By Sidney Secular
September 5, 2023
“The more things change, the worse things become” is the result of the natural downwards spiral of an unnatural society lacking the bearings or a rudder with which to move things in the “right” direction. The Second Law of Thermodynamics takes over when there is no consensus, conscience or correct moral guidance brought to bear on what has become an unbearable situation and few have the moral power or the “informed” conscience to counter it. Thus, this moral and intellectual vacuum is quickly being filled by what has become known as Artificial Intelligence or AI. AI is a man-made development that is latching on or catching on like a disease because it appears able to fill the above moral and intellectual vacuum created by our currently vacuous existence in which we require constant stimulation, often being supplied by this newfound fad.
But as with all such “novelties,” anyone with intelligence realizes that we human beings have to start paying attention to what increasingly impinges upon our lives. The latest tech toys always look great at first, but they begin to grate on us when we realize that they are not nearly so innocuous as they first appear and often they end up degrading us as a species. For instance, the GPS apps makes searching – and finding! – relatively simple while sounding both sensuous and innocuous with their faux female voices. The same type of calming and reassuring influence can be found in tech tools like Siri and her sisters. But these were merely the leading salvoes of a host of oncoming, increasingly edgy, state-of-art stuff that you can’t or won’t be able to resist without incurring the wrath of your “with-it” friends and perhaps even your employer and your government!
AI applications will soon cover all aspects of our lives such as scheduling our appointments, improving our writing, remembering names for us, discovering distant relatives we didn’t know we had, or rapidly sorting through records and files that it would otherwise take us a lifetime to do. AI can detect when someone is using our credit cards without our permission as well as being able to determine our buying and browsing habits so as to target us with alluring ads and these are among performing a multitude of mundane tasks that will leave us with nothing else to do except walk around like good zombies and sit around like couch potatoes eating chips all day and imbibing the latest media indoctrination propaganda.
So, what exactly is AI? It is broadly defined as any computer program that “simulates” human intelligence and therefore both intelligence use and gathering. The difference is AI is able to do this on steroids! Its origins go back to the beginnings of the computer age when it wasn’t taken seriously except in science fiction. However, the fact is that all things that presently monopolize and dominate our lives start out that way; that is, they begin as fads or entertainment fluff. This includes present staples of life such as radio, TV, autos, telephones &etc. But the AI phenomena has now grown to the point at which no one will take you or your software seriously if the latter doesn’t claim to make use of AI. Take ChatGPT, one application of AI that is garnering special attention because of its exceptional capabilities in performing functions that would eliminate the need for humans to obtain and retain knowledge, ending the need perhaps for humans at all! ChatGPT is officially claimed to help people do their jobs better, but Elon Musk has called for a 6 month moratorium on its further development. Why? Because Musk – nobody’s fool! – believes that the “program” could independently decide to rule the human race – or eliminate it entirely!
AI itself involves networks of computer systems that absorb unbelievably massive amounts of data, seeking patterns or commonalities amongst that data, and then predicts outcomes within a percentage range of certainty. A computer application of AI was a winner in a TV episode of “Jeopardy,” examining millions of possible answers in order to select the correct one. The human brain or a living body can be more intuitive or emotionally sensitive than a computer, but it can’t crunch data or at least do it on so massive a scale; and on top of that, computer processing speeds are advancing exponentially, which will make AI ever more powerful and dominant over time. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, AI will soon be embedded in all we do as we become transhuman vice human. Self-driving cars will become the norm rather than the exception and home care androids will replace human caregivers perhaps even terminating their “patients” when they are considered past saving within their clinical evaluation processes. Our brains will be given the capability to think up commands and instructions without having to speak or write them. The problem then becomes that you may not be able to keep your private thoughts to yourself or even have personal thoughts that matter at all! Orwell’s “Big Brother” may well be something that is not even human! The AI-human system into which you will hooked, like a Siamese twin, will come to know everything about you – your strengths, weaknesses, and intentions and will feed you all you need to know in order to handle all situations – at least according to AI! One possibility that should really concern us is that one’s AI buddy can’t or, more to the point, won’t tell you why it made a certain decision and you will not have the power to override that decision. If we don’t know why a machine makes certain decisions, how are we going to regulate it? Indeed, if a machine can make “decisions” absent human input, we cannot claim to be “regulating” it. Rather, it will be “regulating” us!
Of course, as with everything else, politicians don’t understand the concept anyway, at least not enough to try to regulate it or even deal with it. As a result, we will have to create or have AI create a new technocracy to legislate and regulate for us, a system that will probable result in AI being able to rule over us, all of us including the technocrats and libber rats who have been salivating over that prospect for more than 80 years now They know that if they do it right, the whole thing will be falling into their laps through, by, with and through AI. The New World orderlies and their lapdog media influencers are conditioning themselves for their future roles in the coming “scheme” of things, at least as things now stand.
Now, new technologies have historically created more jobs than they have destroyed, but that will not happen this time. AI will replace nearly every category of worker including administrative and those who work with knowledge where judgement calls are required. This includes doctors, lawyers, and even journalists. The latter have not exercised any independent judgement now for decades, so it will be a seamless transition in that “department.” We already have fake news, so what’s new? However, AI will make the situation much worse! Why? Because fake stories are going to get a new and better veneer of realism and you won’t know if any news report should be challenged because you won’t know if what is presented is real or not.
Imagine a fake video showing someone mouthing words they never uttered, or showing someone engaging in a shameful activity in which they never were involved; that is, if any activity will still be considered shameful by then! Perhaps prayer or charity or patriotism?? In any event, cynical and sinful opinion leaders and crooks will certainly use AI to mislead and defraud. As AI improves, you will be forced to give up increasing amounts of your privacy; there will be no “safe spaces,” no sanctuaries even in the privy or the bedroom. And as AI improves, circumstances will prevail that will force you to develop strong emotional attachments to it as you would to a beloved pet or personal icon. People may give up looking for a life partner because they will consider that they already have the perfect one so to speak!
And because creating lasting interpersonal relationships is already such a difficult task, with the pool of desirable and even possible partners shrinking all the time, a safe, pleasant “relationship” with an AI companion may well be seen as the best choice available. After all, one would not need to separate the genuine companion-lover from those with ulterior motives and, procreation aside, we’ll have AI to summon the answers and provide limitless sexual fantasies absent any consequences. Humans not accompanied by an AI assistant will be left behind, just like people today who are without computers or Internet access are increasingly being left behind in dealing with the world around them!
Will this be one giant step forward for mankind, or the end of Man? One thing to consider is that machines cannot create a better world without better people to write the programs and bring their efforts to fruition! If that indeed is the case, then we must recognize that the quality of today’s people just about everywhere leaves little hope that even AI will do that job.
© 2023 Sidney Secular – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Sidney Secular: Success_Express@yahoo.com
