AI will be worse - but it will happen anyway... (Artificial Intelligence is the new bureaucracy)

As always, public discourse focuses us upon the wrong issues. With Artificial Intelligence the focus is upon whether it can be 'better' than the human mind - but the real question is much simpler: whether AI can replace the human mind.

The point is that AI systems can replace human thinking whether they are better or worse. Better or worse doesn't matter...

AI will, in fact, be worse than the human mind: much, much worse - but that doesn't stop AI from replacing the human mind.

AI is an extension of bureaucracy - which has replaced the individual human with systems of committees; has replaced judgement with votes; has destroyed responsibility.

Is a committee better than the individual - No, it is worse.

Has that fact prevented committees replacing individuals in all positions of significant authority in all societies in the developed world? No. Bureaucracy is everywhere, all the bureaucracies are linked, the individual is is a slave of The System - not the slave of a person; and this slavery applies to all individuals, even/ especially those who are members of the committees...

AI is bureaucracy cubed - it is driven by the same intent, it has the same objectives, and it has the same indifference to consequence. Just as bureaucracy is intrinsically immoral, intrinsically evil, in its destruction of responsibility - so exactly is AI - but this is no accident. On the contrary this is precisely why committees run everything; and why bureaucracy can (and will, if plans go through) be replaced by AI. 

AI is bureaucracy 2.0.  The question is, who - or what - stands behind the bureaucracy? What purpose drives this long-term agenda to replace all human thinking - that is, to replace all human thinking, by all individual humans, ultimately.

(Clue: the answer isn't human.)

All through our world, the worse-bureaucracy has replaced the better-individual; responisbility and judgment have been annihilated on multiple fronts... The process continues, globally, without evaluation or negative feedback -  and this is the exact intention for rolling-out AI.

Bureaucracy is always worse, but it has happened anyway. AI will be worse, but it will happen anyway. 

(Unless, of course, we stop it. And the place to stop it is in our own minds, our own hearts, our own deepest understanding. AI is a vampire - it can only enter where it is invited; but at present we are inviting-in the vampire - we are indeed paying the vampires to assimilate our souls.)

The "AI" Litmus Test Fail: Is it caused by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Projection? Managerialism?

I am intrigued by the Litmus Test failure of so many self-identified Christians to discern the grossly net-evil intent driving the current (post November 2022) wave of so-called AI. I want to understand it. 

"It's just a tool" - they say. Yes, and so are all the instruments of mass surveillance and population control "just tools"; from secret police and death squads, to smear campaigns, covert propaganda, and infiltration/ subversion. 

Of course, there are always potentially useful aspects to any tool, bureaucracy, technology - but so what? You can use thumbscrews to hold the door open, or a cosh as a paper weight. You need to ask - what are they designed for, how will they be used.  

The real questions at issue are things like: why did the global Establishment spend trillions of dollars on developing, launching, and implementing these "AI" technologies; what results are they intending to achieve from their investment; and what functions will they actually be deployed for, in the world as it actually is? 

Clearly; it is very important to some people with a lot of power and money, that these AI technologies be adopted and used very widely - whether they work well or not, whether we want them or not. 

Then, from our spiritual and Christian point of view we need to ask - honestly, and by learning from past experience - what will be the overall effect of mass usage of AI-technologies: what will they (on average) do to the way people think, Western society and its institutions, our attitude to the world, our aspirations?

Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism? 

To ask is to answer. 

 

The only honest conclusion from such questions regarding the evil provenance of AI, the fundamentally untruthful propaganda surrounding its emergence and spread (e.g. the word-concept "intelligence!), the coercive and totalitarian implementation - is that this kind of AI is a massive strategy designed to do harm of many kinds. 

Whether you personally believe you are personally exempted from general harm, that you can surf this wave of evil to your own advantage - well this is another matter altogether. 

But even if you can, and even if you actually do make the best of a societal state of waxing corruption (gaining more money, prestige, or power for yourself, perhaps?) - this does not excuse you when you argue in favour of what should recognized as a malign plan.

Otherwise you are no better than a stereotypical war profiteer; one who uses his influence (fasle information, bribery, blackmail etc.) to cause, expand and continue destructive wars - so that you personally can do well out of it. Even if some war is good for you here-and-now, does not mean that war is good in itself - and you ought not to believe or say that it is. 

We cannot defend ourselves against evil unless we recognize evil. Apologists for "AI" are not just harming themselves but others in failing to acknowledge an obvious and major demonic scheme. 

Why, then, do they do this? I think the reasons are psychological - not spiritual. 

There is, I think, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work. 

I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics. 

I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable. 

(You cannot beat 'em, so you might as well join Them.)  

One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!

But this is patent nonsense in general and specifically. Fear of AI is far from normal - which is why so much propaganda must be expended on trying to generate fear (via innumerable mass media fictions about evil AIs, and AI dystopias).

In real life the overwhelming response to AI is on a spectrum from moderate irritation and boredom, to mainstream everyday careerist attempts at exploitation of "the latest trendy thing". 

Therefore such an accusation of fear is a dead giveaway, a projection onto others of something within oneself - often emanating from those who really feel, personally, threatened by replacement or oppression with AI technologies. 

For instance those who hope (like generations before them) to escape this fate by vaulting-over the threat into a managerial situation: to position themselves as expert and enthusiastic "AI managers" in their particular field. 

To adopt an accusatory or "therapeutic", stance to those who see the evil motivation behind AI is classic managerialism! 

The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions... 

The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over;  the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them". 

AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.

If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.     

 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is worse than what it will replace: but it will happen anyway (assuming we let it)

I am bemused by the deluge of credulous drivel being written about self-styled AI (Artificial Intelligence) across the blogosphere. 

But, unfortunately it confirms what I wrote five years ago, and which now seems worth revisiting. 

AI will be worse than whatever it replaces - but it will happen anyway; this because AI is an extension of bureaucracy, and bureaucracy was worse than what it replaced (Much worse); but bureaucracy happened anyway. 

For so long as this world is ruled via bureaucracy, for so long will AI be imposed not only despite its being worse, but also because of the way that it is worse.

Which is that AI is dehumanizing - entraining Men to 'process' like computers - thus destructive of thinking; is anti-spiritual, and a short-cut to self-damnation.

Put like that; it's obvious why AI is irresistible to the demonic global totalitarians rulers, their deluded minions, and the corrupted masses over whom they rule.

Why are so many mainstream media concerning with the danger of takeover by evil A.I.s (artificial intelligences)?

I was watching the most recent 'Terminator' movie and I wondered - not for the first time - why 'Hollywood' has been so keen on 'warning' us about the perils of takeover by evil AIs (Artificial Intelligences). Probably my first recollection of this theme was the computer HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey; and there have been many examples since.

These cannot really be intended as serious warnings, since the same Establishment that funds major media is also engaged in a massive, unrelenting programme to introduce AI (e.g. the interlinked 'internet of things' aka. smart devices) - whether we like it or not. So what is going on?


The first idea might be along the lines of that apparent 'law' by which evil is 'required' to tell us what it is going to do to us, before it does it - as if our tacit consent is necessary.

I suppose this is the origin of the 'monologuing' of all the villains of stage and screen, who almost invariably do this to the hero before attempting to kill him (So, Mr Bond; after I have rushed off to deal with some urgent problem elsewhere, you will be cut in two by this slowly-moving laser beam which I have linked to...); and are then (notoriously) thwarted as a consequence of the delay.

But I think there must be more to it than that, particularly since AI is 'not a real thing'. Computers cannot think, have no will nor personality - and are never under any circumstances going to become living, conscious Beings...

So what is it all about?


My understanding is that the triumph of AI will not be when it becomes sentient, but when people believe it is sentient.

This is the crucial step in mass populations consenting to their own thought-control; which is the ultimate aim of the vast totalitarian bureaucratic System that already covers the world, and is continuously narrowing the mesh of its net to embrace as much of Life as possible.

Therefore my theory is that the evil AI is simply a plausible 'soft sell' of the core idea that there is such-a-real-thing as AI.


Given that it would be nigh impossible to convince modern people into believing that an AI could be the benign controller of a Utopian, it may be that dystopian movies about evil AIs are an indirect and more-plausible way of brainwashing the populace into believing that machines can become alive and conscious and potentially do nearly all of the things that humans currently do.

Once that crucial point has been got-across, then the next stage would be to get people to accept that things-called-AIs could be trusted to do things like drive cars and trains, pilot delivery drones,  fight enemies, do police and government surveillance etc. - so long as there is some kind of human 'supervision'.

Which would - inevitably, nowadays - be bureaucratic surveillance; since demon-serving Establishment seeks - ASAP and as a matter of urgent priority - to monitor and control everybody in the world by one single linked bureaucracy.


In a nutshell - the intent is that things-called-AIs would-be/ will-continue-to-be integrated int The Bureaucracy.

Then things would be set-up for the AIs to be blamed for whatever nasty things the world government bureaucracy has in store for us.

AI: the ultimate fall-guy! (i.e. one who is utterly obedient and who never answers back)


Note: This post is not arguing that AI is impossible. It assume it is impossible and I believe it is impossible; but I am not arguing the case here. The argument is a deep one, to do with the fundamental nature of life and consciousness - and it is not a matter of science; because scientific proof or demonstration depends on prior assumptions as to the nature of life and consciousness. We can't prove or disprove AI with 'evidence' until after we know what counts as evidence and how to interpret it.

"AI" (so-called) and the "wisdom of crowds" delusion - what is the motivation?

Back in the middle noughties I was a New Agey atheist; keen on modernity, globalization, economic growth, democracy - a sort of libertarian; and saw many applications of evolutionary theory to human life... that kind of person.

(See, for instance, this - written at the time; which tried to provide a coherent underlying mechanism for WoC phenomena; derived from complex systems theory.) 

And I was much taken by the general idea of the "wisdom of crowds" (WoC) that was prevalent at the time and much discussed (and advocated) on the blogosphere. 

This argued (and purported to prove inductively, by empirical examples) the generalizable principle that there was a collective wisdom that transcended the individual's knowledge, ability - and judgment. 

To a considerable extent, the WoC theory was merely making explicit our civilization's existing and pervasive implicit faith in the authority of groups, committees, voting, mass opinion... 

What I then had was a progressivist expectation that things are self-correcting over time; and will spontaneously tend to sort-themselves-out (if left to themselves, and not interfered-with by individual humans or interest groups)...

An expectation that human affairs are actually much better than commonly acknowledged; and are naturally and impersonally trended on an upward and positive trajectory - over a sufficiently long span.

In contrast, was the (correct) recognition that individual humans would often be dominated by short-termism and selfishness, were lazy, could easily be misled, and in general nearly always were misguided in their aims and actions... 

Where I strayed from reality was in sharing the common, hopeful, delusional inference that, because individuals were imperfect therefore, the mass of people, the "system" of people and technologies was preferable - because the mass had an organic tendency towards self-optimization, self-preservation and improvement.

In sum, I believed (and wanted it to be true) that "crowds" reliably exhibited an innate wisdom and virtue which was absent from individuals.  

Such wishful-magical views are actually much more prevalent and dominant than most people would admit - indeed, however vehemently denied when made explicit such assumptions are almost universal. 

For instance, almost everybody implicitly believes - and acts on this belief - that a committee, a vote, is more authoritative than an individual human; that elections are the only morally valid way of choosing a government; that consensus is superior to personal judgment; that (proper) processes and procedures are the best way of conducting important functions such as government, the law, medicine, science, mass media... 

And so forth. 

In sum; there is in Western Civilization an extremely strong and widespread aversion-to and prejudice-against individual persons; and instead a solid faith in the groupish, systemic, and abstract*. 

What this amounts to is a metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality. 

People have a solid faith-in and commitment-to the group (no matter how vaguely that group is defined) and to (some kind of) process - as intrinsically superior to any and all individuals.  

I say "people" and I mean... nearly everybody; if you dig-down and are honest about what you find. 

In ancient societies this belief was unconscious and immersive; in modern societies it is conscious - but mediated-by (embedded-in) ideologies and religions. 

The problem is that we are, each and individually, trapped and disempowered by such assumptions - and at the level of thinking.

(ie. Before any question of action can arise we are already blocked by our thinking.) 

We feel (deeply) that we personally cannot and should-not think any thing; unless and until the after relevant group has endorsed it. 

But in a totalitarian world inhabited by people who just-are cut-off spiritually from any group, and self-aware to an unprecedented degree; such an assumption is a prison: a thought prison. 

It is, in effect, a demand that we ourselves must and ought-to inhabit a societal prison; and all our hopes then become fixed upon that prison becoming as kind and efficient as possible; perhaps (the common "therapeutic" value-stance) functioning more like a hospital than a prison... 

But (we believe, because of our assumptions) it is a thought prison society that inevitably must and shall remain.   

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How does this related to so-called "AI"?

I think it helps understand the otherwise extraordinary degree of optimism, and indeed existential hope; that so many people place in these new technologies: technologies which operate by rapidly and simply "pooling" and processing vast quantities of anonymous data, under the ruling (but implicit) assumption that this group-process is superior to any individual.

"AI", in other words, is a variant of the "wisdom of crowds" assumption: 

AI = WoC On Steroids. 

"AI" seems - to such people, with such "wisdom of crowds" assumptions - to offer a permanent way out from the inevitable evil and partiality of individuals - a way forward towards a world of universally accessible knowledge, ability, and objective virtue. 

My point here is that - to my judgment anyway - the actual nature of what happens with "AI" systems is - by its nature - obviously not knowledgeable, not competent, and cannot-be wise. 

And the same applies to the (various) systems of democracy, the processes of bureaucracy, the work of voting committees... 

Once you become aware of, and explicitly consider, what actually happens inside these "black boxes" then it is obvious that they cannot be good. 

For exactly analogous reasons; "AI" cannot be good. 

But people have the metaphysical assumptions that they have; and these are often buried deep, and are typically regarded as facts. 

Most people evidently do not want to become aware of their fundamental convictions; nor to acknowledge that they are indeed assumptions - therefore not the consequence of evidence and logic. 

Yet it is these assumptions concerning what is effective, true and good; that lead to the absurd conviction and hope that "AI" is (whether actually already, or potentially) wise, competent, and will be beneficial overall and in the long term. 

Until these ridiculous, but pervasive, "wisdom of crowds" assumptions are exposed and acknowledged**; then many or most people will remain spiritually help-less and resistant to help; emotionally and intellectually in thrall to those who designed, created, implemented, and administer the "AI" systems.  

+++

* Another version of this - although rare nowadays, especially in practice, is faith in the truth and rightness of "tradition" - belief in "the wisdom of the crowds of the past", perhaps. 

But due to modern self-awareness, it has become impossible to establish unambiguously what is tradition. Tradition itself becomes contested; and then the problem reverts to the modern one of who-or-what entity has the authority to declare what is the real and true tradition. 

That tradition is a variant of the wisdom of crowds delusion; is evident in the way that so many self-identified traditionalists have embraced and become advocates of "AI". They apparently believe (or hope) that "AI" (properly designed and used...) will become a (generally-accessible and easily-usable) supreme source and repository of the wisdom of the crowds of the past.

** It was, I think, the fact that I had exposed and made explicit my own atheist, modernizing, groupist, progressivist etc assumptions; that ultimately led to my recognizing their arbitrary incoherence and inadequacy - then abandoning them, and consciously choosing and adopting something better. 

The intrinsic validity of so-called AI is analogous to the authority of bureaucracy - that is, it has zero validity

AI - so-called Artificial Intelligence - is (just) the latest version of a phenomenon I have spent most of my working life understanding and arguing against: that phenomenon appears in various guises including bureaucracy, voting, statistics applied to understanding, quality management, guidelines...

I have given-up on trying to explain why all of these are wrong when used to make decisions, to achieve insights, to monitor and regulate practices, in government. 

I have given-up; because it has become evident that the belief in such technologies is a matter of faith; it is an expression of deep and self-destructive (as well as socially-destructive) ideals. 

Their wrongness is innate and objective, and can be proved - but first we need to understand these phenomena - and extremely few genuinely wish to understand. 

(If you are sufficiently interested to make the effort, word search these on this blog and read the links. But, really, this stuff would not need explaining; if Men were properly orientated.)  

Most people are happily under the spell cast by these technologies/ methods  and their apologists. They believe because they want to believe; therefore they are strongly resistant to understanding. 

This is a civilization that is killing itself; and one major manifestation of this 'death wish' is that people persist in seeking some kind of technological or methodological technique of making judgments. 

Thus; people under the spell of AI are obviously enchanted by the idea that we can have computers/ machines/ systems which will make judgments, do learning, create poems/ pictures/ stories, discover, 'implement' values, organize people etc. etc. 

Behind such claims, and the eager credulity that welcomes them, there is a not-so-covert desire for human self-annihilation. A lot of people apparently want to hand-over all the highest, greatest, most divine aspects of being a Man - and they are prepared to give their faith to anyone who claims that this can and should be done. 

Because all this is ultimately a matter of faith. 

We now have a world of bureaucracy, with most major decisions made by voting; because that is where people have put their faith - their ultimate faith! 

People's faith is to believe - without any coherent logic, or honest 'evidence', and contrary to vast experience! - that bureaucratic organization and voting are superior to the judgment of individual human beings. 

And so the world is organized; and whatever happens to the world, that faith remains intact. 

Our desire to be rid of human judgment is, at root, an expression of our rejection of God.

This is why it is so pervasive, why it is a matter of faith, and why it will destroy us. 

We cannot be awoken from a spell that we have chosen to succumb to. 

Note added 30 Sep 23: It strikes me that with the advent of AI we have (as it were) officially entered a world in which public discourse consists of parroting: of uncomprehending computer-parrots speaking to other parrots (some computers, some 'humans') who cannot comprehend the parroted stimuli (because, strictly, there is nothing to comprehend), but which generate even more parroted responses... On and on, until the night comes. 

The Absolute stupidity of (totalitarian) bureaucracy

There is an absolute and ineradicable stupidity at the heart of The System: the bureaucracy that controls our totalitarian society. 

This is something that I observed first-hand in the year and a half I worked in the National Health Service administration. What is characteristic of the stupidity is a conviction that because we need it to be so, then it can be so*. 

When The System finds some-thing necessary, then The System will believe that it is possible. 

Indeed, The System cannot comprehend that what it regards as necessary, is actually impossible - because The System only takes regard of itself. 

The System is its own world; and works by assuming that itself is the whole world. 

So that when The System recognizes something as necessary, or even as simply desirable - then The System also automatically-intrinsically regards that something as possible. 

We see this characteristic everywhere - or, at least, we can see it if we stand outwith The System, which apparently not all that many people can or do (or even want to do). 

We see it at the large scale and at the small scale of bureaucratic operations. 

At the large scale there is the colossal socio-economic phenomenon of the Global Climate Warming/ Change Emergency; by which something not-a-problem, and anyway immeasurable (i.e. the temperature of the earth/ocean surface/ atmosphere is not measurable coherently); and which has unknown determinants; is claimed by The System to be understood, predictable, and controllable (by The System) down to fractions of a degree... So The System regards the climate problem as solved and it is all a matter of implementation. 

On a smaller scale there is the current wave of AI ("Artificial Intelligence"), which The System believes it needs in order to exert what The System regards as the necessary degree of monitoring and control over the mass population. And the fact that "AI" cannot by its nature possibly work in the real world for such purposes, and therefore it does not work; is unknowable by The System. So The System regards the AI problem as solved and it is all a matter of implementation. 

And implementation of such schemes is also something that The System knows how to do, to its own satisfaction, by the means it has generated internally. 

So that the actually accelerating collapse of social order and capability in the world outside The System, and that this collapse is actually caused by The System, simply does not register; because it is not part of The System.

From inside The System, the only "real" problems are ones of implementation: the problem that "people" simply aren't properly doing... whatever it is that The System currently wants them to do. 

Which means that the only "real" problem for The System is that of monitoring and controlling "people". 

And thus the circle is completed.    

 *The specific instance when this became clear was when I was questioning a government minister in a meeting at the Health Authority. The NHS bureaucracy had set as a numerical-monitored-target, that national suicide rates should and would be reduced. I pointed-out that this was nonsensical, because nobody knew how national suicide rates could be reduced. The minister rather impatiently explained to me that it was necessary that Psychiatric services had a target (or else they would be neglected), and this was the only suitable measurable outcome; so now it was "up to us" to discover how to reach that target - i.e. how to reduce national suicide levels in line with the targets. In practice, The System generated some (totally conjectural) methods that it believed ought to work. These were accepted (eagerly) because something must be done. The hypothetical notion was, basically, prescribing more antidepressant drugs (because that must stop suicides, right?... Ignoring that the SSRI drugs actually increase suicides, which was what happened in the real world). And so drug-pushing was the policy which got implemented. At least until The System changed the targets, for reasons of its own.

Note added: The above is a soft version of the Systems Theory of Niklas Luhmann - which is summarized and developed in the Appendix of my (pre-Christian, and leftist) book The Modernization Imperative.  

The Artificial Intelligence agenda

The idea behind Artificial Intelligence (AI) (I mean the ultimate demonic strategy, implemented by The Establishment) is to replace the 'human mind' with something less-than-human under the pretence of making us more-than-human.

Transhumanism is the advertisement - Subhumanism is the product.

I don't think replacement is actually possible - but it is certainly possible to amplify considerably - using AI, preferably implanted - the damage of social media in suppressing consciousness.

The method is, mainly, distraction. But distraction from what? What is it that they want to distract us from?

Higher consciousness (Final Participation by Primary Thinking) is the answer - and the thing about the next-step in consciousness is that it must be chosen/ willed/ wanted. So, if AI can continually distract and gratify/ terrify us; then we will probably not-choose/ not-will/ not-want to make that step into Final Participation.

The evil Establishment want people to not-want higher consciousness - and instead to choose one of two options:

The first is un-consciousness (what Rudolf Steiner terms the Luciferic path). This is, roughly speaking, the mass media in its immersive and passive-inducing forms.

The second is alienated consciousness (what Steiner terms the Ahrimanic path). And this is approximately bureaucracy - to live-within The Total System: constrained by the materialist, positivistic perspective... purposeless, meaningless... each self-aware individual a disconnected consciousness.

What is Not wanted is for our self-consciousness to expand to include everything real - that our awake self-awareness become directly and intuitively aware of the totality.

And what is also Not wanted is that our unconscious, passive, manipulated minds wake-up inside the dream.

What Artificial Intelligence is intended to prevent is that we choose to become scientists of the divine and lucid dreamers of this world.

Do They (the Global Establishment) possess secret advanced technology?

I have noticed that there are a lot of people who believe that They possess secret advanced technology (e.g. ultra-advanced aircraft and weaponry; but also 'free' energy, space travel, time travel). 

These are, overall, the same group of people who regard AI as being actually artificial intelligence, as having massively advanced recently, and as now poised to take-over from humans because it is better than humans. 

I don't! I believe that real science is dead, major geniuses are essentially extinct, the international bureaucracy has partly caused but massively exacerbated both of these problems; and the overall capability of mankind has therefore been declining for some decades. 

I believe that AI is not intelligent At All, and takes over from humans because this is in line with the demonic agenda and expedient from the managerial class; and takes over despite its gross functional inferiority.   

I have also noticed that those who 'believe-in' ultra-advanced technology and AI capability; also tend to believe that this world (and maybe ourselves) is some kind of simulation, a Matrix-like world of energetic projections and images - or something.

I don't. I believe this mortal life and earthly world is absolutely real, albeit temporary; and functionally intended to be an intermediate phase between our pre-mortal life as spirits, and the possibility (if we choose it) of eternal resurrected life.  

We seem to have two different metaphysical systems here; that is, different fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of reality. 

Both can't be right; but the distinction cannot be established by 'evidence' because there is no agreement of what constitutes 'evidence'. Nor can scientific (or other) theories help us; because the truth of such theories is what is at issue.  

As so often; by the normal methods of argument, we are compelled either to ignore the problem, or else address it via useless rhetorical clashes. 

The valid alternative is to expose to awareness our own fundamental but unexamined metaphysical assumptions - and then evaluate with the deepest possible intuition whether we really-do believe these once tacit assumptions; and whether indeed we want to believe them!

(I have written previously on the specific subjects referenced above - if you want to know what I think more exactly; then you might do relevant-word searches using the search-box in the top left-hand corner of this page.)

Could computers/ Artificial Intelligence take-over the world soon?

No - because they can't think; and they never will be able to think - BUT...

The totality of computers/ AI could make it possible for just a handful of humans (or other sentient entities) to take-over the world.

And indeed that is the present, rather than a possible future; especially in terms of the omnipresent social/ mass media/ linked-total-bureaucracy that is monitoring human behaviour and filling human minds all-but 24/7; such that ever-fewer people actually, ever, really think any more - they merely supply specialist parts of their intelligence and emotions to participate in the global system of information processing...

In the end, only those who think have agency - and only those with agency can rule - and the rulers will be those individuals (no matter how few, no matter how evil) who have agency. The rest will be either passively obedient, or shunted-aside into intoxication or psychosis.  

And that - Ladies and Gentlemen - is the demonic plan! So far, so 'good'...