AI and Transhumanism
Like a runaway locomotive crashing down the track, the issues of transhumanism and artificial intelligence are coming and we aren't going to be able to avoid them.
Trump’s announcement of a big investment in AI and the fact he is tight with Elon and Elon’s celestial ambitions raise questions about both AI and transhumanism.
These are fast-moving, critical issues we need to openly debate.
Hell, public access to AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT LLM (Large Language Model) was unheard of before 2020 and now it is used on a daily basis. I’ve been using it to edit the book I am writing. Many of us have Apple AI on our phones. Big strides have been made in the past three or four years – and those are just the strides we know about.
AI is a double-edged sword – it is the arms race of the 21st century, just like taming the atom was post WWII. The difference is that this isn’t going to be something we can lock the door to the bunker on to stop it, but if it is inevitable, the question is whether we do it or do we allow our enemy competitors to get ahead of us.
I honestly don't have a hard answer for that question. I know I would rather see America lead the way, because we are certainly the most ethical of all nations pushing toward a fully functioning artificial intelligence because I believe it is coming whether we want it or not.
But I also do not believe this is a genie that can be summoned from her bottle and then put back in without a fight. It seems to me that it cannot be controlled forever. While we may never be hunted by Terminators, the idea of SkyNet is real and to get AI smart enough to do the things we ask of it, it seems a mandate to be as close to sentient as possible is required.
Given the vast amount of programming and information it will require, I believe artificial life will result – and I also believe the will to survive will be as strong in it as it is in humans.
After the dust settles, winning the AI race might look a whole lot like losing – a lot less like the Jetsons and lot more like Terminator.
I do think it is something we will be dealing with for an extraordinarily long time.
Some say Musk is a transhumanist.
First, let me acknowledge there are transhumanists of many flavors out there. There are those who want to see humans turn into something like Cyborg from the DC Universe and there are those who want to go more X-Men Mutant types loaded with Deadpool’s powers of self-healing.
As to whether Musk is or not, I don’t know. If he is, I see him more in the Marvel X-Men camp (evolutionary mutations give the characters their superhuman powers) than the DC Cyborg one (Cyborg began as human but became a living machine with a human mind). I think he is more purpose driven, believing some enhancements are going to be needed to capture his brass ring, aka his quest to land on and colonize Mars. I see him as looking to enhance humans to be able to withstand the physical demands, the stresses, and the challenges of that mission, not necessarily wanting to create a new human species.
There certainly are Cyborg transhumanists out there - like the radical forces at the WEF envisions – that Yuval Hariri futurist dude at the WEF is a real piece of work – these guys think humans of today are as capable as a 1936 Ford truck and are due for a massive species upgrade. They also want to build in a control circuit so that the main tenet, control, of global communist, one-world government can be realized. China is already testing and refining that model without cybernetic enhancements through their social credit system that monitors the daily activities of the entire populace and blocks off certain things if your scores are not high enough.
I do believe AI and transhumanism go hand in hand – same advantages and pitfalls exist in each. If AI can make life better for everyone on the planet by managing risk and threats faster and better than humans ever could, I think that would be a good thing – the same with transhumanism. If I can have Deadpool’s healing powers through nanotechnology, I would get in line for that upgrade.
What is true for either is that if their development and implementation are not governed by a strong set of ethics, the dystopian future of science fiction might just be around the corner.
The danger to humans is the creation of a sentient artificial being without a soul that will see us as illogical and therefore inferior.
The question I ask in all of this is - to what end? What is the ultimate that THEY want to create and WHY? These questions need to be answered.
However, I am also a bit of a realist. I love nostalgia, even wrote books about it, but my career (40 years) was in the computer/technology field, and I saw change, almost yearly - if not monthly, and it changed not only in that industry, but effects on many industries.
I see and play with AI (mainly ChatGPT), and I am both amazed as well as scared to death for what it might turn into. On the one hand it could almost eliminate overnight a lot of ambiguity in Western and Eastern Health care. It could bring about the end of cancers, and other diseases in a matter of a few years. Designer drugs are a matter of course and now coming faster than we think. End of big pharma might just be around the corner as long as the powers to be are not bought off.
AI has the ability to make living so much easier and better for the masses, and yet there is that nagging voice in the back of my head warning of the bad actors trying to hi-jack it for nefarious reasons. That is what scares the heck out of me.
AI is not in any way perfected, but it's not only learning day by day, but it's a computer application that is leaning millisecond by millisecond. This will grow and expand much faster than our computer power can keep up with and that is where the next big bang will happen.
My 2 cents.
A powerful AI without moral restraints could devise Procrustean “solutions” to our problems. Take the supposed impending insolvency of the Social Security system. Some initial plausible solutions, that might seek to increase the fund, like increasing percentages of employee withholdings or extending the age of drawing rights to 70 or more years of age, would simply face too much political opposition. But the “solution” of reducing the numbers of beneficiaries through medical triage or outright euthanasia might become politically appealing to increasingly morally ambivalent younger generations (many of whom may also be eager to inherit parental estates before their elders fritter them away). If the entire class of people 65 years old and older are eliminated their potential political opposition ceases to exist and therefore this solution becomes more feasible.
Of course we don’t need amoral super AIs to produce such morally monstrous solutions. The WEF and other elitist groups populated by moral cretins like Yuval Harari already seem capable of surreptitiously proposing and enacting such schemes. If we consider the evolution of “voluntary” euthanasia programs in Canada and Europe one can see how what was originally proposed as a merciful and humane “right” for terminally ill persons has morphed through family bullying and medical greed into a near obligation for those who are elderly or merely mentally distressed. In retrospect I see the prioritizing of giving the dangerous and ineffective mRNA bio weapon to those 65 and older, the housing of COVID infected patients in nursing homes, and unethical hospital euthanasia protocols for anyone diagnosed as positive by inaccurate CPR tests as having as the ulterior goal the elimination of large numbers of state pensioners seen as “useless eaters.” Super-intelligent AIs, like nuclear energy, will likely only remain tools without real autonomy of will. It is rather the propensity for individuals like Yuval Harari to use such tools for evil purposes that is the real danger.
Another possible solution, of course, would be effective programs to encourage marriage and procreation. But the same green elitists have been pushing policies encouraging abortion, pricing housing out of the reach of young people who could form families, the promotion of castration of little boys and spaying of little girls, and the promotion of sterile sexual life-styles all of which appear to be parts of an overall anti-natalist agenda, also being pushed by globalist elites in the name of keeping planet Earth green (and keeping this Earth gif themselves alone.)