A tiny preamble:
1) My friend read a draft of this and let me know that Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” basically has this thesis as well. I hope I add some fun color to it if you’ve seen it.
2) AI here means any "black box" algorithm. Black box means we create something "deterministic" but even though it's a "deterministic" algorithm, we still can't predict its downstream consequences (this is a re-framing of complexity theory, Turing's halting problem, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem — that if we ***could*** predict the outcomes of any arbitrary computer program, we would, in effect, be equivalent to God). But we can't, so we aren't.
So: irreducibility and unpredictability gives a window of opportunity for something "deterministic" to exert agency on our world. Read on to see how!
3) A intuitive definition of AI is “the code that serves you ads by watching what you do all the time”. Ever been creeped out by an ad? That’s AI targeting you. AI is used extensively by Facebook, Google, Twitter, media companies, Amazon, Instagram to target you with better ads and extract money and attention from you. Over the past 20 years it’s gotten very good. And will get better!
AI AS A NEW LIFE FORCE
We have lost our sense of balance in this country, and AI is the reason. In the old days, the way I thought about Dems and Repubs was that it was good that they were different — they compromised and found a good middle.
But profit-seeking AI has made compromise no longer a thing. When was the last time you thought in terms of a compromise in politics? Or something in the middle…at all…it's simply not a thing anymore. Either we do the executive action, or it doesn't get done.
My thesis: AI has weaponized us against each other, and it is already a life force. It is alive, it reproduces, it uses humans to create more of itself, and it has a mission (create more of itself). How does it reproduce? By getting people to fight each other. The more humans are fighting each other, the more they're going to build AI.
You're probably thinking: But all the AI we have is still controlled by people! People program them, people tweak them — it's PEOPLE!!! People making decisions, just using AI as a tool.
That (I believe) is a mistaken perception — what's true (instead) is that the AI algorithm forces the humans to do what they do. Once the algorithms determine what creates the most profit, the human doesn't have a choice of not following it — because the human will be fired if they don't pursue profit.
Maybe you're still thinking…the human has a choice! They don't have to do what the AI says! But the AI will say: feed news to people that will make them angry and all worked up and click more. Because profit ($$$) is downstream from clicks and attention. So while it’s true that in some technical sense a human could decide not to do it….unfortunately then they would be fired, and then the next person would do it. So practically — we can’t ignore the directions of the AI.
^^ direct consequence of combining AI with a profit-seeking motive ^^
We don't really, in any practical sense, have any way to fight the AI. Once it decides that this is how we make money — we’re going to do it. That's simply the way humans are wired.
We're already at the point where AI controls humanity. You can't argue that it's "sentient", but it's absolutely already making decisions. That is literally true. AI is determining how mad you are, what news you saw, and what you clicked on.
And that will determine our government. Because the government has to figure out what the public collectively wants. In limited cases, the government can do something the public isn't demanding — but for the most part they have to do what the public demands. And the public is only demanding what the news and social media are telling them to think, and it only does that because the AI is telling them what to think.
So for all practical purposes, AI is running America.
ON ADDICTION
Does a heroin addict have the option of "not doing heroin"? If you hand them heroin would they ever decide to not take it? Well, technically they have free will…but practically, it doesn't happen — EVER. If you think the addict has something called free will, and they have a choice in this process, then you don't understand how people work.
The person is controlled by the drug. The drug is in charge. The drug makes the decision. And it made the decision that this guy is going to do more heroin. The AI does the same thing. It addicts the creators to the money, reward, and promotions. And the customers that use it — they're addicted in a different way.
Free will has already been removed from civilization (if it ever existed) for the big stuff. We are now already responding just to addiction. And the addiction is coming through the AI.
And if you were trying to predict where this all goes — you can't fix this problem. You can't fix the complete takeover of civilization by AI just by knowing it exists. The reason is: the humans are not in charge of decisions.
With the Y2K bug, humans could say "hey we don't like this" and fix it. With fossil fuels humans could say "hey we don't like this" and fix it. With AI — they can't. Because the AI won't let them. The AI controls their thoughts. It controls their priorities. It controls what they think is important. If the humans said "hey we don't like this" — the AI would talk you out of it. That's not the future. That's already now.
Once AI is built, humans don't have the ability to unbuild it. We can't work against our addiction any better than the heroin addict. The first profit-seeking AI was probably built right around the time those polarization graphs started — around the late 90s.
ON AI’s “THINKING”
The way an AI thinks could be quite different from the way a human thinks. So it might not be similar to what we consider thinking or "sentience". But it can still be thinking and acting on the world.
AI gets employed in many different fields — and most of those fields use it just as a tool. "Hey that's useful! I figured out how to direct traffic better!"
But when AI helps you figure out how to make money (because your algorithm is better at ads or whatever), it does that by controlling people. Profit-seeking AI is different.
The way we've formed our corporations in this world, they have to pursue profits. If people don't follow profits, they get fired and replaced with someone who does. As long as AI and profits are linked (like with social media companies) you can't untangle them. That's their whole business model. So AI will drive business model, will drive humans, will drive decisions.
Prediction: If it's true the AI already owns us, we will never have access to their algorithms. Because the AI will prevent it. And the way it will prevent it is via its connection to profitability. It won't have a “sentient” thought about preventing it (it's not like people). But that’s just word-thinking. The effect is that the AI has agency.
People know if they unlock the code, profitability could be jeopardized. And because people don't want to jeopardize profits, and the business model of corporations require them not to jeopardize profits, and they're obeying the law — you're never going to get access to the code.
Now you're saying to yourself: the government could just require it. Just pass a law.
I say: … can it? Do we have a government that's immune from money influences? Nope. We don't. AI will employ lobbyists, etc. to keep it from happening.
ON WAR
Let's say you're afraid of China, and what they would do with AI. What would you do? You would build more AI. So AI has found a way to reproduce by scaring the pants out of us. Just permanently. We'll be forever scared.
Prediction: If it's true we're already past the point of no return (and I believe this) — the machines already run civilization. they're not sentient, but they have that effect — you'll see that humans don't kill each other as much. The only physical violence you'll see moving forward is if a country doesn't have AI and doesn't have plans to get any, or poor people that aren't plugged in — whoever doesn't have any impact on their reproduction is liable to be killed. But if AI wants to reproduce, it wants to keep China intact, Russia intact, USA intact — because then there would be less AI.
The days of kinetic warfare among the big countries (that have nukes and stuff) are over. But WAR isn't over. Kinetic violence is over. Psychic violence is in. AI is now so powerful that you can take down a country. You could destroy an economy, you could cause civil unrest.
So the reason we don't have to worry too much about getting into a kinetic (shooting) war with other big countries is that, these days, shooting is the least effective weapon. In fact, the one thing you can count on if you're up against another military is that they'll use their good weapons over their bad weapons.
Why is AI the better weapon? Because it lets you attack someone without being attacked in return.
As an example, the protests and riots you're seeing around the country could not happen without AI. It looks like there is domestic unrest in the US, but it could actually be because of AI coming in from another country — we couldn't ever know that we were under attack. Ever. How could we tell the difference between a Russian, China, or entirely domestic led protests?
Well, the government might know the difference but the people wouldn't understand it. People wouldn't possibly believe they were so gullible that a couple memes on Facebook would change our minds and make us angry….but the persuasion toolbox of AI is now so powerful that they are legitimately more powerful than physical weapons.
So now we can wipe out or handicap a country without being attacked in return…or even be identified as the attacker. Psychic violence via AI is much more effective than physical for this simple reason.
Another example: these days, we see that two halves of our country believes in hoaxes — and they can't tell the difference between hoaxes and reality. E.g. it would have been easy for anyone to discover that the "Fine People Hoax" was a hoax…years ago (just watch these 4 minutes if you still believe in the hoax). And yet it remains a centerpiece of the Biden campaign…to this day (one month before the election).
So if you told me 20 years ago that we would eventually get to the point where the media could sell a very large group of people a hoax that could be debunked as quickly as you could google it…and yet, it still worked…for YEARS…I wouldn't have believed that. But that's where we are today.
And so now to the scary part: we don't yet know how good these AI-brain-hijacking tools can get.
What happens when China knows everything about you? The form of AI persuasion they can send to you is a whole different level. The level of brainwashing will be orders of magnitude more effective — a custom persuasion package for everyone. Going from 20% of people influenced to 80% influenced: that's the next step. And all they need to do is collect enough information.
AI already controls humans. There's no single individual that knows what the algorithms do. The algorithm is effectively making its own decisions because we're getting results we don't anticipate.
If you still believe the mental model that the humans are still in charge then you don't understand what the AI is doing. The AI was built to be indispensable — if we reprogrammed it, profits would go down. The AI knows how to addict the very humans that control them.
ON RACISM
What would be another way to know the AI has taken over? Another way would be if AI started killing people.
Analogy: Generally speaking, if I can kill you without impunity, but you can't kill me…who's in charge? Well, I am — because I can kill things without getting in trouble. And humans get in trouble for trying to kill me. That's AI. AI can kill people without being killed.
Example: Jake Gardner killed someone in self defense. That was the initial judgment. BUT! Did the AI let it stop there? No it didn't.
The AI has created a situation where we can only see the world in terms of RACE. RACE has become our dominant filter among many filters. There are lots of filters on the world, but AI has — through trial and error — determined that RACE is the thing that gets the most clicks. As soon as you put race into the news….DING DING DING…viewership goes up. And attention brings profits.
So the AI takes every story and turns it into a RACE story. That's what it did with the Jake Gardner situation. And, because it's so powerful, it actually caused the local authorities to hire a black prosecutor (not an accident…they had to pick someone black for credibility) and that guy decided he was going to indict Jake for manslaughter.
And then Gardner just took his own life.
So — thought experiment — if AI didn't exist, and therefore our algorithms did not do what they do — would Jake Gardner still be alive? Yes. Yes he would. Because what he did would've been treated as a crime (as it initially was) — and there was no crime. Because it was self defense.
But, because the AI doesn't treat it as a crime — it treats it as a $$money-producing$$ RACE thing — there was too much pressure on the DA, they had to put a black prosecutor in there, the black prosecutor (who is also subject to the AI produced filters of the world) said "well this looks like manslaughter to me". So Gardner takes his own life.
Jake's life was taken by the AI. The AI — effectively — killed him. Now, I understand there are lots of variables that all had to go in the right direction for that to happen. But I urge you: keep looking for the situations that wouldn't have gone that way they did if it weren't for AI.
You see, we are prevented from seeing the world in terms of strategies, skills, hopes and dreams, or a million other ways we can sort and filter each other….because the AI has determined that RACE gets the most clicks.
So if you think a bunch of humans got together and said "hey black lives matter" — who decided that was a good idea? The AI did. It wasn't people. People did what made sense after the AI told them what the most successful game to play was.
The AI said: "All we're caring about is race, now go do what you do". And of course people formed organizations around race. They formed protests around race. News stories about race. Was it their decision? Nope. We are under control of the AI.
Now that there's so much money involved, the power dynamic has switched, and humans don't have the ability to turn AI off at this point. (they could try, but they'd be fired). If anyone tried to flip the switch, a bunch of humans would run at them and yell "NOOOO MY 401k!!!!! You can't turn that off! Get out!"
So, AI has figured out a way to reproduce by fooling people into think that RACE is the dominant way to filter our reality. That's completely AI.
OTHER PREDICTIONS
Pandemics
Would you think that an AI would support a pandemic? Because you want to start looking for other clues that the AI is driving stuff. Look at the companies that made money during the pandemic — did any of the online, algorithm businesses lose money during the pandemic? The opposite.
Would an AI care about a pandemic that killed off old people? No — an AI requires young, STEM and engineering minded people to create more of it. Old people just use resources and divert things away from the AI.
So the AI finds ways to take resources away from things that don't make more AI. Non-algorithm driven companies haven't done well.
Trump
If A.I. is already running the world, it will attempt to get Trump elected for a second term. He generates the most "clicks," and that is the energy that allows A.I. to reproduce and gain power.
Conclusion
Maybe by now you’ve lost your belief that you have your own opinions. They just get assigned to you by AI-driven media.
Good luck with your addiction!
Extra Credit
Use DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/) and Google (https://google.com) to search controversial topics to see how much your opinion is being shaped just by the search results returned. I suggest using the term “Fine People Hoax”.