human atrophy; and wherever people are deemed obsolete, we’ll see the replacement of white and blue collar workers by algorithms and robots.
All of that is happening now, and fast.
To keep China from taking the lead, we’re told, America must build better digital gods than China. It’s like your preacher insisting that for Christians to inherit the earth, they’ve gotta become more satanic than the Devil.
Watching President Trump embrace AI over the past year has been a disappointment, but not wholly unexpected. I’ve written about the conservative case for a transhuman future in my book and in numerous articles. For years, I’ve covered right-wing tech accelerationism on the War Room, even if the Posse didn’t want to hear it. To his credit, Steve Bannon backed me the entire way, regardless of the political friction it caused. Transhumanism never jived with his Catholic faith or his Irish defiance.
The Stargate Project is not an official US government venture, so it’s stunning that Trump would endorse it from the White House—especially right out of the gate. I suppose he wanted to show he’d keep his promises on AI dominance, too. What really took me by surprise was when Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman walked into the Roosevelt Room. Typical of overzealous salesmen, they claimed they’d produce miracles.
“One of the most exciting things we’re working on,” Larry Ellison told the press, “is a cancer vaccine.” Using AI to test blood for the presence of cancer, he said, doctors could then sequence the cancerous genes and “design a vaccine for every individual person.” As I wrote a couple of years ago, this is a Jab 2.0 for Humanity 2.0. “And you can make that vaccine—that mRNA vaccine—you can make that robotically, again using AI, in about forty-eight hours.”
Of course, that’s not the only use Ellison sees for artificial intelligence. Last fall, the billionaire told Oracle’s financial analysts that their tech could make a better world through mass surveillance and behavioral modification. “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.” It’s sort of like having God watching everyone, but with more tangible and lucrative results.
In keeping with that theme, Sam Altman wants to provide advanced AI agents for personalized surveillance—a “super-competent colleague that knows absolutely everything about my whole life, every email, every conversation I’ve ever had, but doesn’t feel like an extension”—basically a guardian angel brought to you by Microsoft and OpenAI.
“Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need,” Altman wrote last September, in a post entitled “The Intelligence Age.” As it happened, the following day the World Economic Forum announced its 2025 annual meeting dubbed “Cooperation in the Intelligent Age.” By coincidence, the WEF is convening right now, during Trump’s first week as president.
In line with Altman, the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son believes AI will soon have godlike powers. “As you say yesterday,” he told President Trump, with accent rike’a kung fu movie, “this is the beginning of a ‘Golden Age’ of America. … This will help solving many, many issues—difficult things that otherwise we could not have solved—with the power of AI.
“I think AGI [artificial general intelligence] is coming very, very soon. … After that, artificial superintelligence will come to solve the issues that mankind would never, ever have thought that we could solve.” Last fall, Masayoshi told global business leaders in Saudi Arabia that he has faith artificial superintelligence will be “10,000 times smarter than a human brain and will exist by 2035,” per Reuters.
In Silicon Valley circles, these superhuman digital intelligences are called “sand gods,” as in the sand used to make silicon chips. For many of them, this is the entire point of human existence.
2 comments:
Stargate parallels the Manhattan Project. The release of atomic energy transformed the world. Dittos for AI.
Question becomes whether or not it will be good or bad for humanity. Lean towards not being good as history suggests that good intentions become bad reality.
Post a Comment