Back on my soapbox today. We are being thrust – note I didn’t use the words led or guided – into a global economic and technological future that is far beyond anything experienced by humanity within any of its recorded history. And the harm done to the health of humanity and the environment is unprecedented in scale. This is not conspiracy theory or the ramblings of some doom sayer, it is a simple statement of the way our future is being controlled and manipulated by a small hierarchy for their pathological needs. This hierarchy is devoid of any spiritual redemption and has made so many of humanity that way as well. They are psychopaths, but we, the masses, are just incredibly distracted by their narratives and cowed into complying to their negative visions through fear. But fear is just ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.’ Even the many awakened ones among us are still manipulated to comply with this hierarchy’s evil designs.
As they further separate us into tribal camps of differences that really don’t matter, the things that connect us are diminished into silence. One way they control how we stay is to disempower us by making us feel like victims with no power to make any significant decisions. In a way this is making us all feel that our ‘Locus of Control’ (see link) is externalized thereby creating the conditions that prevent us making decisions for ourselves. The very act of Complaining with action is a spiritual sickness. It’s being ignorant of the bigger picture. The powers that be want you to feel the victim, and they do this by controlling the narratives – note I pluralize that word. The mass media separate us through the multiple narratives into tribalized camps. They get us riled up and complaining about everything. All of it is a sideshow distracting us from what is really happening. Don’t get me wrong, there is some real stuff to complain about, but we need to take action for ourselves, and that as I can see it (as I have said so many times), can only happen from the grassroots and by simply ignoring the hierarchy and building a new society without them. That sounds scary because we have no real roadmap for this transition (except perhaps my 5 items), and we are creatures that always hope that the current system might yet still work out. Get real – it isn’t going to.
A look at the financial reports from around the world shows clearly how this domination is currently playing out. For example: “Your company replaces your department with AI. Not your whole company. Just enough people that the remaining ones are too scared to ask for a raise. The stock prices go up. The CEO gets a bonus and shareholders rejoice. Then your neighbor loses their job. Then the person across the street. These are not factory workers. These are accountants, project managers, analysts, and market directors. People with 780 credit scores and 30-year mortgages on houses they bought when their income felt permanent. They stop spending. The restaurants close early. The mail gets quieter. The economy looks fine on paper because productivity is up. But productivity going to machines means the money stops flowing through your neighborhood’ Thought Catalog.
AI technology investor Matt Shumer’s was recently chastised for his viral post about the ‘mindblowing ways AI is changing things everywhere?’ Financial elites, greedy for the bloated returns, are investing billions into the “invisible employee (AI).” The trouble is that unless you are savvy to this rush to riches by investors, you can’t physically see what is improving human welfare versus what is merely feathering the nests of the elites. But the people who work with it are seeing it. And they are terrified. The people working in programming technology are anxious about what’s coming. I am also nervous because the website has introduced AI and it wants to write my blog for me. Can AI give a rational opinion that matches mine? Good Lord help us if we let that happen. It actually is, which is why so much polarity exist among humanity at this time. As for me, you get my thoughts and interpretation, not AI.
Shumer recently said something that should make us all very nervous; “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just – appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.”
The amazing speed of development by AI is because of the ‘recursive self-improvement cycle.’ Simply put, a human inputs programming into an AI model. This code then allows AI to generate its own code for newer models of the human code, often leaving the original programmer unable to understand the new codes nuances. The new AI code then trains itself for an even more improved kind of AI function. Remember, its not yet intelligent like human intuitive intelligence, but its ruthless and amoral efficiency to follow the original programmer’s goals (usually profit efficiency) is daunting. The concurrent and rapid self-improvement advances for AI are now estimated at 7 months, if not faster.
Technical writer Mohamed Abdelmenem states: “AI is not a tool you query. It’s an agent you direct. Your value is no longer in executing tasks. It’s in defining the outcome, exercising judgment, and understanding the problem deeply enough to know what “done well” looks like.” But therein lies the crux of the problem. The goals were misaligned with human welfare to begin with and while we can we must use AI as a management tool with human defined goals. AI is not regulated yet, and if we are to avoid it becoming an oppressive force in our lives, we need to reign it in. That can happen locally, but unlikely at the global level unless we raise a ruckus with our political leaders while they may still hear us. The need to localize is now, not in some near future when it is too late.
In his essay, The Adolescence of Technology, Dario Amodei, an artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur, said, “I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.” Presently, AI is a market economic tool, but with scary probabilities to be misused by the powers-that-be,
Let’s get one thing clear. Not all capitalists are greedy (they are just caught up in the worldview), although there a lot of greedy capitalists. What is crucial to note about our modern form of capitalism is that it is a worldview – that is modern capitalism is about maximizing profits, for that is what it is designed to do. “The single focus of capital is the production of profit; it has nothing to do with human well-being, health, or anything of that sort. There are many things that we have the capacity to do, but we simply don’t do them because it isn’t profitable to do so” Laura Westford.
Our modern Global Capitalism is about using money to make money; everything else is extraneous activities to make that happen. You cannot tweak this system or reform it to make it fairer. Environmental economists and ecological economists have developed wonderful programs to try and make that happen. The only way to make it better and fairer means to begin with a new economic system that has a different end-point focus – Quality of life and well-being, not profit. That seems naïve and alien to how we have been conditioned to think about economics. The purpose should be to make things happen for the common good not to generate money for its own sake.
To Be Continued …………….
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