One of the difficult lessons, particularly emphasized by Owen Barfield, is that in every way the spiritual is prior to, and encompasses, the material.
The spiritual world existed first - material and incarnation came later, and locally. Reality is spiritual - with some parts of it also material. The material is always spiritual, but the spiritual is not always material.
Therefore, necessarily, the post-November 2022 "AI" phenomenon is spiritual... But that platitude does not tell you in what way any particular asserted-AI is spiritual.
One deep problem with "AI" is that almost everything we are told about it (what it is, what it can and should do) is asserted by corrupted, lying, manipulative and evil-motivated sources (i.e. the leadership class in the major social institutions) - or by those who are on the payroll.
This nearly-always means that our knowledge can only be negative and general - because, in a domain of untruthfulness, we cannot have valid positive and specific information.
(One honest Man dwelling in a world of liars cannot rely on other-Men for valid knowledge.)
We should therefore assume the problem of discovering the nature and capability of actually-in-place "AI", and even more its assumed future possibilities, this problem goes much deeper than recognized.
It is obvious that people who interact with "AI" assume that everything it does is done by computers.
But there is no reason to assume this is true - especially not in situations where it is advantageous to the "AI" agenda that human thumbs should be pressing down the scales in the desired direction, whenever that is useful.
Of course, even the acknowledged mechanisms of "AI" rely on humans for all the heavy-lifting - the fundamental categorizations of phenomena that form the basis of all subsequent processing, the "AI" learning feedback etc.
But there is every reason why human beings would actively, in real-time, be involved in so-called "AI" processing; when it is important enough to make the effort.
After all, the funding and resourcing of "AI" is incomprehensibly vast - so paying people to add a human touch to "AI" processing is perfectly feasable!
Human boosting of "AI" can be (and is) even explained-away - so that the actual people who are actually paid to do it, apparently do not necessarily realize (most often do not care) why they are providing human tweaks to the algorithms, nor what are the top-level planned consequences of their human-assists.
There is a definite precedent with Search Engines; in which processes of ranking results that were advertised as objective and algorithmic, were in fact subjective and ideologically-driven.
Big Tech is prepared to pay its myriad minions to subvert or distort its algorithms, when this is in aid of an agenda that they consider to be more important.
And currently it is supremely important that as many people as possible be persuaded of the nigh-miraculous powers and capabilities of "AI", including ideas that "AI" has intrinsic functional capability, sentience, agency, and superior intelligence to human beings - and therefore that "AI" not only will but ought-to replace human beings.
The PSYOP includes a strategy of convincing humans of their own inferiority to that mixed package of people and computers called "AI"; and therefore that this self-styled "AI" should replace the humans...
And in practice, therefore, to manufacture consent for the a centralized totalitarian System; in which those who own/ operate/ control the truly-colossal "AI"-enterprise are voluntarily accorded an objective right to rule the rest of Mankind... in whatever ways They "know" to be just and good.
So we should expect human inputs and enhancements - a human thumb in the computerized scales - to be normal and routine whenever this is expedient for the success of the "AI" agenda.
13 comments:
I don't understand AI because I'm not scientifically minded-at all (unfortunately).
But I wonder are people just extrapolating from a previous pattern? We've had humans replaced by machines going back to the Luddites and frame-breakers, this seems like a logical progression.
@M - I don't think it is "just" people extrapolating - I think it is people refusing to think about it for themselves on the basis of what they know: refusing to take responsibility.
People insisting on having faith in and serving external authorities, despite that they know (at some level) that these authorities are evil and dishonest.
"We've had humans replaced by machines going back to the Luddites and frame-breakers, this seems like a logical progression"
This is probably the most widespread reason for believing in AI. But I would say that it only seems like a progression. Technologies have had all kinds of effects on the world, but different technologies are different as are their effects as well as the cultures they existed in. Similarities can be drawn between some previous technology and the new so-called AI, but the differences are more important than the similarities.
Someone who wants to move to digital money could say something similar about a progression: human beings began by bartering, then moved to coins made of precious metals, then to paper money backed up by precious metals, next to paper fiat currency, then to electronic fiat currency, and so naturally the most advanced kind of money is money that is entirely digital that cannot even be converted into paper money.
It is true that the more recent forms of money require greater technical sophistication to implement. But that does not mean they are better. Each form of money has strengths and weaknesses, with the obvious drawback of digital money that it requires a vast infrastructure to exist; you can't just hold it in your hand. So the idea of a progression is a story that someone may tell, but no one has to believe it and there are good reasons not to do so.
Lastly, replacing people is totally dishonest and disingenuous. Supposedly, "AI" is this unstoppable juggernaut and if we lose our job, then that's just tough. And yet, Managers and executives are planning to keep their jobs, they are planning to keep making money while replacing ordinary workers. They would say something like, "Machines are inherently better than people, so I should replace workers, but also, I can work with the AI and be even smarter." But if machines are inherently better than people, why not them as well? It does not add up; we are supposed to accept this whole paradigm about "AI" and yet they do not believe in it when it comes to themselves. So then, why should anyone else believe it?
@NLR - Further, people should by now realize that no policy, no strategy, is ever good of itself. It is trivially easy to put some kind of appealing label onto a plan to enrich oneself and ones cronies with power and money (to make easier further self enrichment). Even worse, it is trivially easy to put an appealing label onto policies actually motivated and implemented with the aim of spiteful destruction - as (all too soon) becomes obvious to those prepared to entertain such a possibility.
The "good" policy of giving aid to feed the starving children of Africa, therefore translates giving guns for vicious warlords. Money for many Christian churches goes on schemes to encourage and subsidise illegal immigration to the West. In 2020 plans labelled necessary to save lives, immiserated, damaged and killed uncounted millions.
Realistically; I think it better to ignore the PR and propaganda, insofar as possible; and try to understand this major strategies on the basis that they Will be used for evil - not matter even if they really do (unlike "AI") have a theoretical potential to do significant good.
Yes, AI is like the siren song, or like the lotus eaters...surrender intiative, we know all things, you will be wiser. Nothing new in mans capacity for delusion and sloth
@RJC - What is new (or relatively new) is the desire of so many people for themselves and their descendants (if any) to be replaced by something else that is not human.
I supposed it is a culmination of the Nietzschian "superman" idea; that because there is no Heaven, and Men are what they are; the only "hope" (a wholly abstract "hope") for "the planet" is to supersede Men with something better-then-Men.
Which, to me, is just a roundabout wish for self-annihilation (and civilizational annihilation): i.e. is suicide.
Suicide (so long as it supposedly entails no suffering) is indeed the not-so-covert/ increasingly-explicit desire of our public discourse.
"AI" is just one manifestation of this suicide-ality rooted in self-loathing (which I wrote about on this blog in 2011, and published in Thought Prison in 2012).
More and more of the people have invited evil into their hearts, embracing that evil as good.
To clarify the above comment: it is not that "AI" is actually superior to Men but that people want it to be superior, because (in order for there to be a better world) people feel they ought to be replaced, deserve to be replaced, *need* to be replaced.
People are therefore *eager* that "AI" be superior to humans, so its actual (or definite potential) superiority doesn't need to be tested, let alone proved.
Because so many people want "AI" to replace humans, they are apparently happy to replaced by "AI" even when (or, I should say, even though) it is functionally inferior...
Even when (and I have hear this) when they believe "AI" will be long-term societally destructive; they still want it...
I am sad to say it, but far from understanding, far from resisting the harm being done; the Establishment strategists are not even having to push at a closed door against resistance - too many people are actively opening the door to "AI", and laying out the welcome mat!
I don't know anyone who is enthusiastic about it. Anyone I know who has expressed an opinion is pretty much hostile to it.
"People are therefore *eager* that "AI" be superior to humans..." Then there are the transhumanists who hope to be upgraded into a new model, even if it entails actual death of the 'original' in the belief that machines can be made conscious and that human memory recorded to them constitute continuity of being.
@ap - What comes through is that most people's fundamental metaphysical assumptions are so incoherent, that they cannot think straight about anything - even apparently simple matters that should be obvious to a child.
The way people think about computers has changed as well. In particular, there used to be a distinct non-materialist undercurrent amongst computer programmers. It is the flip side of making an analogy between software and minds. You can either come down on the materialistic side and say, "the mind is just a computer program" or, you can say, "maybe a computer program is something like thought". There was a view that computer programming could be at artistic and creative at its highest level, that it was in touch with a greater reality in some way.
Now, I am not endorsing the software - mind analogy, just guessing at a reason for that undercurrent, but I do I think that the people who tried to look for a non-materialist way of looking at computers were on a good track overall. And even people who did not express those views had a more positive vision of how to use computers than is current now.
But you don't hear much about that anymore, unfortunately. The way people talk about computers is now wholly materialistic in both senses of the word: reductive and anti-spiritual as well as greedy and careerist.
G faked its widely publicized AI demo in 2023 when it thought it was losing to the AI leader of the time.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/07/googles-best-gemini-demo-was-faked/
@P - With liars, we must also bear in mind that their admissions of lying are always partial, and often designed to create an impression of integrity elsewhere.
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