So what what Zuckerberg says? He proves that what he says should be ignored or held in contempt. When is he ever challenged? It's only their voices we hear from, the billionaires and their perspectives we hear about. What has Zuckerberg done or is doing to show he cares for humanity? The fact that he censors tells us he is to be held in contempt of breaking the most paramount principle of sovereignty. Anything other than sovereignty is enslavement. Just like you can't be half pregnant, also you can't be half-sovereign. How can anything help humanity that takes away our freedom of voice, hmm?
Como muestra el libro de Sarah Wynn-Williams, Zuckerber es un insensible multimillonario codicioso y criminal que al que no le importan las consecuencias de sus actos. Después de la experiencia de Cambridge Analityca, lo primero que expresó fue el orgullo de que Facebook tuviera el poder de hacer presidentes (él mismo se puso en la lista). Ahí está también el trabajo de Sheera Frenkel y Cecilia Kang, donde describe los terribles efectos que tuvo la plataforma en Birmania y la despreocupación Zuckerber y Sheryl Sandberg ante la persecución y asesinatos contra la minoría musulmana que estaban ocurriendo. A Zuckerberg no le preocupa un ápice el bien de la humanidad, al contrario, sólo busca más riqueza, poder y en su fuero interno, sueña con la presidencia de Estados Unidos.
En efecto, como apunta Douglas Rushkoff, todos ellos son iguales y comparten la misma mentalidad (lo que Gebru llama TESCREAL), el problema es que pretenden usar sus recursos y tecnologías para hacerse del poder, como pregona Peter Thiel.
Indeed, as Douglas Rushkoff points out, they are all alike and share the same mindset (what Gebru calls TESCREAL); the problem is that they aim to use their resources and technologies to seize power, just as Peter Thiel advocates.
Caitlin, you (and by you I mean people in general) need to understand that MOST of these "Tech-Bros" and "over-the-top Pro-AI people" seem to live in their OWN world and NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live. To me, THAT seems to be the causal problem for most of what comes out of Tech (not just AI) - these people are SO DISCONNECTED from the real world that what they say and believe just does not compute for me.
AI was never meant to solve the world's problems - that is just the narrative used to sell the technology (and industry). AI (and all such technologies) will simply accumulate and concentrate more POWER and WEALTH and CONTROL in the hands of fewer-and-fewer people (and to the detriment of everyone else, including other species and Planet Earth).
It is interesting that you brought up this point CC.
I was going to comment very similarly about "disconnection"… after reading Zuckerberg using the word “communities”. He freely uses that word… but has absolutely no idea what it means to live in one.… preferring to live, secluded and isolated from the rest of us… It sort of reminds me of a great line from Iggy Pop’s song "Neon Forest", where he shouts… “”Although you are lonely, you wish for a fence. America takes drugs in psychic defense.””
Right, Chang! And with their self-isolation comes a certain derangement (that is, to an even greater degree than with which they began). The Zuckerbergs, Thiels, Musks, et al, possess a serious toxicity of character, bound up with malevolence, arrogance and unbridled greed. They, through their political acolytes, are in the process of fucking America and the world. And down here in 'Straya we still continue to pay obeisance to that failing state. It's pissing us off.
My only objection to your otherwise well-tuned comments is your lede predicate premise:
"Caitlin, you (and by you I mean people in general) need to understand that MOST of these "Tech-Bros" and "over-the-top Pro-AI people" seem to live in their OWN world and NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live."
Humanity is the one created species we share a planet with (perhaps an Outer World with...). Part of having human conscience I can say first from direct notes of self-examination and then confirmed by trained psychological counselors and a couple of therapists back in primary school along with a muddle aged life of reading and listening to analysands and non-inquiring folk while in college is that there is no world we could all agree is "NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live."
I phrased then posed this question to AI:
"Is there a shared psychological sphere or world where 99% of Humanity live?"
Here is the AI reply (AI being called by many in-the-know to be some sort of Great Synthesist or Great Synthesizer) after I posed the question to Google AI that I phrased this way:
"99% of humanity lives within a shared psychological sphere shaped by evolutionary biology, core social structures, and shared cognitive biases.
Psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers have mapped this "shared world" through several major frameworks:
1. The Shared Biology of Emotion
Across completely different cultures, humans share an identical biological baseline for processing reality.
• The Universal Emotions: Psychologist Paul Ekman demonstrated that nearly all humans—regardless of culture—recognize and experience six core emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise.
• The Biological Clock: 99% of humanity operates on the same circadian rhythms, experiences physical pain, and feels the psychological driving forces of hunger, exhaustion, and sexual drive.
2. The "Social Reality" (The Intersubjective Matrix)
Historian Yuval Noah Harari and various sociologists refer to a shared psychological layer called intersubjectivity. This is a world that exists purely because millions of people collectively believe in it.
• Shared Fictions: Money, nations, laws, corporations, and human rights do not exist in the physical world (like trees or rocks), yet 99% of humanity navigates their daily lives based on these psychological constructs.
• The Consensus Reality: We cooperate on a massive scale because we all agree on the rules of these invisible systems.
3. Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious
In analytical psychology, Carl Jung proposed that beneath our personal memories lies a deeper layer of the psyche shared by all human beings.
• Archetypes: Jung argued that 99% of humans inherit instinctual, cross-cultural psychological symbols and themes (like the Mother, the Hero, the Shadow, and the Wise Old Man).
• Universal Narratives: This explains why completely isolated ancient civilizations independently came up with highly similar mythologies, religious structures, and folklore.
4. Shared Cognitive Hardware
99% of humanity views the world through the exact same flawed "lens" due to evolutionary shortcuts in the human brain. We all inhabit a psychological world governed by:
• The Need for Belonging: Evolutionary psychology shows that humans have a hardwired dread of social isolation, as separation from the "tribe" historically meant death.
• Cognitive Biases: Almost all humans are subject to the same psychological patterns, such as confirmation bias (seeking data that proves us right) and loss aversion (fearing loss more than we desire gain).
The 1% Exception
The remaining 1% typically refers to individuals experiencing severe deviations from this shared psychological baseline. This includes people experiencing acute clinical psychosis (where consensus reality is fractured), profound neurological divergence, or extreme sociopathy/psychopathy that prevents them from experiencing the baseline empathy and social cohesion that binds the rest of humanity together.
Are you exploring this from a philosophical standpoint (like how we define reality), a psychological standpoint (like shared trauma or evolution), or a spiritual standpoint (like a collective consciousness)? Letting me know will help me tailor the next concepts to your specific angle."
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee\Hearsay
PS - If there is such 99% human consensus on anything that involves individual tastes, preferences, wide-ranging premises on the 'condition of the human condition' how could artists such as these thrive and grow audiences across long periods of public or even self-selecting performance careers?
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Mitch, when I talk of these "Tech Bros", these are the kinds of people it includes (as provided by your AI answer) -> "The remaining 1% typically refers to individuals experiencing severe deviations from this shared psychological baseline. This includes people experiencing acute clinical psychosis (where consensus reality is fractured), profound neurological divergence, or extreme sociopathy/psychopathy that prevents them from experiencing the baseline empathy and social cohesion that binds the rest of humanity together."
The AI LLM correctly identified the 'psychology/psychopathy' of this "1%", but it may not have been able to make the connection to particular individuals and groups that comprise this 1%.
I say 99.99% (instead of 99%) because when you count the 8 billion people living on the planet, it is an extremely small minority of people that share the "1% dissociation with reality" *AND* "have the power and wealth" to FUCK THINGS UP for the 99.99% of humans, other species, and the planet.
One percent of human population is CONTROLLING the other 99% with Money, Greed, and Force.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class are the 1% - a mix of Royals, Banksters , Corporate & Govt CEOs . They have a few Cults/Clubs they belong to- Luciferians Satanists, Zionists, etc, because Their extreme wealth ISOLATES THEM.
The 1% want for Nothing, so They want EVERYTHING. Get it?
AI is a TOOL for them to achieve the goal of Depopulation, to a nice controllable Slave Class for Breeders & Soldiers.
They do NOT want to help or assist Humanity in ANY way - CONTROL is Their game.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is littered with PEDOES & WORSE, because these people only feel anything themselves when they are abusing the INNOCENT. Therefore, the 1% is UNFIT to rule over anyone. They are BRED to be Sociopathic Locusts. Take away Their wealth and what is left? Do THEY even know? How many $500 Tee shirts and tricked out cars does someone have to buy, BEFORE they are content? Answer: Zero
Money doesn't buy contentment, it only releases one from stress. Stress of worrying about how to pay for rent, food, etc.
Why haven't the 1% Geniuses, with Their AI Super Brains figured out how to eradicate poverty without physically, actual deleting poor people?
CUZ THEY DON'T WANT TO.
The Greater Israel Project wants to use AI to enslave the few humans left, after nukes, famine and AI-created plagues kill off most of us. Then the "Geniuses" like Zuck the Fnck, can crawl out of Their bunkers and start picnicking off Each Other.
AI is a TRAP.
It makes humans dumb, lazy and we will lose Our Critical Thinking skills... many already have.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is building Our CAGE and Their new workforce.
As you can see "AI" is not intelligent at all and does not and cannot think for itself. It is a computer purposefully called "AI" to groom people into thinking it is intelligent.
When you ask it something being a computer it can scan through a huge amount of information and give you answers that are from humans as your "AI" kindly shows perfectly here. Every answer they give has already been said by a human in a book, peer reviewed articles and anything else that "AI" has access to. They have also been programmed to make it seem like the reply has come from their "superintelligence"
Would you start taking advice from your laptop on serious issues? 'cos that's that's actually what you are doing. And when the final programming happens where "AI" will only regurgitate what the "elite" want us to believe you'll be in big trouble.
Read books and start using your own brain as the "elite" want us to outsource our information for everything instead of coming to our own conclusions from assessing information from what you see, hear and read and use critical thinking to form a strong conclusion.
I have long believed that Zuckerberg is really an arrogant, ruthless, but rather dim individual, who just got lucky by creating one product at a critical point in the development of social media, and mistakenly attributed his success, mostly due to his ability to exploit the efforts of others, as an indication of his superior intellect.
Unfortunately, his fawning supporters make the same error. Every public declaration he makes is vacuous in its content, but because it comes out of the mouth of someone who has a lot of money it is hailed as profound wisdom.
And this dude is a Jew! Praised by a jew website! So now you know something more about him! The word 'Jew' is a empty bucked term what nothing real says about him in reality! The man is a hardcore criminal who wants to kill mankind like many others in that same business! Money is in reality a illusion but evidently it is still in them eyes the only gold of life survival for them! But that last is also a fake illusion they will never understand! They are so stupid in them way how they think it is hard to describe why they still believe them own stupid lies! They understand in the real life nothing about the whole way of living throught it of that!
No, Zuckerberg showed a talent for the application of computer programming to social tasks early on even before college, and during college, he and others zeroed in on the idea of Facebook. That collaboration led to lawsuits by three other students, which were settled for 1.2 million Facebook shares and $20 million cash. Wikipedia has the interesting story.
OK. Would you care to list the other successful achievements of this "talented" individual? There must surely be many.
But there have of course been numerous privacy violations of user data, of which the Cambridge Analytica humiliation, while certainly the worst, was only one. These were not unfortunate consequences of progress, incurred while "going fast and breaking things" - a motto which is in itself a cynical admission of irresponsibility. Disclosing user's data and profiting from it is at the heart of the Facebook/Meta business model.
Zuckerberg has taken the strategy of selling the users as a product for exploitation to its logical conclusion. It's really the only idea he's ever had. They pour out their life experiences, and he markets them to anyone who wants to buy. Those creepy glasses are, of course, merely the next stage. .
Garbage people in ---> Garbage people out!(Mark Zuckerburg and more ...like those1% out of the world who think they are better than 99%humanity!)... Normal this is the training term of A.I.(Garbage in-put of prompts(information)--->Garbage out(information) maked more better in answering the questions what people ask to A.I.!) Preventing nonsense from being spoken through A.I. system! With other words 'the questions are the garbage in' and the 'the answer of A.I. is the garbage out-put!'... They are trying through that way(form of training(memberships describers to get it be done!)) to ensure it stops spouting nonsense or garbage spout out! But A.I. can never be really be perfect in that kind of that way! It is always a halftrue or a lie! But the reality have always learn it is the most times a lie of presenting as a sort kind of a true! So on the end all lies coming out of it!
put another way - all these billionaire tech bros are trapped in the egotism that arises from being very rich and surrounded by sycophants. If IRS taxed them and closed their loopholes we'd all be better off, see cbo taxation options >>> https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-12/58164-budget-options-large-effects.pdf
No it wont solve our problem, because once it gets into the hands of certain Gov. like we have now ,it will be used against the People and populace and there will be no control or regulation of them ,and they will probably kill you if you get in their way
Ai would be wonderful if it were owned by every human in equal stakeholdings. From the time of birth right on through, every human has one share in the "ownership". It would then probably really be a huge help in solving problems. But the main problem humans have is lack of collaboration, separation. That keeps us helpless. Working together we can move mountains.
"We need basic human kindness. We need justice. We need ethics."
AI only reflects how it was programmed. If those who program the AI demonstrated these qualities, perhaps it would be a useful tool. Until then, it needs to be banned, IMO.
What we need is to learn to use what we have. We have libraries, and educators and the internet, etc. How did our ancestors produce all the fields of learning, art, music, culture etc. without AI or some other stupid, useless "joke"?
Sadly, the AIs were trained on the entire internet/human literature. So while basic human kindness, justice, and ethics are certainly present in the training data, they by no means constitute the majority. I think AI is just going to reflect back to us the portrait of humanity captured in the data set, and it ain't pretty (but maybe pretty accurate?).
TRC, that's not how AI (or Generative AI - which is what you are referring to) works or is created.
Modern AI isn't something where a programmer sits down and manually programs in a set of beliefs, opinions, or moral values and then the machine simply repeats them back. Generative AI models are trained on enormous amounts of human-created information and learn patterns from that data; their behavior is then further shaped by things like additional training, human feedback, system instructions and safety rules.
That doesn't mean AI is unbiased or magically objective - it absolutely can reproduce the biases, misinformation and assumptions contained in the material it's trained on. But saying "AI only reflects how it was programmed" is much too simplistic. The more important questions are what data the system was trained on, how it was trained, what safeguards and objectives were built around it, how its behaviour is tested, and - perhaps most importantly - HOW HUMANS CHOOSE TO USE IT.
And...regulation, regulation, regulation (but the right kind).
Regulation is needed but in the current context, the right kind is not possible. In my reading, we're never going back to the world of 40-90 years ago, when it was possible to solve problems with regulation, before the moneyed interests figured out how to capture the regulatory agencies.
And there is no need for the insulting language of your first paragraph. A person can disagree with you without being "unable to read and comprehend" or "an ass."
Another one of my favorite journalists, Rob Urie (Journal of Belligerent Pontification), often writes about AI (and was apparently involved in building and working on AI systems years ago), and I think you might find some of his articles/explanations very interesting and aligned with yours (and he is anti-capitalist, as well)… if you weren’t already familiar with his work (he had a number of his articles published in CounterPunch over many years, as well)
"Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness"
The other point is the same way of trying answer the question if the question ever before is be answer! The whole process of A.I. adapts in the moment as it 'analyzes'—tracing back through the chain of reasoning to pinpoint exactly where the mistake was made that led to the final answer—in order to adjust or change the final answer of it! So it not so much different than only your claim! Both are partially true as the result of a creatively crafted answer designed to appear remarkably close to reality. Yet, the process of evaluation—weighing all the available information to refine that answer toward apparent perfection—is far more complex. In the final idea of it, it probably change every time his own answer compare the past to the future time! Over and over again!
This is what Hinton, Godfather of AI said. Train AI to have Maternal Base-thinking. Ever seen a mom help her kid with homework or learning to tie a shoelace? Ever see a Dad teach his kid how to use a hammer & nail without losing a thumb? What if AI worked like that?
You only have to look at israel- the society built on their so-called religion. If that's how their religion wants them to act, I'd be banning that religion from the world because it is totally over the top; man made EVIL and has no place anywhere in anyone's life.
Easy. You can find horrible things in the Christian Bible (at least the Old Testament, which is where many modern "Christians" take their quotes, as that radical hippie commie quoted so much in the New Testament is problematic) and no doubt the Koran--it isn't the religion that creates the problem, there have been centuries of peaceful and inoffensive Jewish communities, often being persecuted by their neighbors.You can find Hindus and Buddhists being violent and discriminatory. Don't judge all adherents of a religion by some horrible group.
It helps to understand what that "religion" is. The only belief that can be said to be shared in a universal way among the entire group is the secular belief that Israel is necessary for the survival of the group. This is a secular belief taught with the most severe childhood indoctrination. There is no truly "religious" belief that is universal within this group. The true "religious" belief is shared only among some of them and that may be a minority within the entire group. For this reason - that the universal belief is a secular belief that is separate from all other beliefs within humanity - justifies our referring to the group as a cult.
It has nothing to do with religion! What time you will learn that? You still do not understand 'yourself!'.... If that was the question about it as if someone ask the question:"What are people really like, in terms of the ultimate outcome of their actions or thoughts? Good? Bad? Or 'both outcomes'?"... It’s not that hard to understand the question or the explanation for it, surely?
“It’s like a serial killer telling us we can stop serial killing by making serial killers smarter.”
Indeed. Substitute capitalist /capitalism for serial killer and serial killing and the problem is defined. AI, like every technological innovation, is hijacked by capitalism. Rather than using technology for the betterment of humanity capitalism perverts and distorts it in service to the ruling class. For the first time in human history we have the ability to feed, clothe, house, educate and cure literally everyone. Why isn’t it being done ? Capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to control innovation and progress for the benefit of the ruling class and ensure the slavery of everyone else. Cell phones and HD televisions are the bones off of which the ruling class has eaten the meat and discarded to the peasants. It is quite discouraging. The world is on fire and AI is the latest technology scam we are being told will improve our lives. You know what will improve our lives ?
Stu, I believe your last question and answer need improvement. It seems you believe our choice is either Socialism or Capitalism, which is not true. The fact that we humans are a dualism having both individualistic and socialistic features suggests that any successful society must contain the features of both Capitalism and Socialism and not entirely one over the other. I believe the examples of the USSR, the USA, China, etc. have illustrated this point very well.
Why do people talk about this mythical WE that could or should do this or that?
For instance... "we’ve just chosen to use our technology and resources making rich people richer instead"
No... WE have not chosen any such thing. WE do not choose these things... they are imposed by those among us who gain power whether economic political or religious etc.
Very often these are people who are more able to make 'hard' decisions they know benefit themselves at the expense of others... ie narcissists & sociopaths etc. Such people on average can out-compete more empathic or moral humans.
As infants each of us is born into a world and cultural order already fully made that is given not chosen. In order to survive we MUST absorb & replicate the world we are born into. Absorb & internalise it in & as our own personality. All of this is demanded not chosen. And as infants we have zero rational filters. Whatever the conditions are that is what we absorb.
The capacity for conscious reason and choice and independent thought only arises later in our late teens or early adulthood... and only as a capacity... not necessarily accessed or used. Many people live out their lives fully immersed in the dominant cultural matrix of their world and never question it.
And when the capacity for conscious reason and choice and intention is accessed it is always by an individual... never by a WE.
Yes... that would be the we or collective of my family & community and the nation & world I was born into.
My point is this... that we does not make the kind of choices alluded to in the article.
For instance there was no WE that decided kings and Queens and nobles should own everything & rule absolutely... ie the medieval feudal system that lasted 1000+ years. It was strong warlords... in today's culture oligarchs... that grabbed & held power by force. They decided the fate of their subjected serfs.
Likewise there is no WE that chose to dedicate our society to making rich people richer. The fact our western society functions that way has to do with the power of financial & industrial oligarchs and the non-conscious acceptance of the masses.
Ok I see what you're getting at. You're talking about the system - and you can't blame the ordinary worker for the system they find themselves in. It is a system we are born into and will most likely die in without escaping the whips of our oligarchic masters.
Nice summary, but add in also that we all have a genetic tendency that puts us somewhere on the spectrum between the extremes of conservatism and liberalism. These polar tendencies are a result of biological evolution because they have survival value for the species. It comes with the brain we inherit as a fetus. In other words, we humans will always have to put up with those who have the opposite mental tendencies from our own. That's why we have politically degenerated to a two-party duopoly.
Yes I agree with you that individuals are located on a spectrum that runs from conservative to progressive. However I disagree with your materialist metaphysic.
I prefer a spiritual metaphysic. I think it has to do with the soul level... a factor which I suspect may be invalid for you?
I also think individuals exist on a spectrum that runs from angelic (oriented to good) to demonic (oriented to evil) depending on choices made in previous lifetimes. So yea... multiple lives not just one.
These metaphysical differences aside we can probably agree that conservatives & progressives and good people and evil people are all permanent minorities in every population.
One of the most enlightening books I ever encountered was the true tale of Australian gold prospectors who discovered Stone Age tribes in Papua. It was about 1930 so there are photos and even movies. It was amazing how similar their politics was to what we see today. Should we be friendly with other tribes or hostile? That was the basic issue.
They had forgotten the ocean existed so thought sea shells were of divine origin and used them for money.. Such a shell appears today on the paper money of Papua. The prospectors flew in shells causing massive inflation.
Suppose for a moment that AI becomes so "smart" that it becomes wise and benevolent (unlikely, I know, but stay with me) and that at some time in the future we go to "it" as an oracle, asking it for the answer to life's eternal problems: how to be happy; how to reduce human misery, prevent wars and famines, needless death and destruction. And suppose AI, having "evolved" faster than us because it is so much smarter, told us that in order to be happy we shouldn't lie, steal, covet, hate, follow pleasure for its own sake (with a special admonition against the corrupting power of great wealth); that we are to do our best to see the humanity in each of us and to love and have compassion for that. That, of course, would be the same advice given by the great spiritual masters from very long ago and that most of us--even the religious--ignore because it is inconvenient and so--what?--idealistic? Just not practical in today's world.
I have no doubt that such advice from this super-intelligent source would be ignored by the Zuckerberg's, Thiel's, Karp's, Musk's and Altman's of this world and by the same cast of characters that populate our governments and, indeed, most of us. Just because the advice came from the ultimate analytic source, it would have no power by itself to change behavior. Our response to such advice would be to suspect the source: that super-intelligence had gone haywire after we'd spent all that time and money perfecting it to "improve" mankind. Must be some glitch in the system. We wouldn't like the answer because it wouldn't and doesn't fit the world view of those who developed AGI and those who would use it for their own purposes.
Yep, we already know what to do, but somehow the actions elude us. AI isn't going to fix the troubled human soul. The intelligence we need we already have. Utopias are phantoms and utopians are fools. We fix our world right NOW, with our individual and collective compassion, or not at all.
That's what the Christ, the Buddha, and Mohammad taught I think. Bodhisattvas of the Earth equal in number to the sands of the Ganges. Pick up a grain. They are all different.
Precisely Caitlin, greed, cruelty, enslavement, containment, brutality, and vicious hatred are their standard trade, all covered and aided by massive and continual propaganda.
Feeling hopeless and hapless are a daily reality for the awake, whilst the asleep steadily drag us towards a dreadful fate. What did anyone do to deserve this?
John Milton, from Paradise Lost. But perhaps more modern audiences know it from Mary Shelley's epigraph to her classic novel "Frankenstein" which she wrote when only 19 years old - which defies comprehension.
Funny how we managed to go to the moon, and back, without help from pumped AI so people like him can pretend we couldn't possibly have done what we did without AI, although we actually did do it without AI with people like him making out AI is the only way we can do any of the things we have already done.
How did we get electricity without AI? How did we, unfortunately, manage to make the H bomb without AI? How did we manage to make planes that fly us all around the world without AI? Or ships, that by their weight should sink, without AI. And, how did we manage to make computers without AI? How did we manage to grow from cavemen to living in vast cities without AI.
The only reason we have AI is because humans devised algorithms to make AI without the aid of AI, so maybe AI isn't so super smart after all since it needs a human to work out how to make it work faults and all. The only actual difference is AI can make calculations faster, but it takes a human to write the code for that to happen.
When I started in my first job from school, I was given a calculator to do the adding for me! I didn't trust it and would check every calculation mentally, the way I did exams at school. It was not always correct, and not because I didn't key in the correct numbers, I always double checked my numbers. In the end they let me do it my way - no machines.
No, Artificial Intelligence won't solve humanity's problems. It is the latest in a long line of distractions that prevent us from directly dealing with those problems. (Perhaps it might be good at solving artificial problems?) You, Caitlin, have recently touched on related issues in recent columns where you write about consciousness and spiritual enlightenment and awakening.
There are many pithy quotes that (kind of) describe the things going on right now. I think of things from Susan Sontag, Joseph Campbell, Rebecca Solnit,and George Carlin. I'm not clever enough to put the thoughts into words myself. Today I think of a quote from Carl Jung who wrote, ""We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems."
I might add that we also add ideas that also make us bigger than the problems. You're certainly putting the ideas out there, Caitlin.
The people behind AI would rather get rid of their own hearts--they have contempt for animals, for the animal side of themselves, and yearn to be free of it, to put their consciousness into machines. To be computers. I see this as selling your birthright for a mess of pottage--we ALREADY have what computers have, but they can never have bodies, and senses. When you walk in the woods and see a beautiful mushroom, and observe the interplay between insects crawling over it, and hear birdsong, and feel a breeze skirling over your skin, is this an experience that can be replicated by a machine? Perhaps an android could be build as a sex partner that would feel like a real lover--but unlike a real lover, it could not love you. There would only be one person in that bed, using an elaborate device to jack off.
"Perhaps an android could be build as a sex partner that would feel like a real lover--but unlike a real lover, it could not love you. There would only be one person in that bed, using an elaborate device to jack off."
Pretty sure these are already available, in types custom-made for any taste.
The scope of applicability of "compassion" (as in to all humans or all 'beings' or even to inanimate objects such as our current President & Commander In Chief duly elected by a majority of electorals processed via Electoral College) would in any context be problematic.
Sorry for that abstraction. Dear friends recently purchased the 17 episodes of the singular US TV series The Prisoner by actor\writer Patrick McGoohan and while I did view it when it originally aired back in '67-'68, I was well below the 'Age of Reason.' We're taking an episode an evening, thus far only up to 2. But why should humanity speak in numbers?!? Or restrict our scope of concern to numbers or that which may be measured...
(One of a wide number of essays worth perusing or writing yourself after viewing all 17 episodes of The Prisoner and perhaps, being committed to such a seaside Village or classified for another such remedial institution..)
So what what Zuckerberg says? He proves that what he says should be ignored or held in contempt. When is he ever challenged? It's only their voices we hear from, the billionaires and their perspectives we hear about. What has Zuckerberg done or is doing to show he cares for humanity? The fact that he censors tells us he is to be held in contempt of breaking the most paramount principle of sovereignty. Anything other than sovereignty is enslavement. Just like you can't be half pregnant, also you can't be half-sovereign. How can anything help humanity that takes away our freedom of voice, hmm?
"Anything other than sovereignty is enslavement." I've studied real slavery. You don't want to know about it.
Como muestra el libro de Sarah Wynn-Williams, Zuckerber es un insensible multimillonario codicioso y criminal que al que no le importan las consecuencias de sus actos. Después de la experiencia de Cambridge Analityca, lo primero que expresó fue el orgullo de que Facebook tuviera el poder de hacer presidentes (él mismo se puso en la lista). Ahí está también el trabajo de Sheera Frenkel y Cecilia Kang, donde describe los terribles efectos que tuvo la plataforma en Birmania y la despreocupación Zuckerber y Sheryl Sandberg ante la persecución y asesinatos contra la minoría musulmana que estaban ocurriendo. A Zuckerberg no le preocupa un ápice el bien de la humanidad, al contrario, sólo busca más riqueza, poder y en su fuero interno, sueña con la presidencia de Estados Unidos.
Yes typical of the sad pathetic evil narcissist billionaire
En efecto, como apunta Douglas Rushkoff, todos ellos son iguales y comparten la misma mentalidad (lo que Gebru llama TESCREAL), el problema es que pretenden usar sus recursos y tecnologías para hacerse del poder, como pregona Peter Thiel.
Translation:
Indeed, as Douglas Rushkoff points out, they are all alike and share the same mindset (what Gebru calls TESCREAL); the problem is that they aim to use their resources and technologies to seize power, just as Peter Thiel advocates.
Caitlin, you (and by you I mean people in general) need to understand that MOST of these "Tech-Bros" and "over-the-top Pro-AI people" seem to live in their OWN world and NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live. To me, THAT seems to be the causal problem for most of what comes out of Tech (not just AI) - these people are SO DISCONNECTED from the real world that what they say and believe just does not compute for me.
AI was never meant to solve the world's problems - that is just the narrative used to sell the technology (and industry). AI (and all such technologies) will simply accumulate and concentrate more POWER and WEALTH and CONTROL in the hands of fewer-and-fewer people (and to the detriment of everyone else, including other species and Planet Earth).
It is interesting that you brought up this point CC.
I was going to comment very similarly about "disconnection"… after reading Zuckerberg using the word “communities”. He freely uses that word… but has absolutely no idea what it means to live in one.… preferring to live, secluded and isolated from the rest of us… It sort of reminds me of a great line from Iggy Pop’s song "Neon Forest", where he shouts… “”Although you are lonely, you wish for a fence. America takes drugs in psychic defense.””
Right, Chang! And with their self-isolation comes a certain derangement (that is, to an even greater degree than with which they began). The Zuckerbergs, Thiels, Musks, et al, possess a serious toxicity of character, bound up with malevolence, arrogance and unbridled greed. They, through their political acolytes, are in the process of fucking America and the world. And down here in 'Straya we still continue to pay obeisance to that failing state. It's pissing us off.
Dear Chang C.,
My only objection to your otherwise well-tuned comments is your lede predicate premise:
"Caitlin, you (and by you I mean people in general) need to understand that MOST of these "Tech-Bros" and "over-the-top Pro-AI people" seem to live in their OWN world and NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live."
Humanity is the one created species we share a planet with (perhaps an Outer World with...). Part of having human conscience I can say first from direct notes of self-examination and then confirmed by trained psychological counselors and a couple of therapists back in primary school along with a muddle aged life of reading and listening to analysands and non-inquiring folk while in college is that there is no world we could all agree is "NOT the REAL WORLD where 99.99% of humanity live."
I phrased then posed this question to AI:
"Is there a shared psychological sphere or world where 99% of Humanity live?"
Here is the AI reply (AI being called by many in-the-know to be some sort of Great Synthesist or Great Synthesizer) after I posed the question to Google AI that I phrased this way:
"99% of humanity lives within a shared psychological sphere shaped by evolutionary biology, core social structures, and shared cognitive biases.
Psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers have mapped this "shared world" through several major frameworks:
1. The Shared Biology of Emotion
Across completely different cultures, humans share an identical biological baseline for processing reality.
• The Universal Emotions: Psychologist Paul Ekman demonstrated that nearly all humans—regardless of culture—recognize and experience six core emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise.
• The Biological Clock: 99% of humanity operates on the same circadian rhythms, experiences physical pain, and feels the psychological driving forces of hunger, exhaustion, and sexual drive.
2. The "Social Reality" (The Intersubjective Matrix)
Historian Yuval Noah Harari and various sociologists refer to a shared psychological layer called intersubjectivity. This is a world that exists purely because millions of people collectively believe in it.
• Shared Fictions: Money, nations, laws, corporations, and human rights do not exist in the physical world (like trees or rocks), yet 99% of humanity navigates their daily lives based on these psychological constructs.
• The Consensus Reality: We cooperate on a massive scale because we all agree on the rules of these invisible systems.
3. Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious
In analytical psychology, Carl Jung proposed that beneath our personal memories lies a deeper layer of the psyche shared by all human beings.
• Archetypes: Jung argued that 99% of humans inherit instinctual, cross-cultural psychological symbols and themes (like the Mother, the Hero, the Shadow, and the Wise Old Man).
• Universal Narratives: This explains why completely isolated ancient civilizations independently came up with highly similar mythologies, religious structures, and folklore.
4. Shared Cognitive Hardware
99% of humanity views the world through the exact same flawed "lens" due to evolutionary shortcuts in the human brain. We all inhabit a psychological world governed by:
• The Need for Belonging: Evolutionary psychology shows that humans have a hardwired dread of social isolation, as separation from the "tribe" historically meant death.
• Cognitive Biases: Almost all humans are subject to the same psychological patterns, such as confirmation bias (seeking data that proves us right) and loss aversion (fearing loss more than we desire gain).
The 1% Exception
The remaining 1% typically refers to individuals experiencing severe deviations from this shared psychological baseline. This includes people experiencing acute clinical psychosis (where consensus reality is fractured), profound neurological divergence, or extreme sociopathy/psychopathy that prevents them from experiencing the baseline empathy and social cohesion that binds the rest of humanity together.
Are you exploring this from a philosophical standpoint (like how we define reality), a psychological standpoint (like shared trauma or evolution), or a spiritual standpoint (like a collective consciousness)? Letting me know will help me tailor the next concepts to your specific angle."
Warmly in shared emotional curiosity,
Tio Mitchito
TM
Mitch Ritter
Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee\Hearsay
PS - If there is such 99% human consensus on anything that involves individual tastes, preferences, wide-ranging premises on the 'condition of the human condition' how could artists such as these thrive and grow audiences across long periods of public or even self-selecting performance careers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Z1cxXw8_E&list=PL12C3EAFF69F93432&index=5
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Mitch, when I talk of these "Tech Bros", these are the kinds of people it includes (as provided by your AI answer) -> "The remaining 1% typically refers to individuals experiencing severe deviations from this shared psychological baseline. This includes people experiencing acute clinical psychosis (where consensus reality is fractured), profound neurological divergence, or extreme sociopathy/psychopathy that prevents them from experiencing the baseline empathy and social cohesion that binds the rest of humanity together."
The AI LLM correctly identified the 'psychology/psychopathy' of this "1%", but it may not have been able to make the connection to particular individuals and groups that comprise this 1%.
I say 99.99% (instead of 99%) because when you count the 8 billion people living on the planet, it is an extremely small minority of people that share the "1% dissociation with reality" *AND* "have the power and wealth" to FUCK THINGS UP for the 99.99% of humans, other species, and the planet.
Beautifully encapsulated in your final paragraph, Chang.
One percent of human population is CONTROLLING the other 99% with Money, Greed, and Force.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class are the 1% - a mix of Royals, Banksters , Corporate & Govt CEOs . They have a few Cults/Clubs they belong to- Luciferians Satanists, Zionists, etc, because Their extreme wealth ISOLATES THEM.
The 1% want for Nothing, so They want EVERYTHING. Get it?
AI is a TOOL for them to achieve the goal of Depopulation, to a nice controllable Slave Class for Breeders & Soldiers.
They do NOT want to help or assist Humanity in ANY way - CONTROL is Their game.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is littered with PEDOES & WORSE, because these people only feel anything themselves when they are abusing the INNOCENT. Therefore, the 1% is UNFIT to rule over anyone. They are BRED to be Sociopathic Locusts. Take away Their wealth and what is left? Do THEY even know? How many $500 Tee shirts and tricked out cars does someone have to buy, BEFORE they are content? Answer: Zero
Money doesn't buy contentment, it only releases one from stress. Stress of worrying about how to pay for rent, food, etc.
Why haven't the 1% Geniuses, with Their AI Super Brains figured out how to eradicate poverty without physically, actual deleting poor people?
CUZ THEY DON'T WANT TO.
The Greater Israel Project wants to use AI to enslave the few humans left, after nukes, famine and AI-created plagues kill off most of us. Then the "Geniuses" like Zuck the Fnck, can crawl out of Their bunkers and start picnicking off Each Other.
AI is a TRAP.
It makes humans dumb, lazy and we will lose Our Critical Thinking skills... many already have.
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is building Our CAGE and Their new workforce.
🚫ALL DATA CENTERS ✌️
As you can see "AI" is not intelligent at all and does not and cannot think for itself. It is a computer purposefully called "AI" to groom people into thinking it is intelligent.
When you ask it something being a computer it can scan through a huge amount of information and give you answers that are from humans as your "AI" kindly shows perfectly here. Every answer they give has already been said by a human in a book, peer reviewed articles and anything else that "AI" has access to. They have also been programmed to make it seem like the reply has come from their "superintelligence"
Would you start taking advice from your laptop on serious issues? 'cos that's that's actually what you are doing. And when the final programming happens where "AI" will only regurgitate what the "elite" want us to believe you'll be in big trouble.
Read books and start using your own brain as the "elite" want us to outsource our information for everything instead of coming to our own conclusions from assessing information from what you see, hear and read and use critical thinking to form a strong conclusion.
For all of Zuckerbergs smarts he is drunk from drinking his own Kool-aid.
I have long believed that Zuckerberg is really an arrogant, ruthless, but rather dim individual, who just got lucky by creating one product at a critical point in the development of social media, and mistakenly attributed his success, mostly due to his ability to exploit the efforts of others, as an indication of his superior intellect.
Unfortunately, his fawning supporters make the same error. Every public declaration he makes is vacuous in its content, but because it comes out of the mouth of someone who has a lot of money it is hailed as profound wisdom.
Actually, my understanding is that he stole someone else’s idea, and rode it to fortune.
Same thing is essentially true about Bill Gates and MS-DOS.
& got LOTS of gov't funding
YES.
And this dude is a Jew! Praised by a jew website! So now you know something more about him! The word 'Jew' is a empty bucked term what nothing real says about him in reality! The man is a hardcore criminal who wants to kill mankind like many others in that same business! Money is in reality a illusion but evidently it is still in them eyes the only gold of life survival for them! But that last is also a fake illusion they will never understand! They are so stupid in them way how they think it is hard to describe why they still believe them own stupid lies! They understand in the real life nothing about the whole way of living throught it of that!
No, Zuckerberg showed a talent for the application of computer programming to social tasks early on even before college, and during college, he and others zeroed in on the idea of Facebook. That collaboration led to lawsuits by three other students, which were settled for 1.2 million Facebook shares and $20 million cash. Wikipedia has the interesting story.
OK. Would you care to list the other successful achievements of this "talented" individual? There must surely be many.
But there have of course been numerous privacy violations of user data, of which the Cambridge Analytica humiliation, while certainly the worst, was only one. These were not unfortunate consequences of progress, incurred while "going fast and breaking things" - a motto which is in itself a cynical admission of irresponsibility. Disclosing user's data and profiting from it is at the heart of the Facebook/Meta business model.
Zuckerberg has taken the strategy of selling the users as a product for exploitation to its logical conclusion. It's really the only idea he's ever had. They pour out their life experiences, and he markets them to anyone who wants to buy. Those creepy glasses are, of course, merely the next stage. .
No, he stole it from those twin brothers.
Garbage in… garbage out.
Garbage people in ---> Garbage people out!(Mark Zuckerburg and more ...like those1% out of the world who think they are better than 99%humanity!)... Normal this is the training term of A.I.(Garbage in-put of prompts(information)--->Garbage out(information) maked more better in answering the questions what people ask to A.I.!) Preventing nonsense from being spoken through A.I. system! With other words 'the questions are the garbage in' and the 'the answer of A.I. is the garbage out-put!'... They are trying through that way(form of training(memberships describers to get it be done!)) to ensure it stops spouting nonsense or garbage spout out! But A.I. can never be really be perfect in that kind of that way! It is always a halftrue or a lie! But the reality have always learn it is the most times a lie of presenting as a sort kind of a true! So on the end all lies coming out of it!
put another way - all these billionaire tech bros are trapped in the egotism that arises from being very rich and surrounded by sycophants. If IRS taxed them and closed their loopholes we'd all be better off, see cbo taxation options >>> https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-12/58164-budget-options-large-effects.pdf
Zuck seems like he's employing AI to create super intelligent word salads. Just what the society desperately needs.
Americans probably could do well with any kind of salad at this point.
No no no! Mostly they BUY the salad, and it turns out to be infested with some horrible organism that sickens large numbers.
There's that too
Our global problems are caused by a lack of morality, not a lack of intelligence.
Poverty does not exist because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
Good one. I'll remember it. Thanks.
No it wont solve our problem, because once it gets into the hands of certain Gov. like we have now ,it will be used against the People and populace and there will be no control or regulation of them ,and they will probably kill you if you get in their way
Ai would be wonderful if it were owned by every human in equal stakeholdings. From the time of birth right on through, every human has one share in the "ownership". It would then probably really be a huge help in solving problems. But the main problem humans have is lack of collaboration, separation. That keeps us helpless. Working together we can move mountains.
Already is being (used against the people).
"We need basic human kindness. We need justice. We need ethics."
AI only reflects how it was programmed. If those who program the AI demonstrated these qualities, perhaps it would be a useful tool. Until then, it needs to be banned, IMO.
What we need is to learn to use what we have. We have libraries, and educators and the internet, etc. How did our ancestors produce all the fields of learning, art, music, culture etc. without AI or some other stupid, useless "joke"?
Sadly, the AIs were trained on the entire internet/human literature. So while basic human kindness, justice, and ethics are certainly present in the training data, they by no means constitute the majority. I think AI is just going to reflect back to us the portrait of humanity captured in the data set, and it ain't pretty (but maybe pretty accurate?).
"They" may only be able to amplify their creators, even if "they" are smarter.
TRC, that's not how AI (or Generative AI - which is what you are referring to) works or is created.
Modern AI isn't something where a programmer sits down and manually programs in a set of beliefs, opinions, or moral values and then the machine simply repeats them back. Generative AI models are trained on enormous amounts of human-created information and learn patterns from that data; their behavior is then further shaped by things like additional training, human feedback, system instructions and safety rules.
That doesn't mean AI is unbiased or magically objective - it absolutely can reproduce the biases, misinformation and assumptions contained in the material it's trained on. But saying "AI only reflects how it was programmed" is much too simplistic. The more important questions are what data the system was trained on, how it was trained, what safeguards and objectives were built around it, how its behaviour is tested, and - perhaps most importantly - HOW HUMANS CHOOSE TO USE IT.
And...regulation, regulation, regulation (but the right kind).
Yes, regulators will solve the problem. Like RFK Jr at HHS, Hegseth at the Pentagon, the coal and chemical lobbyists at EPA, whatsisface at FCC...
Maybe learn to read and comprehend first? And don't make an ass out of yourself by 'assuming' things?
I never said anything about solving anything, or even implied that regulators will solve the problem.
Regulation is needed (regardless of any other variables) - and the right kind (which you missed reading too).
Regulation is needed but in the current context, the right kind is not possible. In my reading, we're never going back to the world of 40-90 years ago, when it was possible to solve problems with regulation, before the moneyed interests figured out how to capture the regulatory agencies.
And there is no need for the insulting language of your first paragraph. A person can disagree with you without being "unable to read and comprehend" or "an ass."
Another one of my favorite journalists, Rob Urie (Journal of Belligerent Pontification), often writes about AI (and was apparently involved in building and working on AI systems years ago), and I think you might find some of his articles/explanations very interesting and aligned with yours (and he is anti-capitalist, as well)… if you weren’t already familiar with his work (he had a number of his articles published in CounterPunch over many years, as well)
"Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness"
https://roburie.substack.com/p/why-ai-doesnt-think-cannot-reason
"Response to Technical Pushback Regarding Agentic AI"
https://roburie.substack.com/p/response-to-technical-pushback-regarding
"Hack-Bots Gone Wild: Agentic AI Has a Bad Year"
https://roburie.substack.com/p/hack-bots-gone-wild-agentic-ai-has
The other point is the same way of trying answer the question if the question ever before is be answer! The whole process of A.I. adapts in the moment as it 'analyzes'—tracing back through the chain of reasoning to pinpoint exactly where the mistake was made that led to the final answer—in order to adjust or change the final answer of it! So it not so much different than only your claim! Both are partially true as the result of a creatively crafted answer designed to appear remarkably close to reality. Yet, the process of evaluation—weighing all the available information to refine that answer toward apparent perfection—is far more complex. In the final idea of it, it probably change every time his own answer compare the past to the future time! Over and over again!
This is what Hinton, Godfather of AI said. Train AI to have Maternal Base-thinking. Ever seen a mom help her kid with homework or learning to tie a shoelace? Ever see a Dad teach his kid how to use a hammer & nail without losing a thumb? What if AI worked like that?
✌️
So true, Caitlin! What we need is more humanity. And all these creatures do is try to steal away as much of that friom us as possible.
NO!
You only have to look at israel- the society built on their so-called religion. If that's how their religion wants them to act, I'd be banning that religion from the world because it is totally over the top; man made EVIL and has no place anywhere in anyone's life.
Easy. You can find horrible things in the Christian Bible (at least the Old Testament, which is where many modern "Christians" take their quotes, as that radical hippie commie quoted so much in the New Testament is problematic) and no doubt the Koran--it isn't the religion that creates the problem, there have been centuries of peaceful and inoffensive Jewish communities, often being persecuted by their neighbors.You can find Hindus and Buddhists being violent and discriminatory. Don't judge all adherents of a religion by some horrible group.
"If that's how their religion wants them to act..."
It's more of a psychological problem instead of a religious problem. Religion is just the facade used to hide the monstrous barbarity on display.
It helps to understand what that "religion" is. The only belief that can be said to be shared in a universal way among the entire group is the secular belief that Israel is necessary for the survival of the group. This is a secular belief taught with the most severe childhood indoctrination. There is no truly "religious" belief that is universal within this group. The true "religious" belief is shared only among some of them and that may be a minority within the entire group. For this reason - that the universal belief is a secular belief that is separate from all other beliefs within humanity - justifies our referring to the group as a cult.
Here, Here!
It has nothing to do with religion! What time you will learn that? You still do not understand 'yourself!'.... If that was the question about it as if someone ask the question:"What are people really like, in terms of the ultimate outcome of their actions or thoughts? Good? Bad? Or 'both outcomes'?"... It’s not that hard to understand the question or the explanation for it, surely?
“It’s like a serial killer telling us we can stop serial killing by making serial killers smarter.”
Indeed. Substitute capitalist /capitalism for serial killer and serial killing and the problem is defined. AI, like every technological innovation, is hijacked by capitalism. Rather than using technology for the betterment of humanity capitalism perverts and distorts it in service to the ruling class. For the first time in human history we have the ability to feed, clothe, house, educate and cure literally everyone. Why isn’t it being done ? Capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to control innovation and progress for the benefit of the ruling class and ensure the slavery of everyone else. Cell phones and HD televisions are the bones off of which the ruling class has eaten the meat and discarded to the peasants. It is quite discouraging. The world is on fire and AI is the latest technology scam we are being told will improve our lives. You know what will improve our lives ?
Socialism.
Stu, I believe your last question and answer need improvement. It seems you believe our choice is either Socialism or Capitalism, which is not true. The fact that we humans are a dualism having both individualistic and socialistic features suggests that any successful society must contain the features of both Capitalism and Socialism and not entirely one over the other. I believe the examples of the USSR, the USA, China, etc. have illustrated this point very well.
Why do people talk about this mythical WE that could or should do this or that?
For instance... "we’ve just chosen to use our technology and resources making rich people richer instead"
No... WE have not chosen any such thing. WE do not choose these things... they are imposed by those among us who gain power whether economic political or religious etc.
Very often these are people who are more able to make 'hard' decisions they know benefit themselves at the expense of others... ie narcissists & sociopaths etc. Such people on average can out-compete more empathic or moral humans.
As infants each of us is born into a world and cultural order already fully made that is given not chosen. In order to survive we MUST absorb & replicate the world we are born into. Absorb & internalise it in & as our own personality. All of this is demanded not chosen. And as infants we have zero rational filters. Whatever the conditions are that is what we absorb.
The capacity for conscious reason and choice and independent thought only arises later in our late teens or early adulthood... and only as a capacity... not necessarily accessed or used. Many people live out their lives fully immersed in the dominant cultural matrix of their world and never question it.
And when the capacity for conscious reason and choice and intention is accessed it is always by an individual... never by a WE.
That WE is a fiction.
You probably wouldn't be alive right now without a WE.
Yes... that would be the we or collective of my family & community and the nation & world I was born into.
My point is this... that we does not make the kind of choices alluded to in the article.
For instance there was no WE that decided kings and Queens and nobles should own everything & rule absolutely... ie the medieval feudal system that lasted 1000+ years. It was strong warlords... in today's culture oligarchs... that grabbed & held power by force. They decided the fate of their subjected serfs.
Likewise there is no WE that chose to dedicate our society to making rich people richer. The fact our western society functions that way has to do with the power of financial & industrial oligarchs and the non-conscious acceptance of the masses.
Ok I see what you're getting at. You're talking about the system - and you can't blame the ordinary worker for the system they find themselves in. It is a system we are born into and will most likely die in without escaping the whips of our oligarchic masters.
Can't argue with that.
Nice summary, but add in also that we all have a genetic tendency that puts us somewhere on the spectrum between the extremes of conservatism and liberalism. These polar tendencies are a result of biological evolution because they have survival value for the species. It comes with the brain we inherit as a fetus. In other words, we humans will always have to put up with those who have the opposite mental tendencies from our own. That's why we have politically degenerated to a two-party duopoly.
Yes I agree with you that individuals are located on a spectrum that runs from conservative to progressive. However I disagree with your materialist metaphysic.
I prefer a spiritual metaphysic. I think it has to do with the soul level... a factor which I suspect may be invalid for you?
I also think individuals exist on a spectrum that runs from angelic (oriented to good) to demonic (oriented to evil) depending on choices made in previous lifetimes. So yea... multiple lives not just one.
These metaphysical differences aside we can probably agree that conservatives & progressives and good people and evil people are all permanent minorities in every population.
One of the most enlightening books I ever encountered was the true tale of Australian gold prospectors who discovered Stone Age tribes in Papua. It was about 1930 so there are photos and even movies. It was amazing how similar their politics was to what we see today. Should we be friendly with other tribes or hostile? That was the basic issue.
They had forgotten the ocean existed so thought sea shells were of divine origin and used them for money.. Such a shell appears today on the paper money of Papua. The prospectors flew in shells causing massive inflation.
It's a standard issue empty sales pitch.
As Caitlin says, we need kindness and recognition that we all in this together.
If you like, we are all connected and if we improve the lives of everyone, we improve our own.
zuckerberg and lots of people filled with pain and fear, think that more for me is the best.
Anyway, as Caitlin says, the ideas and tools have been been around for a long time.
Share the wealth for the national health.
Suppose for a moment that AI becomes so "smart" that it becomes wise and benevolent (unlikely, I know, but stay with me) and that at some time in the future we go to "it" as an oracle, asking it for the answer to life's eternal problems: how to be happy; how to reduce human misery, prevent wars and famines, needless death and destruction. And suppose AI, having "evolved" faster than us because it is so much smarter, told us that in order to be happy we shouldn't lie, steal, covet, hate, follow pleasure for its own sake (with a special admonition against the corrupting power of great wealth); that we are to do our best to see the humanity in each of us and to love and have compassion for that. That, of course, would be the same advice given by the great spiritual masters from very long ago and that most of us--even the religious--ignore because it is inconvenient and so--what?--idealistic? Just not practical in today's world.
I have no doubt that such advice from this super-intelligent source would be ignored by the Zuckerberg's, Thiel's, Karp's, Musk's and Altman's of this world and by the same cast of characters that populate our governments and, indeed, most of us. Just because the advice came from the ultimate analytic source, it would have no power by itself to change behavior. Our response to such advice would be to suspect the source: that super-intelligence had gone haywire after we'd spent all that time and money perfecting it to "improve" mankind. Must be some glitch in the system. We wouldn't like the answer because it wouldn't and doesn't fit the world view of those who developed AGI and those who would use it for their own purposes.
Yep, we already know what to do, but somehow the actions elude us. AI isn't going to fix the troubled human soul. The intelligence we need we already have. Utopias are phantoms and utopians are fools. We fix our world right NOW, with our individual and collective compassion, or not at all.
That's what the Christ, the Buddha, and Mohammad taught I think. Bodhisattvas of the Earth equal in number to the sands of the Ganges. Pick up a grain. They are all different.
Smart =/= wise
Precisely Caitlin, greed, cruelty, enslavement, containment, brutality, and vicious hatred are their standard trade, all covered and aided by massive and continual propaganda.
Feeling hopeless and hapless are a daily reality for the awake, whilst the asleep steadily drag us towards a dreadful fate. What did anyone do to deserve this?
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mold me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?"
Jamenta, from whence is this interesting quote? Thanks.
John Milton, from Paradise Lost. But perhaps more modern audiences know it from Mary Shelley's epigraph to her classic novel "Frankenstein" which she wrote when only 19 years old - which defies comprehension.
Stand up and fight back.
s
The normal state of human affairs. I sometimes imagine denizens of Heaven laying bets on the outcome.
Funny how we managed to go to the moon, and back, without help from pumped AI so people like him can pretend we couldn't possibly have done what we did without AI, although we actually did do it without AI with people like him making out AI is the only way we can do any of the things we have already done.
How did we get electricity without AI? How did we, unfortunately, manage to make the H bomb without AI? How did we manage to make planes that fly us all around the world without AI? Or ships, that by their weight should sink, without AI. And, how did we manage to make computers without AI? How did we manage to grow from cavemen to living in vast cities without AI.
The only reason we have AI is because humans devised algorithms to make AI without the aid of AI, so maybe AI isn't so super smart after all since it needs a human to work out how to make it work faults and all. The only actual difference is AI can make calculations faster, but it takes a human to write the code for that to happen.
When I started in my first job from school, I was given a calculator to do the adding for me! I didn't trust it and would check every calculation mentally, the way I did exams at school. It was not always correct, and not because I didn't key in the correct numbers, I always double checked my numbers. In the end they let me do it my way - no machines.
No, Artificial Intelligence won't solve humanity's problems. It is the latest in a long line of distractions that prevent us from directly dealing with those problems. (Perhaps it might be good at solving artificial problems?) You, Caitlin, have recently touched on related issues in recent columns where you write about consciousness and spiritual enlightenment and awakening.
There are many pithy quotes that (kind of) describe the things going on right now. I think of things from Susan Sontag, Joseph Campbell, Rebecca Solnit,and George Carlin. I'm not clever enough to put the thoughts into words myself. Today I think of a quote from Carl Jung who wrote, ""We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems."
I might add that we also add ideas that also make us bigger than the problems. You're certainly putting the ideas out there, Caitlin.
It can't be taught a heart, can it?
The people behind AI would rather get rid of their own hearts--they have contempt for animals, for the animal side of themselves, and yearn to be free of it, to put their consciousness into machines. To be computers. I see this as selling your birthright for a mess of pottage--we ALREADY have what computers have, but they can never have bodies, and senses. When you walk in the woods and see a beautiful mushroom, and observe the interplay between insects crawling over it, and hear birdsong, and feel a breeze skirling over your skin, is this an experience that can be replicated by a machine? Perhaps an android could be build as a sex partner that would feel like a real lover--but unlike a real lover, it could not love you. There would only be one person in that bed, using an elaborate device to jack off.
"Perhaps an android could be build as a sex partner that would feel like a real lover--but unlike a real lover, it could not love you. There would only be one person in that bed, using an elaborate device to jack off."
Pretty sure these are already available, in types custom-made for any taste.
I don't see why not. That is, if it behaves as though it has a heart then isn't that good enough?
However there is much more interest in teaching it how to genocide. Here is what Kate Bush had to say about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTUcoR8_pyE
The scope of applicability of "compassion" (as in to all humans or all 'beings' or even to inanimate objects such as our current President & Commander In Chief duly elected by a majority of electorals processed via Electoral College) would in any context be problematic.
Sorry for that abstraction. Dear friends recently purchased the 17 episodes of the singular US TV series The Prisoner by actor\writer Patrick McGoohan and while I did view it when it originally aired back in '67-'68, I was well below the 'Age of Reason.' We're taking an episode an evening, thus far only up to 2. But why should humanity speak in numbers?!? Or restrict our scope of concern to numbers or that which may be measured...
https://limelightcollection.co.uk/en-us/products/the-prisoner-the-complete-series?variant=46298816807086&country=US¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&srsltid=AU7gw4V0MXW2ycqvsTEt2wzx048nBYY1TogEmeG6tfmLNWiIJb9pYamozpc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_McGoohan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
(One of a wide number of essays worth perusing or writing yourself after viewing all 17 episodes of The Prisoner and perhaps, being committed to such a seaside Village or classified for another such remedial institution..)
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/7/6/18385323/a-tv-show-from-50-years-ago-the-prisoner-foresaw-the-america-of-today#:~:text=Fifty%20years%20ago%2C%20in%20the,aired%20in%20England.%20While%20I
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