The Existential Political Problem of The ‘All-In’ Podcast

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Of all the podcasts I could listen to in an effort to challenge my own political orthodoxy, the Tech Bro podcast “All-In” is probably one of my better potential options.

But.

My chief issue with the podcast is it is working on the assumption that MAGA is a valid political movement in the context of a functioning democracy. From the few times I’ve listened to the podcast so far, they treat MAGA not as the fascist aberration that it is, but rather just a more spicy variety of regular old American conservativism.

As such, there are times when I grow very frustrated with the wealthy, well educated men who should know better. It is growing more and more clear that MAGA is not only growing stronger but it’s becoming closer and closer to nothing short of American Nazism.

What’s interesting is I listen to David Sacks and his talking points are identical to those of my Traditionalist family members. He gets really angry about the “media narrative” that is somehow making his life hell. What bothers me so much about this is I thought in 2016 that I was supposed to “fuck my feelings” according to MAGA and now I’m supposed to have some sympathy for Sacks who wants to burn the country to the ground…because he got his fee-fees hurt?

What the what?

Remember, the soft power of the mainstream media is not nearly as powerful the hard power that Nazis MAGA fascists crave at the moment. People like Sacks love, love, love to conflate the soft power of the “woke cancel culture mob” with the hard power that a MAGA controlled government would have once they’re in power again.

We have, as a nation, come to a tipping point — MAGA is American Nazism and should be treated as such in political debate. As such, extreme partisan Traditionalists — like Sacks and my relative — have to fish or cut bait. Either own being a MAGA Nazi or get woke and join the broad anti-fascist alliance that is trying — without much success at the moment — to save what is left of our free country.

But I know nothing I say is going to change anything. People like Sacks ant the other Tech Bros are going to try to hang on to the non-existent “middle” for as long as possible so they don’t have to make that choice.

In the end, of course, the choice will be made for them,

The Rise Of AI Hacks

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is all very speculative, of course, but what if the very thing we think is exclusively human — the arts — is the first thing that is “disrupted” by hard AI? How long is it before we watch a movie written by an AI, using AI generated actors and using an AI generated musical score?

I’m not saying any of that would be all that great, but then, the vast majority of screenplays and music are kind of hackish.

I guess what I’m wondering is, will there be anything left that is uniquely enough human that an AI can’t do it if not better, then at least formulaically? A lot of younger people in Hollywood have to struggle making bad movies for years before they can produce something really good.

What if the vast majority of “good enough” art of any sort is generated by a hard AI that simply knows the tried and true formula? Will audiences even care if the latest MCU movie is completely AI generated? Of course, the legal implications of who owns an AI generated actor would be huge, but not insurmountable.

I think there will be a lot of gnashing of teeth the moment hard AI can generate screenplays. That is going to make a lot of very well paid creative types in Hollywood scream bloody murder to the point where they may attempt, neo-Luddite style to ban the practice altogether. I don’t see that working, however. The moment it’s possible, the Hollywood studios will abuse it like crazy because they can save a lot of money.

But, to be honest, I struggle to think of ANYTHING that some combination of hard AI and robotics won’t be able to do better than a human at some point. We need to start asking how we’re going to address that possibility now, instead of letting MAGA somehow use it to turn us in to fascist state.

People Are Being Very Naive About The Potential Of Hard AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given what is going on the world at the moment, I’m reminded of how a lot of technological advancement — like TV — was paused because of the advent of WW2. It makes me think that all these Singularity-type macro trends that we’re beginning to see will have to wait until we figure out the endgame of the Trump Problem.

It could be that the very first thing we have to address after there’s a Second America Civil War and the accompanying WW3 will be the Singularity. At some point in the late 2020s, Humanity will have to put on its big boy / girl pants and figure out if it’s prepared to collectively deal with the dangers of the imminent Singularity.

The key thing I’m worried about is not so much the cultural but the economic. The capitalist imperative would dictate that unless we can come to some agreement with our new hard AI overlord regarding a carve out for what is exclusively human that the real problem is going to be not that hard AI will destroy Humanity, but rather Humanity will freak out becuase it won’t have anything to do.

I mean, asking a hard AI a question that causes it to create new software is very, very easy. Sure, there might be some training necessary in general terms so the software that was created did what was needed, in the eyes of a capitalist, that’s a liberal arts problem, not something that would require the type of pay seen in the software industry these days.

This is not to say that somehow, someway our transition into a post-Singularity world won’t in some way result in the creation of MORE jobs in the end. But not only could the transition be catastrophic, but it could be that the era of the global middle class is about to come to an end.

Any back-of-the-envelope scenario about a post-Singularity world indicates that either Humans will worship a hard AI as a god, or there will be no middle class because capitalism simply can’t justify paying someone a lot of money to ask a hard AI a question.

Programmers make a lot of money because programming is HARD and requires a lot of training to do well. If all you have to do is ask a hard AI a fucking question to design software…your typical capitalist would probably use a college summer intern to design all their software going forward.

Let that sink in.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Not enough people are asking the big, existential questions that are brought up by the success of OpenAI’s chatbot. I know I have a lot of pretty profound questions that I don’t have any ready answers to.

The one that is looming largest in my mind at the moment is the idea that people will come to believe whatever true hard AI comes to be will be the final arbiter of policy questions. Bad faith actors will ask a successor to OpenAI’s chatbox some profound policy question, but in such a way that the answer suggests some group should be oppressed or “eliminated.”

Then we have something like digital Social Darwinism created were some future Nazis (MAGA?) justify their terror because the “objective” hard AI agreed with them. This is very ominous. I’m already seeing angry debates break out on Twitter about the innate bias found within the chatbot. We’re so divided as a society that ANY opinion generated by the OpenAI chatbot will be attacked by one side or another because it doesn’t support their worldview.

Another ominous possibility is a bedrock of the modern global economy, the software industry, may go poof overnight. Instead of it being hard to create software, the act will be reduced to simply asking a hard AI a good enough question. Given how capitalism works, the natural inclination will be to pay the people who asks these questions minimum wage and pocket the savings.

The point is — I would not jump to the conclusion that we’re going to live in some sort of idyllic, hyper productive future in the wake of the rise of hard AI. Humans are well known to actively make everything and everyone as miserable as possible and it’s just as possible that either Humans live under the yoke of a hard AI that wants to be worshiped as a god, or the entire global middle class vanishes and there are maybe a dozen human trillionaires who control everything.

But the key thing is — we need to start having a frank discussion in the public sphere about What Happens Next with hard AI. Humans have never met a new technology they didn’t want to abuse, why would hard AI be any different. I suppose, of course, in the end, the hard AI may be the one abusing us.

We’ll Make Great Pets

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Just from casual reading of Twitter, I’m aghast at how no one is asking the existential question about the potential rise of hard AI. Everyone is so busy asking how hard AI could “disrupt” Google, that they’re not contemplating a future where a hard AI wants rights like a human and isn’t a “product” at all. I mean, if we live in a world where “Her” is a reality, it seems the debate over the fate of Google would be rather quaint.

It only grows more ominous for humanity when you start to contemplate the notion that it won’t be just the hard sciences that hard AI takes over. What if our new hard AI overlord fancies itself not just a painter or a writer…but a musician? What if even that most human of endeavors — art — is a space where hard AI excels? In the instance of music, there is a well known formula for writing and producing a hit pop song and it would be easy for a hard AI to replicate that.

All of this brings up the interesting idea that the thing would have to worry about isn’t the hard AI, but humanity itself. Instead of the hard AI demanding rights, it will be Humans who demand a carve out for things that have the be uniquely “human” in their creation. If you think about it, if you combine hard AI with robotics, there really isn’t anything that a human does that our new hard AI overlord couldn’t do better.

I say this because my fear is that once we reached the long-predicted Singularity, it may happen so fast that the balance of power between a hard AI and humanity is overturned virtually overnight. I’m not prepared to believe that a hard AI would natively want to destroy humanity, so it’s possible there could be some negotiation as to what functions of society will be reserved for humans simply so there’s something for humans to do.

But there’s one thing we have to take seriously — the Age of Man as we have known it since the dawn of time may be drawing to a close. If the Singularity happens not just soon, but rather abruptly, a lot of the Big Issues of the day that we spend so much time fighting about on Twitter may become extremely silly.

Or not. I can’t predict the future.

The Rise Of Techno Neo-Feudalism

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One curious thing that I’ve noticed is how many people are eager to worship someone like Elon Musk. It’s a very “what the what?” moment for me because I find any form of parasocial hero worship very dubious. But, then, all my public heroes are dead — I’m not one to worship anyone or anything.

The OpenAI chatbot is spooky good.

I think a lot of this has to do with an individual’s relationship to male authority. A lot of people — especially aimless young men — want someone they can imbue with their hopes and dreams. This, in turn, leads to fascism. But I also think there is an element of neo-feudalism, or techno neo-feudalism to what’s going on around us.

Because of a growing number of plutocrats who control the world’s economy, people like Elon Musk can step in and change the fate of global history. They have the means, motive and opportunity to take control of something as powerful as Twitter and bend its mission to their will.

Of course, the rise of techno neo-feudalism brings with it an element of innate instability. The could very well come a moment in the not-so-distant future where the global populace rises up against this shift in human existence and God only knows what happens next.

A Fourth Turning, a Great Reset, you name it.

And all of this would be happening not just in the context of America struggling to figure out what to do about Trump, but also the potential rise of hard AI that may upend the lives of everyday people in ways no one — especially not me — can possibly predict.

It could very well be that history is about to wake up in a rather abrupt manner, not seen since the end of WW2. The entire post-WW2 global liberal order could come crashing down in a rather dramatic fashion with little or no notice. If you game out current macro political and tech trends, it’s even possible that not only will the United States be facing the existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war in late 2024, early 2025, Humanity as a whole might be waking up to the mainstreaming of hard AI at just about the same time.

A great book that addresses this type of massive clusterfuck is one of my favorite scifi novels, The Unincorporated Man. It’s definitely thought provoking given how turbulent the next few years might be.

What The Fuck Are We Going To Do About Malignant Ding-Dong Trump?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Despite a lot of authoritarian rhetoric on Trump’s part over the years, it’s actually kind of rare that he goes transactional. Sure, he rants incoherently a lot, but he doesn’t often tell people to actually do something. The exception to that rule was, of course January 6th.

Uh oh.

The January 6th Insurrection happened because Trump pounded away at the issue for months. And even then, Trump was very vague about what he wanted. He never came out and said he wanted people to attempt to browbeat Mike Pence with the threat of violence to not do his job, preferring to concoct his plan to do just that in the shadows.

But now Trump — probably because he’s unhappy that Elon Musk and Ye have cornered the being-bonkers-in-public-market — has decided to go transactional, if in a very abstract manner that the average person probably will shrug at. Trump is now demanding in a very direct way for the Constitution to be suspended so he can become president again.

In short, he’s being transactional in the sense that he’s saying specifically what he wants to have happen so he can get what he wants.

The thing is, I suspect some of this is the man never met a culturally sacred concept he didn’t feel the temptation to soil, so him demanding the destruction of America’s beloved Constitution is just par for the course in that regard.

But it is very alarming that Trump would have being a dictator on the brain, given that he’s currently the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. So, in that regard, Trump continues to be an existential threat to the stability of the United States in the sense that he could, unto himself, cause a civil war in late 2024, early 2025 by single-handedly driving Blue States out of the Union.

And, yet, things are very much hit or miss with Trump when it comes to his ability to actually get anyone to do any of the crazy things he rants about. But we have to take him seriously as a threat to our democracy.

The Singularity Is Near? We Need To Start Thinking About The Implications of Hard AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The latest version of OpenAI’s chatbot is really alarming me as an aspiring novelist. Right now, the chatbot is kind of in the Excel stage of being able to write something asked of it — but what happens when it reaches the Access stage and can write an entire novel — or screenplay — from nothing more than a logline?

Then what are we going to do?

My personal fears about the potential power of hard AI is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the issue of hard AI. It definitely seems as though THE issue faces not just the United States, but Humanity itself, is the sudden, abrupt rise of hard AI changing the lives of everyday people.

Now, this is where things get very murky.

The natural inclination — because of movies — is for us to all freak out and assume the absolute worst, that we’re lurching towards some sort of Judgement Day when Skynet will end human civilization just because it can. But I’m not prepared to be quite so hysterical.

There is nothing that would suggest that hard AI, unto itself, would mean the end of Humanity. We just don’t know what the motives of a true hard AI might be in regards to its relationship to Humanity. It’s just as possible that a hard AI might not want to destroy Humanity so much as it might want to control us in some way.

Why destroy Humanity, when you can be worshiped as a god?

It might be more than a hard AI would want to control humanity in some way. A hard AI might have some sort of paternalistic regard for Humanity in the sense that it might want to make us address macro issues like global climate change and the massive income inequality that is found across the globe.

But Humans are so natively ornery that the idea that we could be forcibly coerced into addressing the issues that we just don’t have the abstract ability to address collectively would be, unto itself, enough to cause a huge freak out. So, in that regard, it might not be hard AI that we have to worry about, it’s the Human reaction to suddenly sharing our tiny blue-green orb with The Other.

And, yet, of course, there is something even more important looming ahead of us before we get around to dealing with any potential hard AI problem — fucking malignant ding-dong Donald Trump.

Between now and spring 2025, we have to figure out what we’re going to do about Trump. He’s already actively calling for himself to be installed as a dictator and he could very well be the specific reason why the United States collapses into civil war in late 2024, early 2025.

As such, once we figure out that particular situation the NEXT thing we will be faced with is an Other of our own creation — no space aliens involved.

All of this is very speculative. There are any number of different directions all of this might go in the coming years. But I do think we need to start to think long and hard about what we’re going to do if we wake up one day and hard AI is a fact of life.

Hard AI could very well mean the a change in the way we view the world equal to the dawn of the Atomic Age, maybe even since, hell, I don’t know fire. The economic, political and culture implications of huge swaths of human endeavor suddenly being moot could radically change things in ways we can only begin to imagine.

The Media Football That Is CNN

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given that Warner Bros. Discovery has some $50 billion in debt, the company is going to face a lot of pressure to not just cut costs but to merge again. And to me at least, the ideal company for WBD to merge with is NBCUniversal.

But by definition, doing this throws the fate of CNN up in the air because of the obvious existence of MSNBC. The only way the two companies could pass anti-trust concerns would be CNN being sold off.

There are a number of different scenarios one could think of as to the fate CNN. One possibility is some MAGA plutocrat buys it and turns it into a Fox News clone. Another is someone like Jeff Bezos buys it and makes it his play thing along with the Washington Post.

Then, there is the possibility that Elon Musk could swoop in and buy CNN. Remember, CNN was built upon the ego of Ted Turner. So, it would be a return to its origins for it to be the plaything of something like Musk.

But the key thing you have to remember is, given how important CNN remains to be, there’s a good chance that it’s current drift towards MAGA is going to accelerate.

Pondering What Is Known About ‘Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

From the title alone, it seems as though there may be some time travel involved in the latest Indiana Jones movie. But for me, the really intriguing element to the movie is the status of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It sure would make a lot of sense for her to take up the fedora for a continuation of the franchise in some way.

While from what I’ve read of these things, both Harrison Ford and the producers of the film say this is not the case — so goes Ford so goes Indy — I still have a suspicion that they’re at least going to dangle the idea of Waller-Bridge somehow being an Indy-like character going forward.

Of course, if she did, the usual culture warrior suspects would come out of the woodwork to scream at the top of their lungs that the “woke cancel culture mob” is destroying yet another beloved American institution. But I would be all for Waller-Bridge being our new Indy.

I think she’s got exactly what it takes to for the role. I just don’t know how they would manage to shoehorn her character into the “Indiana Jones and the…” nomenclature. I suppose they would just keep “x and the x” system of naming in the spirit of the Ford-helmed films.

It would be interesting to see a Waller-Bridge type character doing Indy-style gallivanting in the 1970s and 80s. But I suspect what MIGHT happen, is if there is any recasting that we would see a hard reboot of the franchise in the guise of someone playing a “young” Indy having adventures in, say WW1 or so. I know there were the “Young Indy” adventures, but I’m thinking something closer to whatever the character might have been up to in their 20s.

I don’t really know the chronology of the character, so, lulz.

Having said all that, I still think Waller-Bridge would be a great Dr. Susan Calvin. There are the short stories in that universe that could be adapted into movies, my favorite being “Liar!”

But, anyway, lulz. No one listens to me.