The Machine is Here

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy in odd old ends stol’n forth from holy writ; and seem a saint when at most I play the devil.” - William Shakespeare, Richard III

“There is no place for democracy in the kingdom of God.” - Alan Watts

"The future is not set." - Sarah Connor - Terminator 2 - Judgement Day

I’m writing today with more questions than answers - I’ve been pondering how our digital technologies have altered our societies.

How wonderous and magical that I can send my thoughts to you all in seconds and your pockets will buzz and alert you.

How awful that evil thoughts and lies tend to spread wider than the good. How awful it has become so hard to tell truth from lie.

I think by now we all know the addicting and negative impacts of social media on our democracy and our lives because of how they are designed to prey on our impulses and not honor our values.

Despite AI programs being fairly new, they have quickly been implemented into all aspects of our lives from weapons development to classrooms across the world.

Our over-anxious and undersocialized youth are now able to by-pass the rigors of learning new things and mastery all-together.

And the machine only grows more powerful.

The art above is human made (drawn by me) and edited with digital, non-AI tech in Procreate. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine.

Lately, I find myself verifying my humanity to machines more often than seems sane.

My face, my voice, my bank account, all of it could be manipulated in seconds to some nefarious cause. If a hacker steals your identity, do you still exist? It’s the new, less zen, version of the tree falling in the woods thing.

I’ve been playing with the question of inevitability. Something I think Oppenheimer also wrestled with. Do you think the nuclear bomb would have been created if our government spent that same kind of energy into restricting uranium extraction instead of running the arms race with Nazis and despots? What we think of as inevitable might just be us trying to justify the consequences of our choices retrospectively. The threat to humanity that was created then still looms over us all even now.

It’s hard to imagine endings on a day like this when the winter sun is strong and you’d be crazy to think that stars ever died.

So maybe I’ll talk about beginnings…

This is one of the most famous frescos on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Painted by Michelangelo in about 1511. He said he drew inspiration from the phrase in Genesis that God created man in his own image.

Do you see how the drapery of the angels around God looks like a brain? It might be a stretch, but many have theorized that Michelangelo had a deep understanding of human anatomy and made the image of God in a brain-like structure because God bestowed on mankind our unusual intelligence.

For better or for worse.

Our divine spark.

A force of massive creativity, and destruction. God-like in its own right.

It seems that with self-awareness comes paralyzing fear. We have been searching for a cure for our loneliness since the beginning. And it appears we may have found it…more and more people use AI chatbots as personal therapists and companions.

Desperate to throw off our human responsibilities to a “higher intelligence” we have been in search of a God to give us meaning and solve our problems.

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google and DeepMind, Google’s AI database, said he’d be fine if “the digital God took over.”

Many top level exectives at these tech companies seem to have a similar view. They are fine subjugating humanity to a God of their own creating, so long as their company controls the profits.

I don’t think all these men and women are evil. I think they desperately want to find answers to problems that have plagued humanity for thousands of years.

I know they always roll out the medical benefits. Wouldn’t it be great if AI could cure cancer?

Of course it would. But what’s the trade? Is the cost something we are willing to pay?

These people are willing to take risks that no-one signed off on on behalf of 8 billion people. And the incentive/economic structure they’re working in does not promote good, it promotes domination.

I, for one, am not okay with outsourcing our very humanity to a machine programmed with incentives by corporations that deem the well-being of people and planet well below profits.

A democracy does not work with a monarchical bone structure. You cannot have a king if what you want it is freedom and equal rights.

A democracy means each citizen must recognize his own “divinity”, so to say. We must own our power and responsibilities, not just our rights.

Because we worship intelligence and power, we are often willing to surrender our own will to it. Trust it.

But I hope you know that, just like your social feeds are tailored to you, the answers AI gives you are tailored to you. Truth may or may not factor into that equation. The number of AI related suicides and delusions are rising.

Can we have a functioning society when we no longer have common truths? Only individual realities?

It may seem impossible to change the trajectory of tech, but I know if Rachel Carson hadn’t written Silent Spring, there’s a chance our environment would have been more full of DDT.

I know that if millions of people hadn’t canceled their Disney + accounts, Jimmy Kimmel might still be silenced.

I work to help small regenerative farms that that put the health of soil, animal, and humans above profit. If those farmers gave into the machines too, we’d lose so much of our biodiversity and choice in food. Food is connection and culture, not just commerce. That’s how we have to see everything - we have to move away from the lens of commerce to survive. We have to prioritize community. It is the Antidote to the AI mind.

Our future is constantly being re-shaped by every day people refusing to go quietly into the dark night.

We must stand firm and not bend to the inevitable. Because the only thing that’s inevitable, is what we do not resist.

For a more thorough discussion on this topic, please listen to the converstion linked below with Tristan Harris, co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology (and the guy who made The Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix) and Steve Bartlett from the Diary of a CEO.

This technology is evolving rapidly and we have to act quickly before more damage is done.

It’s easy to dismiss this kind of talk as pre-mature, or unfounded. But I’d rather be sounding alarms too early than too late.

I’m no ludite, I like being able to take advantage of advanced medicine, efficient travel, and abundant resources. I would just like to safeguard jobs, art, and human agency and worth.

If we can have guardrails put in and laws written to moderate and control these technologies, like we do with poisonous chemicals and drugs, then maybe we have a chance of curbing their impact.

After all, you don’t find people smoking on planes anymore. Stranger things have happened.

I’ll try write again soon, and I’ll get back to talking about books I’ve been reading and art I’ve been making.

I hope you’re well and that good things find you.

Love,

Gia