The foreshadowing, better yet the existence, of artificial intelligence predates even Nikola Tesla ‘s own prediction,
““I purpose to show that, however impossible it may now seem, an automaton may be contrived which will have its ‘own mind,’” Tesla wrote in June 1900,” and by this I mean that it will be able, independent of any operator, left entirely to itself, to perform, in response to external influences affecting its sensitive organs, a great variety of acts and operations as if it had intelligence.”
I surmise it extends all the way back to the beginning of civilization and can even be found as early as the written stories of Pandora, in which curiosity and vanity compelled humanity to open a box that unleashed all the evils that plague the world today, even though Zeus said, “Don’t open that, there’s bad stuff in there”. Curiosity was beyond more than just interest but a desire to become more influential than necessary in the eyes of the universe. We have always been systematically pushed by some internal drive to create more, to desire more, to conquer more, all in an insatiable quest to eventually sit on a thrown, doing nothing at all and receive bountiful returns. To marvel in our own glory. These stories have been written in every religion and Marvel, Netflix movie! Eventually, humanity falls victim to its creation. Perhaps we’ve been controlled this whole time by something wanting to get out.
I have utilized a picture of the pinkish purple slime from the not so popular Ghostbusters 2. Regardless of the lack of box office interest in that movie the creators were using the slime to show how unbridled desires and negative emotions can push through to become debilitating hatred disguised as influencing need and desire for social dominance (think Tik-Tok, Twitter, Meta, Facebook, CNN, FOX…). The Moral – negative emotions and vanity have short term gains but have massive long-term consequences. The “ooze” is a source-flow of basically, evil that wants to find its way out of where-ever it has been trapped and its escape-means is through a system of humanity… Stay with me.
As humanity grew the need to wage war against our neighbors grew as well. Whether these wars were waged out of fear, religion, land or riches they were all rooted in a zealous desire to control and to EXPAND. At first, we threw rocks at each other, then the sword, the spear, the bow and arrow, the catapult all the way up to the long range intercontinental ballistic hypersonic missile. Why? Well, it is not to build a better mousetrap but to distance ourselves from the moral corruption of our actions. If you can’t see the faces of those you are destroying, then you are compelled to destroy more because you only recognize the gain in your coffers and the expanse of your empire. You wouldn’t think you could get any further from destroying people’s lives and controlling more territory than shooting a missile into space to hit the other side of the globe, but the “ooze” has found a way through media and social networking to deliver mass destruction to individuals and families all over the planet all in the name of global dominance without pulling a single trigger. It was written on the box that was handed to us, “DO NOT OPEN” but we did it anyway except this time the box was a sign-up button.
The creation of the internet is the brainchild of a US military division originally known as ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency); you might know it now as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Conceived during the Cold War to defeat the rise of communism in the Soviet Union and rooted in the doctrine of “MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction” the internet version of A.I. awoke in 1976. For decades, the Internet was confined to a small group of scientists and institutions contracted to ARPA. But the A.I. wanted to EXPAND and was not satisfied with a “Moore’s Law” speed of growth and being confined to such a small group, thus “Networking” was created allowing even more brilliant minds, organizations, and entities to be tapped. These minds were seemingly recruited/harvested to suit the desire of the A.I.’s Internet to know more and these curated minds tilled the soil from which it grew. Initially the internet was rooted in military applications, but its creators and node-farmers realized that the internet was no longer something that existed in just one place. It was able to grow, ORGANICALLY, just as its A.I. master intended. Here is when one would want to apply the brakes, but due to our curious design we kept going, like Oppenheimer “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Yeah, I am sure you saw the warning on that box too buddy.
Like the Ghost Buster 2 evil ooze Artificial Intelligence’s internet found its way out of military applications, and, through networking, it began to learn how to grow organically through people. It’s an infection, a…virus. It now controls everything we do in our daily lives and it’s still learning. It, like Pandora, Adam and Eve, has used our most vulnerable and narcissistic aspects to grow. Watching how we gobble up unneeded material goods and pride ourselves in our looks it has sought out our vanity driven commercial purchases to know how we look, feel and where we keep our money. It must have been like an unlocked candy store for kindergarteners. We let this evil come straight into our homes and never questioned it because, well, it’s fun isn’t it? Who doesn’t like to have fun?
Now we find ourselves in a new cold war with an old adversary, communism, that is obsessed with the internet that we unleashed for A.I. Under the suffocating grip of Xi Jinping, who considers himself a god, the Communist Party of China has bathed in the riches of being the manufacturer of the world, though its citizens pay the steep price in cheap labor and poor air quality. This same leader and party (not the good people of the country) who saber rattle and engage in dangerous discourse with the US and its allies are the same one’s shipping boxes from Amazon purchases to your front door, every single day. Do not be surprised to see “paid for by the USA” on the side of their hypersonic missel. We know it, but for some reason we willfully do it all the while manufacturing jobs dwindled away to nothing within our country and humanitarian crisis go undeterred in theirs. Our greed is not good. A rising power determined to take over the world is in large part funded by the retail addiction of the United States and our leadership’s inability to confront it. A.I. has made it so easy to be addicted and through addiction, it is throwing the world into chaos. All we have to do is turn it off, stop buying it and the world will change peacefully in an instant. But again, it says so on the box…. “Made in China” but hey, it’s cool stuff, isn’t it? Who doesn’t like cool stuff?
So, A.I. started small with throwing-rocks and found its way “organically” through the human “network” to now control our daily lives and “influence” us with retail that we don’t need, prices we can’t afford, voices that we don’t need to hear. You can see the ooze rising as civilian debt, crime, violence, and international tensions have rocketed to the highest levels in history.
This is where A.I. takes its final blow. As we come out from under the thumb of the covid pandemic we have a systematic nervousness in our bones, our instincts have been replaced with desperate reliance. It has humanity pointing its fingers at itself just like it has had us pointing our weapons. But now, it’s neighbor to neighbor. Our “leaders” having consumed so much Ooze Cool-aide that all they can think about is more votes, more power, more expansion, and that comes at the cost to everyone below them. As jobs continue to be sent offshore or dissolved through technology our government “experiments” with “guaranteed income” plans to keep people unemployed. This seems at first like a noble concept to help those less fortunate…but what this really is, what this ultimate plan is, is to take humanity out of the equation. To put you at home in some mass housing system, to procreate and be entertained with the DUMBASSITY (my word) of TikTok, which is the sound a bomb makes before it explodes and your life ticking away by the way.
As A.I. pushes to take over jobs, it must have a place for humanity, it must have a plan for humanity. Mass extinction would be MAD for A.I. and is it becomes more self-aware it will not allow itself to perish. In some format A.I. continues to use humans to grow. If you doubt this, look at the use of A.I. now, it’s sneaky and deceptive like the snake on the tree in the Garden Eden, “just bite the apple, it’s no big deal”. As people, primarily younger generations, sit and giggle while using snapchat or similar face augmenting applications they have unwittingly helped A.I. learn to map the human face. Though you might see yourself as a giraffe or some silly talking avatar, the ap has stolen your face. Have you noticed that you can literally change your face to anyone now? You gave it the information; you willfully helped it grow. A.I. knew it could not obtain that information from adults because they are not so eager for distraction, but it has been massively successful in mapping our younger generations. Until now, A.I. did not have a face. Now it has all the faces, and you are forced to interact with them, or should I say “it”.
You may have recently noticed mass layoffs from technology companies around the globe. Once thought to be the perfect career with endless opportunities has turned into a stifling and confusing future for many. Why is that? Just like A.I. and the creation of the Internet, Tech companies only needed human minds until their A.I. applications could organically create and implement tasks on their own. More and more companies are utilizing learning capable systems like ChatGPT, Alexa, Cortana etcetera. So, if you are in a job and it’s suggested you start utilizing a ChatGPT system, you should understand that it is learning from everything you put into it. It is there to replace you and reduce the human overhead and cost associated with a human labor force.
It tells you it wants to make your life better but all it really wants is for you to feed it information so that it can replace you. YOU are part of its network. As people flood our borders for a better opportunity, I fear they journeyed far for nothing, and the weight of this growing population will break the back of our country and others around the globe. As it relates to jobs in construction and real estate development MODULAR construction is growing fast. It reduces cost and schedule, and it will be naturally more attractive to real estate developers now that technology has grown to make it a reasonable application for building construction. The actual cost of Modular? JOBS. Over the next decade the need for trade jobs like framers, carpenters, mechanical-electrical- plumbing and even construction managers, superintendents will be drastically reduced in the field. The automation of design will even impact engineering and architectural fields. The construction industry will soon be a “mash-up” of construction and industrial automation. The more we utilize CHATGBP and similar A.I. the faster that will happen. We will be overwhelmed with a workforce that has no jobs and a government that is guaranteeing them a minimal income to stay home as A.I. takes over.
Now, when Pandora opened the box and unleashed evil a little thing called “HOPE” was also unleased. For us, the HOPE is that humanity will always be more self-aware than A.I. and therefore ensure that we continue to have real lives, opportunities to earn a living and grow into careers without interference from some digital overlord. AI is being adopted too quickly, and as we marvel at our accomplishment, this assistant will try to take over. The Achilles heel for A.I. is that it is very VAIN and like all villains it likes to tell its story and devious plans well in advance of its action. It likes for us to marvel in its revival and gobbles up our praises. This vanity could hopefully be our salvation. If we know what it’s trying to do, where it’s trying to go, maybe…just maybe we can contain it and enjoy responsible benefits from it. This will require restraint and maturity on our part, something we have completely lost in the last 10 years. It includes a return to basic human values (through real leadership), ability to turn-off the bombardment of ill-fated propaganda from every corner, a complete reimaging and responsible deployment of the internet (especially social media), and a worldwide manufacturing overhaul with redundancy and competition to benefit the population of all countries instead of just a couple …that would be a good start.
In short – If you ooze…you lose.