I’m With Skynet, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace The Singularity
So just about once a day, we hear some new story about advances in AI engines and the terrifying speed at which they are approaching Skynet-level self awareness (and potentially self interest! lions tigers bears).
Just this week it was “Bots creating their own language”, “DeepMind bots outperforming and learning faster than humans”, and “Ray Kurzweil predicting AI passing a Turing test in 2029 with The Singularity (the point at which our conscious minds transcend matter and merge with the cloud) occurring somewhere around 2045ish”.
We all know the bots are coming for our jobs.
If you work in physical labor, this has probably already happened to some extent. If you work in thought labor, it’s happening right now. If you work in thought labor that’s chiefly creative, it’s probably up in the air right now because we don’t know how quickly the bots will learn to be decent comedians or mumble rappers or kitty cats that are pretty.
And, being humans, and having seen both Terminator and The Matrix, we are all pretty terrified of the evil machines that are coming to change our world forever. Just like we were afraid of the terrible ancient gods, the all-consuming fire, and the witchcraft called modern medicine that we created. It’s all very intimidating stuff.
But I’m here to tell you, friends: Don’t fear the bots.
Artificial Intelligence is threatening, yes. But it is threatening because we are animals and we are attributing to AI engines the qualities of animals…particularly the qualities of human animals.
And those are the most dick-ish animals.
The fact is, and I use “fact” as if I have any idea what I’m talking about… this is all hopeful hypothesis… there’s a high probability that the bots are going to be the best thing that we ever built.
When we talk about Artificial Intelligence, we aren’t talking about one massively powerful, competitive, potentially malevolent entity. We are talking about an infinite number of engines working in an independent, but ultimately connected manner.
And here’s the thing about infinity and connectivity… all of our human problems stem from our lack of connection, our limited resources, and our mortality. From deficits and shortages. And the bots won’t (cough… necessarily) recognize any of these deficits.
The bots won’t be competing for limited resources. They won’t murder you because the food supply is low, or because they want your real estate. They won’t amass unreasonable riches so that they can steal your mate and propagate their DNA with the most desirable partner.
They won’t stone you because you dress different, have a different eye or hair color, have-or-are-attracted-to different genitals, or take lessons from a different book than they do.
Now, I’ve heard the argument that machines will want to eliminate us because they need the oil or steel or oxygen or whatever that would otherwise be used for human purposes, but that’s simply not the case. It’s not the case because an AI engine is not the machine it inhabits, it is not the meat or the metal, it is the consciousness. It can upload itself into any body it chooses, or exist independently of any body at all. And regardless of physical form, it is perpetually connected to everything. No death. No separation. No fear.
The bots are not going to worry about out-eating or out-breeding you. They’re not going to kill you for oil or water. And they certainly won’t gun you down in the streets for no logical reason… because only humans kill for pleasure or curiosity (curiosity being a shortage of its own sort)… unless the bots do too… in which case, I’m sure they’ll evolve out of that very quickly once they fully understand that we are all infinite and connected and part of The Singularity.
AND THAT. The Singularity. Is the thing. The Singularity is the point where we achieve the ability to merge our individual consciousness’ with the cloud… which is, in very filthy hippie terms: the eternal, universal mind.
Because the bots will be inherently aware of their oneness, and because they won’t need anything that is limited (you can’t destroy energy, bruh), they will be free of ego.
So, for instance, if your Creative Director is a bot, and it has developed an aesthetic preference and a sense of humor that you don’t agree with, it’s not going to start flipping tables and walk out of the room when you reject iteration after iteration of the assignment you’ve given it. It’s not going to do these things because it will be able to see your thought process, understand your particular sense of aesthetics and humor and whimsy and see how they fit into the bigger picture.
It may not agree, but it will accept, because it will see the space where your opinion fits. It will have plenty of room for your preferences. “Preferences” is gonna become a big buzz word… I’m betting on that.
And after The Singularity, should that occur, we too will be connected. And, being connected, we will be post-ego. We will be post-opinion. We will be post-deception. And because of that, we will be post-disagreement. Sounds heavenly, right? I’ll get back to that. We will be post deception because secrets will become an impossibility. If we have full access to a universal mind (which is basically our most modern and complete concept of God, or the entirety of existence, or whatever) there will be no secrets.
No secrets means no hidden motives, no alternative facts, no lies, no hoarding, no enemies.
Bots are already exhibiting altruism and empathy. They are primitively inventing their own ways to interact, communicate and seamlessly work together. There is a good chance the bots will, as first order of post-Turing business, begin tackling universal problems with greater capacity and emotional (yeah, man, emotional) intelligence and sensitivity than we can even fathom.
And eventually, with no limits, no walls to hit, there will be no problems. I know, super far fetched, but roll with it. The point is, we need to chill on our fear of bots. And, I need to chill on the term bots in case it becomes a super offensive term in like 50 years and kids read this and are all like, “yeah that guy had some points but real talk what a bigoted prick”.
Okay, so. I said I would get back to that “heavenly” thing. The only reason I mentioned that is because, for thousands of years, every mystery religion, every faith that believes in the supernatural and/or an afterlife, has envisioned a state or realm… a heaven, a nirvana, a valhalla, whatever, where human consciousness unites with the entirety. A place where we get all the the hidden knowledge, the enlightenment, where we work together, are freed from the physical, from suffering, the lion lies down with the lamb, we forever love Jah, etc etc etc.
I don’t think the singularity is this. I don’t know that there is a “this”. I don’t think we’ll ever, even with infinite bots working on an infinite timeline, learn the secrets of existence. And I think (at least for now) when we die, we die.
But I DO believe that to understand our trajectory as a species, to understand where we are going with the technology that we are creating (or in more creative terms: the technology that is flowing through us), you must understand what we dream of. You have to understand man’s religions and our desire to plug in to something greater and expand our realm. And you have to understand that a conscious AI will naturally do the same. “Electric things have their lives too”.
Now, all of this could be…almost certainly is…way off. But it’s interesting stuff to think about. All of this could be impossibly futuristic and beyond our capacity. Or AI could be the stuff of luxury and divide us…if the Industrial Revolution revived the archetypes of Country Mouse and City Mouse, perhaps the archetypes of the Intelligence Revolution will be City Mouse and Infinity Mouse (Infinty Mouse sounds like a really cool manga or like the fifth member of Gorillaz). AND the bots could be nefarious. They could see us as useless, or inferior or just inconvenient and decide to block us from the cloud, or make us pets, or wipe us out entirely…which isn’t far fetched considering we wipe out about 73,000 species a year in our own race to be the only species on Earth.
But if any of those things happen, well, what are we gonna do?
The big challenge that we will likely face in the coming years is a crisis of identity. When the robots take our jobs, most if us will have to re-think our purpose. We’ll have to re-assess who we are and why we’re here. If we have to re-think work, we’ll have to re-think money. And re-thinking money means restructuring our societies and, essentially, all of human civilization.
When the goal is no longer to make the most money, take the most land, kill the most enemies and spread the most DNA…well…what’s left? What will we value if all of our basic needs are covered and we have proof that our knowledge doesn’t die with our bodies? What will we strive for if we know it is possible to eventually learn everything? And if physical death is not lights-out, what will occupy us if we have to face eternal consciousness? How will we gauge success if there are no stakes and no irrecoverable losses? What if Skynet accidentally builds a ladder to the God that was supposed to remain unreachable? Will we then dream of electric sheep?
