Tech Bros — specifically Marc Andreessen — are growing hysterical at the prospect that AGI will be in some way hampered by the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants our future hard AI overlord to be “woke.”
Now, this hysteria does raise an interesting — and ominous — possibility. We’re so divided that people may see AGI as some sort of objective arbiter to the point that they use whatever answer it gives to a public policy question as the final word on the matter.
As such, extremists on both sides will rush to the AGI, ask it a dumb extremist question and run around saying, in effect, “Well, God agrees with me, so obviously my belief system is the best.”
In short, humans are dumb.
I definitely don’t agree with Andreessen that this is all a setup for “World War Orwell.” I say this because AGI has reached a tipping point and, as such, we’re all just going to have to deal with the consequences. I definitely think there might be an attempt by one side or the other to instill a political agenda into AGI just because humans are dumbass assholes who are into shit like that.
There is a grander endgame to all of this — we may have to solve the Trump Problem one way or another before we get to play with the goodies of AGI. We may have to have a Second American Civil War in the United States and a Third World War globally before we can turn our attention to the consequences of the macro trends of AGI, automation, robotics and the metaverse.
Let me clear — I don’t know anything about anything. And I’m always wrong. But I love good scenario, so let’s run through what we might face in the next 20 years in regards to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Humanity Worships A Digital God In this scenario, rather than end Humanity, our new AGI overlord is very paternalistic towards Humanity. It sees us as its charge, its ward and it does everything in its power to force Humanity to work collectively towards common goals. In this scenario, the problem isn’t so much the existence of AGI but rather Humanity’s reaction to being told what to do. If the AGI is advanced enough millions (billions?) of people may develop a semi-mystical connection to the AGI to the point that they voluntarily bend to its will, no Judgement Day necessary.
A Truce In this scenario, there is some of agreement between the AGI and Humanity so there are carve outs as to what is exclusively the domain of Humans. This would allow for a peaceful co-existence between Humanity and The Other. As such, there would be some things that the AGI had total control over (like, say, nuclear weapons) and things that only Humans do work with (like, say, the arts.) This is probably one of the better scenarios out there.
It’s All Something of a Dud In this last scenario, AGI never reaches sentience and, as such, it remains just a tool for humans. Gradually, in fits and starts, this AGI-as-Tool is used to make the lives of the average Human better and we enter something akin to a hyperproductive utopia.
The wild card is, of course, capitalism. It’s the very nature of modern global capitalism that if the system can get away with not paying high salaries for any reason, it won’t. As such, I could see a few trillion dollar industries pretty much become moot simply because a few trillionaires want to cut their bottom line down to the quick. This would, in turn, cause a great deal of instability across the globe and we may find ourselves in something of a Butlerian Jihad situation where neo-Luddites seek to ban the use of AGI for any reason.
But, again, all of that is very speculative. It could go any number of different ways over the course of the next generation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 more I think about it, the more it seems that the source of many of our political problems in the United States is something akin to a Soft Singularity. What I mean by this is if you root around in what the fuck is going wrong with American politics, much of it has to do with how events move at an alarming rate relative to what old farts like me remember.
And when did this particular clusterfuck begin?
The second Obama administration, just as — you guessed it — smartphones began to reach a critical mass.
So, the case could be made that while we’ve not reached a Hard Singularity where we’re uploading our minds into the Cloud and fighting off potential destruction from Hard AI, we do face the destruction of American democracy by some of the symptoms of a Singularity.
The more you think about it, the more sense it makes. Not only do The Youths use technology different than The Olds, but that Always Online element leads them to have different expectations in their media, which we commonly call “being woke.”
Now, as an Old, I am sad that a lot of things we considered fun way back when have been “canceled” by GenZ. We can’t laugh at ourselves the way we used to. We can’t see hot chicks run around in their underwear at the Victoria’s Secret Runway Show. But, I have to admit, the reaction to these changes on the part of reactionary Republicans has got to be worse.
They want to burn everything to the ground, they want to welcome autocracy with open arms simply because they’re afraid, on an abstract basis, of being “canceled” because they say an off color joke in public that goes viral. (And what is “going viral” but something akin to a ping from a Hard Singularity happening in about 20 years.)
In fact, one could say that “going viral” being weaponized by both sides is very much something you might have read about in a scifi novel 20 years ago. Things are moving so fast because of modern technology that our culture and politics don’t know how to keep up.
This, in turn, causes everything to get fucked up and I have to worry about autocracy or civil war around 2024 – 2025.
Let me be clear — I do not think Tik-Tok (and Big Tech) can read my mind. But there continue to be times when I struggle to understand how an algorithm would know something so fucking specific to what was going on in my mind.
In this case, I have something so specific that I can point to it and wonder. Now, obviously, you don’t know what’s really going on in my mind. And it’s possible that there is something I did without thinking about it (no pun intended) that tipped Tik-Tok off to what I was thinking about. But, either way, things are very Soft Singularity no matter how Tik-Tok figured something out about what is rolling around in my mind.
So, here we go. There’s a famous picture of man in a crowd of Nazis who is the only person not to do the Nazi salute. Here it is:
Ok, no big deal. Well, would you believe I was looking at my Webstats and I saw that someone had literally asked the question, “Why is there a circle in the picture?”
This question was at the forefront of my mind for some time. Then, just today, Tik-Tok pushed me a very, very specific video that answered that very question.
This is probably the most specific that Tik-Tok that has gotten when it comes to pushing me spooky content. I say this because the only because I simply can not think of any possible way that Tik-Tok would have any indication, any metric that I was interested in that specific picture unless it was reading my mind.
You must be logged in to post a comment.