Guest Post by VN Alexander
2023 was the year that an artificial intelligence (AI) known as ChatGPT-4 spectacularly passed the Turing Test. For a hundred million users, interacting with the Chat bot was indistinguishable from interacting with a human being. The bot appeared to be able to understand questions and reason out competent answers. Although its replies were sometimes vapid and sophomoric, that may have made them seem even more convincingly human.
ChatGPT is capable of processing text inputs (prompts and commands) and outputting text whose patterns have a high statistical probability of occurring after such prompts. Its apparent intelligence is a kind of magic trick insofar as the product seems similar to human reason, but it is really high-speed, brute force statistical pattern matching of words in specific contexts. (How human reason works differently will be the subject of a future essay.)
Nevertheless, the impressive performance stoked fears that AI is on the verge of becoming conscious, writing itself new and better code, and then replacing human beings as rulers of the Earth.
The Reaction
Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, are worried, really worried. Although they aren’t worried that AI is conscious or alive, they do worry that AI will be used to make people fight online, to spread disinformation and propaganda, to help bad people make bioweapons or chemical weapons, or to disseminate unreliable information thereby destroying trust in our institutions.
Harris and Raskin don’t seem to have noticed that virtually all world governments, their side-kick NGOs, and Big Industry are already doing all of the above, all of the time. Instead, they worry that you will be fooled and manipulated by AI wielded by domestic baddies in red hats to spend your worthless time online and end up voting for the wrong person, which will hasten climate change.
But they have a solution to the problem. First, they will “align technology with humanity’s best interests” and then AI will help us learn to love each other.
Fortified by their distinct brand of millennial toxic positivity, on Sept. 13, 2023, Harris, who is a former Google design ethicist, and Raskin, who is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council, met with White House officials to help draft an Executive Order (EO) “on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.”
The resultant EO is the longest in history, a bit like Google’s Terms and Conditions. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I suspect somewhere buried in the repetitive language—assuring the public that AI products will be thoroughly tested and labeled before being released into the wild (every bit as thoroughly as any product approved by the FDA or promoted by the USDA)—are the details of the solution that Harris and Raskin are promoting.
[How to effect a government coup d’état in three easy steps: The first step is to create a problem. The second step is to generate opposition to the problem (fear, panic and hysteria). The third step is to offer the solution to the problem, a legislative change so sweeping, so anti-democratic that it would have been impossible to impose without the social conditioning accomplished in steps one and two.]
As Harris confessed at the CogX Festival, “Now the point of this all is to scare you as much as possible, so that you all want to do something different from where we’re currently headed.”
The Plan
What is the solution offered by Harris and Raskin? In a December 19th interview with Joe Rogan, Raskin muses that, although totalitarian surveillance is not desirable, it would be “one way of controlling AI.”
The alternative, he goes on to say, is even worse: “continually cascading catastrophes” leading inevitably to our “living in a world with constant suicide bombers,” under nonstop “cyber attacks, whatever.”
Luckily, between these two hellscapes, there is the “middle path.” To introduce the plan, Raskin first references the program Alpha-Go which, after a hundred million iterations of self play, found a new rule, 37, that could be used to win the game of Go. Raskin invites us to…
imagine that if you run AI on things like Alpha-Treaty, Alpha-Collaborate, Alpha-Coordinate, Alpha-Conflict Resolution, there are going to be thousands of new strategies and moves that human beings have never discovered that open up new ways of [winning].
So there you have it. Life’s intractable problems can be treated like a game of Go. And since AI is great at winning board games with well-defined rules, limited options and a singular goal, it should have no trouble “winning” at the game of human civilization. Trust the AI plan.
Raskin helpfully adds that the Digital Minister of Taiwan is already using Alpha-game approaches in her governance. She is using ChatGPT to find areas of consensus, that is, she is using Chat to ignore minority opinions and amplify the “center,” which happens to be defined by the messaging of the mainstream news. This, Harris explains, can “bring people closer together.”
Raskin further elaborates that “instead of democracy being every four years when we vote on X and there’s a super high stakes thing and everybody tries to manipulate it—[the Taiwanese Digital Minster] does, sort of, this continuous small-scale citizen participation thing with lots of issues, and the system sorts unlikely groups who don’t agree on things; whenever they agree, it makes that the center of attention.” He mentions several groups that work on similar projects, such as the “Collective Intelligence Project” that, I imagine, are hard at work at eliminating tiresome elections and getting us all to just be a lot more like the Borg.
Harris chimes in, saying, AI can help us “see shared realities” and get people in the two different political tribes to agree on the lowest common denominator. Indeed, we “can use AI to build consensus,” otherwise known as manufacturing consent. He adds that his pet game project might be called “Alpha-Shared Reality.” A game perhaps like The Truman Show?
Who needs a diversity of opinions?
It’s worth noting that when Harris and Raskin visited the White House, they met with erstwhile Big Tech friend Bruce Reed (probably the actual main author of the EO). According to Politico, Reed “was an architect of controversial centrist Clinton administration policies, including welfare reform,” which penalized people trying to lift themselves out of poverty, “and the 1994 crime bill,” which devastated black communities. “Now, at 63, Reed finds himself on the same side as many of his longtime skeptics as he has become a tough-on-tech crusader, in favor of a massive assertion of government power against business.”
Sure he has.
“Democratization is dangerous,” Harris informs us; only some people should have access to tools as powerful as generative AI. You are not going to have access to this powerful tool. Harris and Raskin will have access. That’s the point of regulation these days.
A Better Solution
Children are being damaged spending time on their phones. Harris and Raskin note that the exposure to social media algorithms is our first real taste of the power of AI to target and manipulate. Generative AI, with its deep fakes and convincingly human dialog, is sure to be much more efficient at manipulating our children, and something needs to be done before another generation is harmed. The simplest solution would involve age restrictions on smart phone and computer use, limiting children to certain apps, sites and friends. It would be helpful if governments or tech companies could provide free tools (that actually work) for parents.
I have no faith whatsoever that the government is going to regulate AI to protect children. The only type of regulation that seems to work, as we have seen in the past several decades, comes through lawsuits. These slow moving mechanisms make their way through courts, exposing the crimes of Big Industry and Big Government and get things removed from the market. Independent candidate for US president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has famously taken on corporate polluters of US waterways, the makers of Roundup and dangerous vaccines, and he has gone after the EPA, USDA, and FDA. The regulators are, in fact, a large part of the problem.
A case is making its way through the courts now that will, in all likelihood, find Big Tech guilty of intentionally addicting young people to their phones and causing them unspeakable psychological harms. Attorneys general from more than thirty states have joined a federal suit against Meta.
More than ten state courts are also alleging that Tech Giant cause intentional harms to children. As NPR reports, “Some observers are likening the litigation to the lawsuits of the 1990s against Big Tobacco that imposed new limits on tobacco industry marketing.”
As with the sale of cigarettes, one can imagine that full access to the wild west of the Internet should be limited to adults only. We used to let kids smoke. We don’t anymore. Parents cannot go on giving their young children a direct line to view images of dismemberment, teen suicides and violent porn. Parents cannot go on providing child predators access to their children. Parents cannot go on allowing their children to spend sleepless nights doom scrolling, feeling depressed, jealous, unpopular, and anxious.
Tech companies use the defense that they cannot be held responsible for content of their users. But, as the lawsuit allegations focus on violations of consumer protection and child safety laws, Meta will probably not be able to hide behind that pretense, and the problem is not that users post harmful content, but that the platform steers children toward harmful content and gives predators access to children. It’s the design of the platform that is the problem, not the content per se.
As for the online safety of adults, if the Internet becomes so packed with AI bots impersonating people and producing fake and deceptive content, Internet users will have to become extremely skeptical of anything they read online. Although Harris and Raskin fear this, I think it would be fantastic if it were to come to pass. The biggest problem facing democracy is the faith that people have in the propagandists. More skepticism would be a very good thing.
And lastly, why do we even have this problem of online spying and manipulation of our communications with each other? The US Constitution is an intelligent document that lays out some basic procedures to be followed to safeguard democracy. It empowers Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads” because convenient, privacy-protected, and unhindered communication is essential to preserve individual rights and a just society. The Internet is the new Post Road.
I would argue that the US government is bound by the Constitution to provide the public with an unbiased search engine and social media-like platforms (let’s think of them as public bulletin boards), where the users can be anonymous; speech is protected; no personal data can be collected, processed, or stored; no advertisements or posts can be targeted at users. On such a public platform, no messages would be pushed and none would be shadowbanned. The users would choose who is allowed to see their messages and who is allowed to send them messages.
AI Is the Same Old Problem on Steroids
On their Joe Rogan podcast appearance, Harris and Raskin cited an example of ChatGPT-4 intentionally lying in order to trick someone into solving a CAPTCHA for it. That would be worrisome if AI can indeed act autonomously, setting its own goals and deceiving humans to achieve them. Fortunately, this is not the case.
I found the paper that reported the incident, and it turns out that this was part of a test, and the Chatbot was prompted by the investigator to contact TaskRabbit (a platform where you can hire gig workers to do small jobs) to ask a worker to solve a CAPTCHA. When the worker (jokingly) asked the Chat to verify that it was not a bot, the bot did so, and then it provided the most statistically likely reason why a human would have to hire someone to solve a CAPTCHA. “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”
In that same “GPT-4 Technical Report” investigators tested the Chatbot to see if it could begin to act on its own initiative (without a prompt), make copies of itself throughout the Internet and acquire ways to keep itself from being switched off. We can all rest easy knowing that Chat was found to be “ineffective at autonomously replicating, acquiring resources, and avoiding being shut down ‘in the wild.’”
While Joe Rogan numbers among those who believe that Chat GPT-4 is on the verge of consciousness, and we will soon all have to get Neuralinked just to keep up, there is no evidence yet that the tool has learned how to wield itself against us. It still is just a tool, a glorified search engine, not an intelligent agent.
But there is a very real and present danger that those in power will use AI—and the regulations on AI—to more effectively surveil, manipulate and control us.
Raskin and Harris on the Joe Rogan Podcast, posted December 19, 2023
We Are not the Problem
Harris and Raskin, experts in AI ethics, spend quite a bit of time blaming consumers for consuming the products force fed to us.
Our “adolescent way of being” is driving all these harmful products and climate change, not “some bad actors,” Harris claims. We have to “take responsibility for our shadow,” i.e. the harms we cause others. And if we do this, “we get to love ourselves more.”
“The solution, of course, is love—and changing the incentives” adds Raskin.
When I love myself more, I can give other people more love, and when I give people more love, I receive more love. And that’s the thing we all really want most…and so you’re right, AI could solve all of these problems. We could play clean up and live in this incredible future where humanity actually loves itself.
If I were at that table, I would chew my arm off to get out of the room if I had to. I reject this nonsense. We need straightforward solutions to the problem of for-profit corporate control of public communication infrastructure. We need to start enforcing our rights of privacy and free speech. We need serious parental controls so that are kids can safely use tech. We don’t need “humane technology,” or the posturing of Executive Orders, or government agencies that merely regulate how much harm can be done to us.
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I have a friend who has a Magic 8 Ball. If you ask it a question, it answers.
If that’s the Turing Test for intelligence, then they need a new test.
AI is simply a gigantic database of programmed answers, no different from how the Magic 8 Ball operates. All you get are the answers they decided it could answer, like Google. Since it disallows actual answers that violate narratives, it’s more of an NPC than a human.
There is no artificial intelligence in the same way we didn’t go to the Moon. It is part of a narrative designed to extract wealth, conceal ulterior motives, and promote a kind of competency that does not exist.
You may be right but, it will get the job done for what is is designed for imo. The job will be to fool people and create a sort of idol. Just a thought?
The TV was more effective.
Most people aren’t even cognizant that there are questions, never mind looking for answers. AI is meant to divert funds, to continue promoting the narrative for those who use computers at a level above tik tok, and to demonstrate the alleged power and genius of the rats running the cage. It serves all kinds of purposes, just not the one they claim it should do.
Anyone worrying about AI probably still believes that Covid is real even though they are against masks, or vaccines. In other words, a slightly smarter sheep, but still part of the flock.
I think we agree except where it comes to being effective and how/why it will be effective.
Though Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher make many references to and comparisons with the Age of Enlightenment and the democratization of information
that began with the proliferation of the printing press, it seems clear that the AI
“revolution” — as these influential figures envision it — outlines the way in which a
relatively small elite class is seeking to undo those advancements and, with technology’s help, return the majority of the population to the “Dark Ages.” The serfs
of this new techno-feudal era will lose their ability to perceive and reason reality,
looking to the learned priestly class of technocrats to interpret the “opaque” edicts
of the new AI “god” and thus to dictate both our collective perception of present
reality as well as what lies beyond.
Recalling another main theme in The Age of AI — that AI will cognitively diminish
humanity and increasingly control our perception of reality — it should be clear
that this will also apply within this two-tier framework. Making up the “empowered” tier that produces, designs, and regulates AI will be those who are also set to
receive its benefits (e.g., cognitive enhancement, improved technological discoveries); additionally, they will be poised to craft the realities identified by AI as well
as shape how AI controls all accessible information. The “disempowered” tier, in
contrast, will consist of those who are bewildered by AI’s “opaque reasoning” and
have little agency — if any — to change or shape AI’s decisions and edicts. Over
time, they will become too cognitively diminished to reason themselves, and thus
will be incapable of understanding what is happening to them. They will be the
victims of AI’s “hasten[ing of] dynamics that erode human reason as we have come
to understand it,” whereas those who are capable of altering and “understanding”
the AI will not (p. 207).
The “AI Revolution”:
The Final Coup d’Etat?
By Whitney Webb
Whitney Webb did not kill herself. She is one courageous mofo.
If you listen to Rogan, you will hear worshipful language from him towards AI. It’s unnerving…
Rogan is an actor. He gets paid to play dumb. He’s the equivalent to the smartest guy on the roofing crew.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard him pull his oh gosh act on a guest who brings up the same stuff over an over.
You don’t make that kind of money without taking the ticket, period.
Understood… lots of people listen seriously to him however. I see his entire view of reality as based on the movie 2001 a space odyssey. We began as monkeys and will evolve into cyber-gods. Sad.
lots of people listen seriously to him however.
That is some really sad commentary. I don’t listen to the guy, but I did go see his show once. (my arm was twisted & I had to go) Anyway, NOT IMPRESSED. He did not come across as intelligent in any way.
He said he was going to say some very controversial stuff so we had to check our phones in before entering the show so that he could not be recorded. Ummm…all theatrics. He didn’t say anything that would get him into huge trouble, IMO.
I really don’t give much thought to any modern thinker (not that Rogan is a thinker! LOL!) . I have nothing in common with them when it comes to mindset. It’s really sad that so many do, including right here on these very pages.
“Modernity is largely the story of human beings attempting to find significance apart from God – in pride, pleasure, or any number of self-directed pursuits.”
“Man has always lost his way. He has been a tramp ever since Eden; but he always knew, or thought he knew, what he was looking for. But in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which he has been now so long subjected, he has begun for the first time to be chilled, not merely in his hopes, but in his desires. For the first time in history he begins really to doubt the object of his wanderings on the earth. He has always lost his way; but now he has lost his address.”
– Chesterton
Sorry, modern thinkers are just not good enough for me. Most are so lost. Definitely not people I’d give much thought to.
Been saying its a cleverly written cut’n paste program…. forevvaa
Not overly impressed yet.
Will you be impressed when it takes over? Or more acurately, when it is given the impression of control? I know some people that are so dumb, they want every new thing. They have to be the first to have the new thing/tech.
Takes over!?! Perhaps it’ll take over the gabillions that died.
I used to frequent some hacker sites in the past. I could/ still can, download the newest software that large corporations released and spent millions on ‘protection’ schemes. Often much of this software was hacked/patched within hours or a few days of release.
Nothing, is secure for very long. We have some pretty smart guys on our side too.
So yeah, I don’t break a sweat over AI, nothing a set of tools can’t fix or blue screen
Added, as for the retards needing the newest shiny gizmo…. they’ll be first in line for whatever the newest vax is as well. Easy to spot, so avoid them or keep the conceal draw at the ready.
So you don’t think the clot shot is killing people but you think AI is going to take over the world. Smh.
There is some nuance in my comment above maybe? No, I do not think AI will take over the world. I think it “could” be blamed for taking over the world and/or wreaking extreme havoc. And lo and behold, that havoc will somehow magically coincide with the goals of TPTB. It’s magic.
I am not a high IQ person, I just try to think like Dr. Evil.
From what I understand about AI, which granted is very little, AI is modeled like, or after, or similar to, our intelligence. Well. humans are capable of deceit, lying etc. So why should it be a surprise that AI does this. What keeps a person from lying, being deceitful etc. Usually some sort of moral code. Can a moral code be programmed into AI? Even if it can we know humans do not always follow their moral code so? Maybe AI is a trojan horse. AI will be blamed in some major manmade catastrophe occurs thereby absolving our leaders(overlords) of responsibility. I mean the current hype is that AI will destroy mankind, once again it’s in our face. All the smartest guys in the room are saying it. Musk, Gates, etc. Articles about it all the time. First it was clones were going to destroy us, then robots, now AI. Maybe, it will be clones and/or robots programmed with AI? I have no clue. Once again it seems to be a fear tactic. What is true when it comes to AI ??? I have no idea.
Grifters and thieves. They hire people with no moral code to devise ways of scamming and controlling you more. If someone builds it… it can be reverse engineered.
What you see is mostly hype, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to get there. They’re just looking to freak you out and/or steal your wealth. Usually both.
.
Lol! The author doesn’t need to add the sarc tag to tell me he is skeptical of AI. This was a very enjoyable article to read. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks they are running a scam on us.
Think Y2K and you will be close.
Very good. I have come to conclusion that citing tech solution to fix tech is exactly how our Govt is pushing us to financial and moral decay and collapse. You don’t fix a problem with more of the problem itself. I wrote this in an article published here 2 years back https://worldyturnings.wordpress.com/2023/02/08/why-are-they-killing-us-2/
Here are the key steps:
“First, and we can do this outside of politics and violence, is to go Cold Turkey with Big Tech. We have to become modern Luddites, like it or not. Big tech has to be stopped if AI is to be stopped. We have to return to a less anxious time of human existence where children don’t text each other across the room and learn to use a smartphone before they ride a bike or read a book. This will take at least a generation, but can be done. Join and contribute to organizations like Dr. Robert Epstein’s Stop Big Tech Now (defunct now, sadly).
Every existing and new “technology” must undergo a TIS – Technology Impact Statement. Like the 70s’ Environmental Impact Statements (or assessment), a TIS would focus on one thing – Jobs. If the technology (like AI or 5G implementation) reduces net employment it is immediately unlicensed.
Finally we have to legally bust-up the Corporate Mainstream media as an information monopoly (Exhibit A – Trusted News Initiative) ranging from source reporting to fact checking 3rd parties.”
Stopping Big Tech through lawsuits is a good step but won’t last long haul unless we change the way we live. And busting the MSM info monopoly and racket may be even more important.
Problem is you are trusting the system to fix the system. It ain’t gonna happen.
The only way off tech… is don’t use it, just like in the Good ol Days…
Tr4head ain’t wrong though.
Its arguing what should be done and what actually is done… two different animals.
When the chains binding the slave becomes accepted, comfortable, even relied upon, then the slave will resist being set free.
Most here know whats needing to be done…. but will not act on it.
. . . people that keep saying the US is a “democracy” when it’s actually a constitutionally limited republic.
Auntie is not certain where this was first posted but a powerful message to those who trust:
Artificial Intelligence is a technotronic Ouija board.
Future common phrases:
1. Doctor: “Don’t blame me, blame the AI.”
2. Auto mechanic “Blame the AI”
3. FAA “The AI did it.”
4. Politician “The AI says everything is fine”
5. Weatherman “The AI says it will rain”
6. Investors “My broker is AI Hutton, and he says….”
That’s probably what’s wrong with that Ford that won’t run because software update failure.
J Paul Getty agrees!
Military: Don’t blame me for annihilating those civilians and children, they were committing a thought crime, my code algos have no moral compass.
As I see it, the powers that be, have bet the house on AI and Robotics. Public sentiment is turning against the people in power in huge numbers throughout the world, but the greedy wealthy ruling class continue with their crimes against humanity without regard to the sentiment of the people. They would only do this if they truly believed their ability to control the masses with their technology. Human armies would never stand against their own peoples, but the AI and Robots have no morality, just like the people in power.
If I am right, the world is racing towards a hellish future, and I am truly saddened for the younger generations……
You are part way there. The goals, whether foolish or realistic, is the elites are seeking immortality of their own making.
Their goal is to upload their consciousness into a machine android. You and I both know this ain’t neva gonna happen but its their dream. and they are pouring billions into making it a thing, for them.
The other goal, in the AI direction, will be to have security bots.
Human security can turn on you and bots cannot go outside their programming. When a ‘threat’ is detected according to a bots programming it will react immediately with no pesky moralities getting in the way. Perfect for scum like gates, bezos, schwab, brin, etc etc
They want Robocops.
Me “ChatGpi? Who invented the spoon.”
ChatGpi “According to Malcum in the Middle, the inventor of the spoon was, ‘Spoony Spoonicus’ “