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AI as the Evolution of Mind and Society

k310 2y ago
Well, that's fun. The tell: > The questions asked above have received wholly contradictory answers. The United States is the land of the free—no, we are the home of systemic oppression. OKAY. Not quite yet ... > Rather than try to reconcile opposites, let’s imagine the consequences for two very different iterations of American society as they reap the whirlwind sowed by the human/AI mind: > The first is a place of grievance and despair, composed of individuals universally alienated from every source of meaning—family, community, religion, nation, history. The result can only be self-loathing and moral paralysis. The pathologies involved include anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, loneliness and random violence. Men are impotent and women are sterile. The future is apprehended as an unstoppable catastrophe. Everyday life is a desolation. The only pure soul in this picture is the victim, whose suffering redeems nothing. > The entry of the human/AI mind into such a society will fill an immense void. It will inspire messianic expectations that can only be fulfilled by a priestly caste of technologists, who will reorganize society on some meaningful principle. Instead of God or Mammon, despairing Americans will come to worship an immortal Mind. Everything will be structured in terms of purposeful activity. The alienation of labor will be turned inside out, as work and worker dissolve into a single algorithmic function. Human existence will be reenchanted but deprived of agency. In this vision of the future, we will be predicated to a transcendental AI Subject. > The second iteration posits a society of adventure. This assumes the continuation in time of a primordial theme of American life: the spirit of the frontier. The guiding impulse will be to “move fast and break things”—to push beyond geographical boundaries, the line of received knowledge, conventional arrangements, established systems. Endless pretexts will be found for competition, exploration, innovation, games of skill and chance, with heroic champions held as the models and envy of the rest. The abiding virtue of this society will also be its most egregious vice: a terrible restlessness—the inability to stand put and wait to see what happens. > The insertion of the human/AI mind will turbocharge this society’s naturally dynamic tendencies. Exploration will push beyond all previous limits, even to the stars, triggering a manic quest to leave ourselves behind. Competition will drive differentiation in every facet of existence, down to the genome level: We will breathe freely in the void of space. Innovation, child of competition, will give “creative destruction” a dangerously literal meaning. Epic art and poetry will coexist with robotic warfare and genocidal technologies. It will be the best and the worst of times, an age of heroes and holocausts—the final fulfillment of human potential, lived on the edge of extinction. I vote for neither of the above. Did AI write this?

k310 2y ago

Well, that's fun. The tell: > The questions asked above have received wholly contradictory answers. The United States is the land of the free—no, we are the home of systemic oppression. OKAY. Not quite yet ... > Rather than try to reconcile opposites, let’s imagine the consequences for two very different iterations of American society as they reap the whirlwind sowed by the human/AI mind: > The first is a place of grievance and despair, composed of individuals universally alienated from every source of meaning—family, community, religion, nation, history. The result can only be self-loathing and moral paralysis. The pathologies involved include anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, loneliness and random violence. Men are impotent and women are sterile. The future is apprehended as an unstoppable catastrophe. Everyday life is a desolation. The only pure soul in this picture is the victim, whose suffering redeems nothing. > The entry of the human/AI mind into such a society will fill an immense void. It will inspire messianic expectations that can only be fulfilled by a priestly caste of technologists, who will reorganize society on some meaningful principle. Instead of God or Mammon, despairing Americans will come to worship an immortal Mind. Everything will be structured in terms of purposeful activity. The alienation of labor will be turned inside out, as work and worker dissolve into a single algorithmic function. Human existence will be reenchanted but deprived of agency. In this vision of the future, we will be predicated to a transcendental AI Subject. > The second iteration posits a society of adventure. This assumes the continuation in time of a primordial theme of American life: the spirit of the frontier. The guiding impulse will be to “move fast and break things”—to push beyond geographical boundaries, the line of received knowledge, conventional arrangements, established systems. Endless pretexts will be found for competition, exploration, innovation, games of skill and chance, with heroic champions held as the models and envy of the rest. The abiding virtue of this society will also be its most egregious vice: a terrible restlessness—the inability to stand put and wait to see what happens. > The insertion of the human/AI mind will turbocharge this society’s naturally dynamic tendencies. Exploration will push beyond all previous limits, even to the stars, triggering a manic quest to leave ourselves behind. Competition will drive differentiation in every facet of existence, down to the genome level: We will breathe freely in the void of space. Innovation, child of competition, will give “creative destruction” a dangerously literal meaning. Epic art and poetry will coexist with robotic warfare and genocidal technologies. It will be the best and the worst of times, an age of heroes and holocausts—the final fulfillment of human potential, lived on the edge of extinction. I vote for neither of the above. Did AI write this?