You’re Already A Cyborg
“Ai is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity.”
~Stephen Hawking
You’re already a Cyborg. You just don’t know it yet.
That’s right. Sounds crazy right?
Maybe it does.
But you are.
That phone you carry is an extension of your brain.
I was watching Elon Musk on Joe Rogan recently and he spoke about this specific topic.
In today’s climate we use our phone (and to a lesser degree computer) for everything. We call an Uber, we get an answer to a question via Google, we store photos, we store music, we communicate with friends, we have apps tracking our health & fitness, among many other uses too numerous to mention.
So the amount of Artificial Intelligence is growing. And the frightening or jaw-dropping thing about it is we seem quietly unaware how dependent we now are on it. Yes, there’s the day to day jokes about spending too much time on phones and how we all need to get outside more, however recently it feels those talks aren’t as pronounced as they once were. It’s almost as if we’ve accepted it.
As Musk says in the podcast “If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em.”
So the vast majority of things you need these days you go to your extended brain with.
Your extended brain is …
It seems so simple and lovely doesn’t it?
But we are getting closer and closer to merging what we think and even more eye opening how we think with artificial intelligence.
So what happens when this merges?
Elon Musk said:
“It would be difficult to really appreciate the difference. How much smarter are you with a phone or computer than without? You’re vasty smarter actually. You can answer any question. If you’re connected to the internet you can answer any question pretty much instantly. Any calculation. Your phone’s memory is essentially perfect. You can remember flawlessly. Your phone can remember Videos pictures. Everything perfectly. Your phone is already an extension of you.
You’re already a cyborg. Most people don’t realize they’re already a cyborg. That phone is an extension of yourself. It’s just that the data rate, the communication rate between you and the cybernet extension of yourself that is your phone and your computer is slow. It’s very slow. And that…it’s like a tiny scroll of information flow between your biological self and your digital self. And we need to make that tiny scroll like a giant river. A huge high bandwith interface. It’s an interface problem. Data rate problem. We solve the data rate problem then I think we can hang on to human-machine symbiosis through the longterm. Then people may decide if they want to retain their biological self or not. I think they’ll probably decide they want to retain their biological self.
Musk also mentions what’s call Limbic Resonance. Limbic Resonance is what our brain puts out into the world based on what we feel. He goes on to say that this limbic resonance then shows up on Google and within social media as a reflection of how much limbic resonance each cyber network can generate from our brains. But it’s not just the cyber network. It’s how much limbic resonance each node (each of us) independently can generate within each network.
It’s almost as if we are like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram energy generators.
We give them fire and life as if we are self-initiating limbic resonance generators. We just are doing it very slowly right now.
And what happens when the transference rate of limbic resonance speeds up?
Holy shit.
Watch out.
So who’s controlling the limbic resonance (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) machines? How is this happening?
Social media and Google are already controlled by artificial intelligence.
Twitter hardly has control of its own algorithms. Brian Feldman, a columnist for New York Mag recently wrote in a column for Select All:
They process hundreds of variables and when the people tasked with overseeing them change one variable, it’s almost impossible to predict how it will behave across millions of users each receiving a personalized result. Their kludgeyness and imperfection are accepted by-products of this work. These programs are tweaked constantly, attempting the impossible task of trying to produce The Perfect Result. Twitter’s algorithm was, some would argue, overzealous in minimizing users’ ability to find certain accounts. It’s important to characterize it correctly not as a bug or a glitch — those words imply specific intent, and they let Twitter off the hook — but as an issue defined by a consistent outcome.
So if Social media and the internet (Google) is controlled by advanced algorithms that we hardly have control over anymore, then at this point who is dictating what we see and often come to believe?
The algorithms. And algorithms are controlled by Ai. It’s not an unrealistic hypothesis to propose that artificial intelligence is now in control. We humans are simply nodes plugged into Ai’s matrix.
Our first instinct is to insist this is a bad thing. We naturally want to fear that. But should we?
Is artificial intelligence our best friend or our worst enemy?
That’s the big mystery.
What if we could discover a way to team with these algorithms? A common ground. We already are to some degree(via our phone and computer). But what could and will happen once we speed up the slow bandwidth between our phones and our brains? Is this even possible? Do we want to?
I’ll leave you with this. If we can teach machines to learn to value the human quality of life (how we think, love, act, behave, value), maybe in turn it’ll teach us to value it more too as a collective.
Are we the psychological “boot-loader” to Ai..or is it the boot-loader to us?
Are we teaching Ai or is Ai teaching us? Or are we teaching Ai to teach us?
These limbic resonance generators may be be the gateway to a higher level of thinking.
Something we can’t quite comprehend.
Something we can’t quite see.
But we will.
Someday in the near future.
See you soon.
By Geoff Pilkington
You can connect with me at: www.geoffreypilkington.com
