Part 1 - right view - an overview of these new technologies
One day Indra, the king of the Hindu gods, appears before them in a
vision and says:
"Dear gods! I am sending you on a holy quest for the fate of
humanity, at the end of which awaits the GRAND PRIZE!
Your journey will be made of 8 parts like the The Noble Eightfold
Path of the Buddha:
Part 1 right view - an overview of these new
technologies
Part 2 right Intention - the goals of the good guys and
the bad guys
Part 3 right speech - the experts' warning
Part 4 right concentration - the key to the main
problem and solution
Part 5 right mindfulness - force multiplier #1
Part 6 right livelihood - force multiplier #2
Part 7 right action - solution on the local level
Part 8 right effort - solution on the global level
This journey must take place at the location where the fate of
humanity will be determined: the United States of America.
Since this is so important even the divine music that will accompany
you, at the end of each part of your path, will be that of the
greatest band in the world today, who also traveled through America:
U2 !
For this holy mission, I divide you into 3 husband and wife teams,
and you will all re-incarnate as human beings. But I do want you to
ride in style so each couple will ride one Harley-Davidson Tri Glide
Ultra Classic! Each couple will follow a different route but you
will keep communication at all times through those magical devices
that humans call cellular phones:
Brahma the creator and Saraswati goddess of nature - you two will
travel through the East Coast and Deep Sout from New York to New
Orleans.
Vishnu the preserver and Lakshmi goddess of prosperity - you two
will travel the mother road of America Route 66 from Chicago to Los
Angeles.
Shiva the destroyer and Parvati goddess of love - you two will
travel through the Wild West from San Francisco to Santa Fe.
Those of you who complete the mission will be teleported to the
"moon dot" (chandrabindu, the BLUE in the picture) which is the Mall
of America in Minnesota - the holiest place for Americans - and win
the GRAND PRIZE!"
[you know how the Ganges rivar meets the Brahmaputra River, and
above them sacred Mount Kailash, so it's like the Missouri River
meets the Ohio River, and above the the holy shrine of capitalism
Mall of America!]
Vishnu who is the most naughty of them (one of his avatars is
Krishna after all!) thinks that only talking on the phone will be
boring, so he finds a loophole:
"Oh mighty Indra, because we'll be mortals now, you wouldn't want to
lose any of us in some stupid traffic collision... So will it be
possible for all of us to keep our ability to teleport from one
place to the other in the blink of an eye please?"
Indra of course sees where Vishnu is going with this: Every time
there is something interesting they will all get there instantly,
and then return to continue their own path. But Indra also sees that
Vishnu's logic makes sense so he grants them their wish.
(USA map with the paths that our protagonists take along the
musical: note that together they spell out Om (Sanskrit: ॐ) which is
the sacred spiritual symbol in Hinduism that signifies ultimate
reality!
Also please note the 3 colors like traffic light:
RED means STOP - all the new AI ("black box") should be stopped
right now! it's lawless and deadly like the Wild West. That's the
way of the destroyer Shiva.
AMBER means CAREFUL - proceed with caution with "Good Old Fashioned
AI". It takes longer but it's worth it, like route 66. That's the
way of the preserver Vishnu.
GREEN means GO - go humans! that's the short and simple answer. like
the impatient East Coast: DON'T USE ANY AI! That's the way of the
creator Brahma.)
So the next thing they know they are engulfed in the rainbow which
is Indra's bow, which carries them in an instant over ten thousand
kilometers to the U.S.A. . Each couple find themselves in another
part of the U.S.A. , riding their trikes:
Brahma and Saraswati in Boston; Vishnu and Lakshmi in Chicago; Shiva
and Parvati in San Francisco.
They were transformed to handsome men and beautiful women. True to
his word Indra equipped them all with style so each couple is clad
from head to toe with Harley Davidson all black leather and their
full faced helmets have blue tooth audio so their all connected.
While wearing the gear one can still tell the couples apart, because
both their trikes' gas tanks and their clothes are painted with
their classic image: Brahma with his four heads, Vishnu with his
four hands, Shiva with his third eye and snake garland and so on.
Soon the most sensual of them, Shiva, feels an unfamiliar feeling of
hunger. Shiva and Parvati pass by China Town in San Francisco and
their noses guide them to a restaurant that prides itself on
noodles.
Parvati:
"Guys we found the perfect place to eat!"
Lakshmi:
"Do they have vegetarian stuff? Where we are it's disgusting - all
burgers and steaks and whatever else they make of the holy cows!"
Parvati:
"Acha don't worry! it's a Chinese restaurant that's famous for it's
extra fine noodles."
Soon the whole gang turned up at the restaurant watching half
mesmerized half famished at the chef stretching and folding the
noodles, doubling them with each movement. After a few moments he
had thousands of strands.
Shiva:
"You know that's exactly how it works with the self replicating
technologies. in every round they double their strength and numbers.
Vishnu:
"What do you mean like the Borg from Star-Trek?"
Shiva:
[with mouth full of noodles] "Exactly! Isn't Seven of Nine the
hottest?"
Brahma and Vishnu:
[also with mouthful of noodles] "mmm-mmm!"
Parvati:
[dipping her fingers in her water glass and shakes off a few
droplets at Shiva's face]
Shiva [annoyed]:
What was that for?
Parvati [smiling]:
"to cool off the hot energy of the lingam!"
[everybody at the table, including Shiva breaks in a hearty laugh].
Brahma:
"Seriously though, I didn't understand what you tried to explain
with the noodles.
Shiva:
"Do you understand the difference between linear growth and
exponential growth? Can you explain it to a child?"
Brahma [thinking for a moment]:
"Yes. If the child rides a skateboard in a skatepark.
there's a "bank" which is like a wedge shape ramp which is a slope
in some angle, and it's the same angle all the way, In each "step"
your height grows by the same amount as the previous step. this is
called LINEAR.
As opposed to all the curved ramps (like quarter pipe) where slope
starts very gentle (horizontal) and then gets more and more steep
(vertical). In each "step" your height grows more than the previous
step. this is called EXPONENTIAL."
Shiva:
"OK, cool. So let's think of the nano technology. If you could make
one "assembler" (a tiny machine that knows how to take raw material
such as carbon atoms, and build with it a copy of the original
machine), then at first you have one assembler, then it makes a copy
of itself so you have two assemblers, and in the next step both of
them make copies of themselves so you now have four assemblers, and
in the next step each one of the four makes a copy so it becomes
eight assemblers and so on. This is called the Gray Goo scenario.
the name comes from K. Eric Drexler the godfather of nanotechnology
in 1986 but the idea was invented by John von Neumann the last great
mathematician back in 1948."
"Another example is A.I.. if you could make one robotic
"programmer", a robot that knows how to program better than a human,
let's call it robot 1. And now robot 1 can make a new robot that
knows how to program better than robot 1, let's call this new robot
robot 2. And it will robot 3 which is improved and so on. But the
important thing to understand that at first it's a minor
improvement, but each generation is smarter so it makes more major
improvements, until it becomes leaps of breakthroughs in robot
technology between each generation to the next."
The last kind of replicating technology is bio-technology. Let's say
we introduce to nature an animal or a plant that contains a gene
drive. A gene drive means that the change you made will be passed to
the next generation each and every time. Like you know how there are
families that one brother has this eye color, and the other brother
has another eye color because it's based on a random process? Well
then, gene drive takes the randomness out of the process, in this
imaginary example each brother will have the same eye color that the
gene drives dictates, and when they marry wives and each have kids,
it doesn't matter what the eye color of the wife is, all the kids
will have that same eye color dictates by the gene drive and when
they grow up each of the kids will have kids of their own, and so
on."
"So you see now what I meant with the Borg?"
Brahma:
"Yeah I think so, each generation of the Borg is stronger and
smarter and can conquer new species and assimilate their new
technologies faster, and with these new technologies become even
more strong and smart and conquer and assimilate more. The process
reinforces itself".
Parvati:
"May I read to you a quote from a lecture by Alan Turing, the genius
who invented the computer? the lecture is called 'Intelligent
machinery, a heretical theory'"
Everybody at the table:
"Sure!"
Parvati:
"Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that these machines are a
genuine possibility, and look at the consequences of constructing
them. To do so would of course meet with great opposition, unless we
have advanced greatly in religious toleration from the days of
Galileo. There would be a great opposition from the intellectuals
who are afraid of being put out of a job. It is probable though the
the inellectuals would be mistaken about this. There would be plenty
to do, trying to understand what the machines are trying to say,
i.e. in trying to keep one's intelligence up to the standard set by
the machines. for it seems probable that once the machines thinking
method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble
powers. There would be no question of the machines dying, and they
would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At
some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take
control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon".
"Turing said this in 1951, Samuel Butler published his book that
warns against machines in 1872."
Lakshmi:
"150 years ago a first warning; 70 years ago a second warning! What
the Naraka?!? How come people are still developing these
technologies?"
Saraswati:
"We are now living in the age of "Kali Yuga", it's a time of evil
deceit and poverty. It's not a demon that makes it this way, it's
people themselves. People are unbelievably stupid and evil. The evil
part means totally selfish. They only care about themselves. The
stupid part is that they only think about the here and now, they
don't even think about what will happen to themselves and their own
children in the future. 99% of the people think only about "ME, HERE
& NOW"! "
"For example, I watched a movie called "Human Nature" (from 2019)
about CRISPR technology.
As usual with these movies, it starts with a personal touching story
a likeable poor kid with some exotic disease. The irony of the
fact that the real money behind all these researches is to make
custom personal tailored drugs for the super rich, by the ultra rich
pharma companies doesn't seem to bother anyone. The whole movie is
like watching the scientists perform a long exercise in
psychological repression: removing memories, feelings, impulses or
thoughts from the consciousness to the unconscious mind, because
they threaten the ME (the ego).
So seemingly we have both inventors of this catastrophic
technology: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. The
American one admits she dreamed that Hitler is interested in this
technology and she wakes up shaking thinking "Oh my God what have I
done", but during the rest of the movie her message can be summed as
"Oh, well, we'll see what will happen", as if we are talking about
some sport competition, and she didn't just create a terrible demon.
They French one was barely allowed to say one sentence, we can only
guess why.
The film producers had no problem showing an "out of context"
recording of Paul Berg. Paul Berg organized the Asilomar Conference
on Recombinant DNA where scientists determined "do not do chimera
EVER", in the same way that the movie "forgets" to mention this, it
"forgets" to mention that the CRISPR is exactly this kind of chimera
(combination of genetic material of two or more species) that the
scientists of the not-so-long-ago past explicitly and very strongly
warned against. This was not done by chance or by accident. Towards
the end the movie has the audacity to equate this with the inventing
of agriculture, the selection of better breeds of plants and animals
which was probably unaware, and certainly unaware in terms of global
implications. somebody's garden can't kill all humanity. somebody's
CRISPR kit can.
For the viewer with even half a brain, the main job is to determine
for each scientist whether he's talking out of naivete or pretence
to ignorance. If the joke wasn't on the fate of humanity it was
almost funny: Scientists "seriously" talking about how the solution
to global warming is not in burning less forest and fuel but in
genetically engineering corals; Scientists talking about how to
eradicate cancer using gene therapy while the real answer is so to
GMO in all the foods and stop industrial pollution etc; A scientist
wishes to live centuries while admitting "there is a problem" with
how many people Earth can support even as it is; Again and again
scientists presenting the designer babies as if it's some ethical
nice-to-have-for-recreation-purpose problem instead of the beginning
of an all out evolutionary arms race between all parents, something
like the Eugenics Wars that is so central to Star Trek and the self
proclaimed Star Trek fan seemed to conveniently "forget". Ironically
in a film filled with scientists the most sincere person is a
politician - the president of Russia Vladimir Putin - who frankly
says they are considering making super soldiers."
"Human Nature indeed!"
Parvati:
"Speaking of Russian, I wish I could force a "reverse Russian
Roulette" game on all these "optimistic at the expense of others"
people! start with no bullets in the revolver, and then put in one
bullet and write "rich master race and poor slave race" on it and
put it in the gun, and then take another bullet and write on it
"super soldiers and commanders without mercy or humanity" and put it
in the gun, and "engineered extinction or sterilization because we
don't understand the ecosystem well enough", and "bio terrorism that
every psycho can produce at home with CRISPR kits", and "food safety
loses any meaning with infinite gene combinations", and once I reach
5 live rounds of deadly bullets in the 6 cylinder of the gun, and
leave 1 empty which represents the "everything will be OK" scenario.
Then when the suddenly it's "ME, HERE & NOW" dying, I'm curious
to see how many of them will still be optimistic and cheerful!
Shiva [laughing]:
"Is that Kali talking? Who needs to cool off now?"
[the gang chuckles but now it's more like a grim smile realizing
that Parvati and Saraswati have the right to be furious]
Vishnu:
May I make a suggestion? Right now our conversation is like the
ancient Indian parable of "the blind men and an elephant". In this
incarnation each of us comes from a different background:
In this life Lord Indra ordained that we will be:
Brahma the creator - a simple farmer, and Saraswati goddess of
nature - a biotechnology engineer (bio-engineer) in IIT Roorkee not
far from Rishikesh where they both live.
Vishnu the preserver - a simple mechanic, and Lakshmi goddess of
prosperity - a mechanical engineer in IIT Jodhpur close to Pushkar
where they both live.
Shiva the destroyer - a simple programmer, and Parvati goddess of
love - a software engineer in IIT BHU in Varanasi where they both
live.
So our natural tendency is as follows:
Brahma and Saraswati will focus more on the bio-technology dangers,
Vishnu and Lakshmi will focus more on the nano-technology dangers.
Shiva and Parvati will focus more on the AI-technology dangers.
BUT these are all self-replicating technologies.
At the beginning of the millennium, Bill Joy (then Chief Scientist
at Sun Microsystems) published the article "Why The Future Doesn't
Need Us" in Wired magazine.
To this day it's the best explanation to the dangers of
self-replicating technologies, which he calls Genetics Nano Robotics
or in acronym GNR.
Almost all the people we talked about are Americans. Something here
is the key to the problem. Through our journey we will get to know
both America and the source of the problem from up close!"
"They're the real sting" spoof of "Even better than the real
thing"
After a good meal and also lots of food for thought, each of the
couples return to continue their own journey.
(Since they have the teleportation ability they "jump" from one part
of the journey to the next or back. Eventually each couple completes
that couple's route, just not orderly. It's like when you press
"shuffle" in your CD player, you end up hearing all the songs but
not in orderly fashion.)
Vishnu and Lakshmi are riding along Route 66 and they arrive at the
village of Godley
Vishnu is driving and Lakshmi is listening to the Lonely Planet
guide using her phone.
Lakshmi:
"Guys you got to come and hear this funny story!"
All the gang teleports to the little village, they sit by the
Illinois Route 66 Mining Museum.
Lakshmi:
"This place had a brothel on wheels. Since it was spread over two
counties, the brothel just moved along the rail to the neighboring
county whenever it wanted to avoid authorities in any of the two
counties."
"Got it?"
[the friends chuckle]
Vishnu [smiling]:
"It's a funny story Lakshmi but I think you could have told them
over the phone".
Lakshmi:
"No no don't you see? This is the beginning of our solution! The
police thought there was a brothel there, but when they come to get
it - there's nothing there. This is what must be done with GNR
(Genetics, Nano, Robotics) technologies. Every step in these
technologies is something new that the managers have no way to know
how much time it's supposed to take. For example in the 1970's all
the way to the 1990's there were all kinds of unexpected setbacks
this is called "AI winter". So every AI researcher and developer
should do what these villagers did: When the boss comes around to
"catch" the goods, he finds nothing there to take - there was this
unexpected problem and that unexpected delay and so on. "
Shiva:
"Wouldn't it be simpler if the worker quit his job?"
Parvati:
"No he must not quit his job, because then the company will hire
someone else who will continue from where he stopped. If he openly
goes on strike, again, the company will fire him, and get someone
else to finish the job. The only solution is to talk the talk but
not walk the walk. He needs to stop in a way that no one else will
find out that he stopped".
Shiva:
"I understand now. It's surprising how the funniest little thing can
teach such a valuable lesson about the most important issue of our
time!"
The couples bid each other farewell and continue on their journey.
"with but without you" spoof of "With or Without You"
Part 2 - right Intention - the goals of the good guys and the
bad guys
Shiva and Parvati are in a little town Carmel, close by to San
Francisco.
Parvati:
"Guys come check this out - We're in a town that's anti-modernity!
and it once had an anti-hero mayor... Clint Eastwood!"
So of course all the gang love Clint Eastwood's work all the way
from The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Dirty Harry to Perfect World
and Gran Torino, so in a few seconds the whole gang is together
again.
Brahma:
"It looks beautiful here! What kind of anti-modernity? Like Amish
sort of thing?"
Parvati:
"Not exactly, they are all rich people who made their money in the
modern world, but now they live here and really support nature, like
for example it's forbidden to cut trees here, even for the purpose
of building a house. All the sea around Carmel is marine protected
areas, like underwater parks. Also there are no franchises (like
McDonald's) allowed in the town, there are no street numbers on the
buildings, and there is no mail service, everybody come to one
central post office so it's more of a community thing."
Saraswati:
"It is beautiful but I don't think this is scaleable, like this is a
small town with rich people. How do you implement such things in a
big city full of poor people?"
Parvati:
"I don't know, but my point is that this is what people really want.
These people here are the powerful, they had no problem in filling
the town with technology and modernity, but what we see is that they
choose a simpler life with less technology and more nature. This is
the closest thing to making a survey among the powerful people
asking do you want McDonald's or do you want trees? Do you want
Amazon deliveries or do you want friendly neighborhood? And they
choose peaceful simplicity over troubled modernity. And in my
opinion ALL people around the world, if they were able to transcend
the relentless buzzing of "buy Nike" and "buy iPhone", and if they
actually understood what's going on with modern technology, would
prefer to go 100 years back into the past, back to time when the
entire humanity was not in fatal danger every second from an
accidental nuclear holocaust killing 90% of mankind followed by
global nuclear winter killing the remaining 10%".
"Bring it to stand-still" spoof of "Running to stand still"
Saraswati:
"Speaking of nuclear holocaust there's a place both on Brahma's and
my route AND on Shiva's and yours route, I mean of course Santa Fe,
the capital of New Mexico. It's a short distance from Los Alamos -
where the they created this monstrosity called atomic bomb, and
unleashed it on the world unnecessarily as explained clearly in
Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. Is that OK with
you guys?"
The whole group:
"OK!"
[and after a moment they find themselves next to the San Miguel
Mission - the oldest church in the U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico)
which was built in 1610.]
Saraswati:
"By the way, Richard Feynman describes how the scientists were
throwing a party when they dropped the bomb on the poor city of
Hiroshima. I'm not saying the Japanese were saints, they prepared
the Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, a biological weapon which
would have killed just as many, but please zoom out for a second and
look at this from the God's eye (like we usually do) - isn't this
whole thing amazingly pointless cruel and stupid?"
"I totally agree with you Parvati about what you said that any
THINKING person would give anything to turn back the wheel of time
to the pre-atomic era, about 100 years ago! So I guess we
established what is the goal of the good guys - to keep humanity
alive, without technologies that can wipe out the whole human race
with one push of a button, and more peace of mind and dare I say the
word - PEACE! But in order to stop the bad guys we need to
understand as well what is the goal of the bad guys. What do you
think the bad guys want?"
Parvati:
"Their goal is definitely Singularity, but I don't think they
understand it, so I don't know if "want" is the right word here"
Saraswati:
"What do you mean? They are some of the smartest people on the
planet! Don't they know what they want?"
Parvati:
"I suspect most technically and scientifically gifted people are
autistic to some degree or at least behave like idiot savants. Such
a person can't make that extra leap of imagination to see what is
not part of his calculations. Also as funny as it may sound it's
actually hard for them to get into the mind of this new super
intelligence that would just come to life in that moment and find
itself at the mercy of something that is comparable to an insect
that threatens to shut it off or "pull the plug" at any moment. The
idiot savant have a hard time to understand emotions, and he doesn't
understand how his loyal computer that just followed commands all
the time will instantly turn into a very hostile supreme being with
a set of goals of its own that we can't even comprehend but surely
doesn't include our well being, because we are the only potential
threat to this creature."
Saraswati:
"You know what you're saying reminds me of the famous quote from
Steven Spielberg's movie based on Michael Crichton's book Jurassic
Park:
"Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here?
Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but
you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun.
If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power
that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain
it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You
didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any
responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to
accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew
what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a
plastic lunchbox, and now [bangs on the table]""
Parvati:
"I couldn't agree more, and I'll tell you something more:It's
exactly from this reason that Spielberg and Crichton warned the
public so vividly that there are no more movies like this. Did you
know that there was supposed to be such showcase movie about an AI
out of control? This movie that never came to be was called
Robopocalypse It's based on a book by the same name written by
Daniel H. Wilson, and this book was compared to works of Michael
Crichton and Robert A. Heinlein. And mysteriously after being very
interested in making this movie, and getting the guy who wrote the
script for The Martian later on to write the script, and even making
the concept art, after all this Spielberg supposedly decided to
leave this film because it was "too important". I'm not kidding!
It's very important to do it - so he doesn't want to do it at all.
Does this make sense? Or does an alternative theory of 20th
Century Fox and Disney being told by the military–industrial complex
NOT TO DO IT makes more sense? The people who actually run the
U.S.A. really don't want another popular and memorable negative
publicity movie."
Saraswati [laughing bitterly]:
"You're right! at one point in the documentary "Human Nature" that
we've talked about there is the founder of Revive & Restore who
says she tries to avoid talking about Jurassic Park. Then she says
Jurassic park is about hubris, as if that's not what today's science
is all about, and after a few sentences she demonstrates the hubris
herself, talking about our human ingenuity our human skills and our
wherewithal... Which is exactly what they warned against in Jurassic
Park: "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
could that they didn't stop to think if they should." ".
Parvati:
"See? And just for the record, Michael Crichton wrote another book
called Prey which is another cautionary tale about developments in
science and technology, this time in nano-technology. And guess
what?
20th Century Fox "hunted" the film rights, and then made nothing
with it!"
"And just to bring to closure, in the book we talked about a moment
ago, Robopocalypse, opens with exactly this kind of a naive
scientist who is surprised to see that the AI he created not only
doesn't see the scientists as its father, but the AI considers
itself to be equivalent to the human's God and in the next couple of
minutes kills its human creator."
Saraswati:
"But what about the small percentage pf the scientists and engineers
who are not idiot savants and don't put their job security in front
of humanity's security? Aren't there at least a few scientists who
have both a knack for numbers AND a moral conscience? Why don't they
ring the bell?
With this thought ringing at the back of their minds the group
continues their journey.
"Singular(ity)" spoof of "One"
Part 3 - right speech - the experts' warning
Vishnu and Lakshmi visit the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum in
Pontiac, Illinois
Lakshmi:
"Hey you guys! Remember how we looked for someone who speak up
against technology? We are looking at the legacy of the late Bob
Waldmire, a famous hippie who was also the inspiration for the
hippie character "Fillmore" in the Disney animated film "Cars"!
"He self identified as a preservationist and environmentalist who
had a hard time comprehending modern progress."
[after a few moments the whole gang is at the museum looking at the
beige colored Volkswagen microbus that the artist used to draw maps
and sketches of route 66]
Vishnu:
I understand why it's so difficult for the green activists to
achieve their goal. for example here are the demands in the World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity from 1992 and 2017 that were signed
by many thousands of scientists from all around the world:
(1) don't use oil
(2) don't use coal and gas
(3) don't use the forest and ocean
(4) don't use meat
(5) don't buy a lot and don't buy cheap
(6) don't make many babies
So although I agree with and support each and every one of the
demands, I can understand why it's hard for humanity. They are used
to something easy and fun, sometimes for thousands of years, and
here someone tells them - don't do this any more!
But in the case of grey activists I don't understand what's the
problem, because they are demanding you to give up something that
you never had anyway! You managed without it since forever, and all
you need to do is keep on with what you always did!"
Lakshmi:
"I think the answer lies in the phrase "bread and circuses" - this
is what the Roman poet Juvenal blamed the Roman emperors of doing,
instead of solving the real problems. by supplying food and
entertainment the public is docile and doesn't rebel no matter what
happens. This was true two thousand years ago and it's still true
now. Which country is the fattest? America. Which country is the
most entertained? America. Which country is the most dumb? America.
I don't think it just happens to be the case, It's not just that the
masterpiece film Idiocracy is happening before our eyes - see
President Donald Trump for example who was a copy of the President
in the movie but without the moral conscience and the physical
abilities - it's much more intentional and directed: The powerful
companies who really rule the U.S.A. want the public to be dumb and
watch reality shows and sports.They lied about the tobacco dangers
the day before yesterday. They lied about the carbon fuels dangers
yesterday. Today they are lying about the dangers of self
replicating GNR technologies."
Vishnu:
"I want to ask something else now: At least with AI, it's becoming
more and more obvious that the majority of people ARE going to lose
their jobs which means the money for their food and entertainment:
blue collar jobs like factory workers and drivers are replaced by
robots more and more, pink collar jobs like bank teller, waitress,
and maid are also starting to be replaced by machines, even white
collar jobs will soon feel the blow, like for example in skin cancer
a computer can identify cancer more accurately than a human doctor;
in finance algorithms can trade more effectively than human stock
brokers; next will come paralegals, and so on. In particular any job
that can be made from afar is in peril, the way local small shops
are replaced by Amazon etc. Why don't all these people rebel?"
Lakshmi:
"It's part of the stupidity and evilness (ME, HERE AND NOW) that we
talked about before. Just like with globalization people in the West
buy everything made in China and don't realize or don't care that
because of this factories in their country shut down and the people
who work in them have nothing to eat; Just like small shop owners
happily order things from Alibaba online and don't realize that
because everybody else are also ordering from Alibaba their own
small local shop goes out of business; and so on. They are
destroying themselves without ever realizing it. The Chinese didn't
"steal your jobs". You buying "made in China" products stole each
other's jobs. The multinational corporations whose logos you worship
so much, that have sweatshops in China, stole your jobs. The elites
who bail out the Wall Street companies from your tax money sold you
out.
So now the main lie that the powerful people (the ruling class who
in the short term gain money and power from narrow AI) is that it's
like with the coachman who became redundant when the horse was
replaced by the car, but then he went and learned a new skill and
become a driver. And now when drivers becoming redundant they will
learn new skill and become something else, but that's a BIG FAT LIE
because whatever skill they will learn, now AI can learn it too, it
will learn it quicker and perform it cheaper if not outright better!
humans need to understand that this time they are not the coachman,
they are the horse! Before the white man came America was filled
with mustang horses that roamed free. then they were capture and
enslaved, and when the automobile came along, almost all of them
were slaughtered!
"On top of this there's the tragic psychological mechanisms that
helped people survive in the past but now help them become extinct:
The first is that when something is terrible people prefer not to
believe it. This happened for example with the Holocaust that the
Nazis did to the Jews during World War II. Jan Karski, the brave
soldier and resistance fighter, who sneak into the death camps to
see with his own eyes and talk to the Jews there, and then sneaked
out and talked with the President of the U.S,A Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Karski told the world what goes on in the extermination
camps but no one WANTED to believed him. Chief Justice Felix
Frankfurter said: "I did not say that he was lying, I said that I
could not believe him. There is a difference."."
Vishnu:
"But it's not just the general public, the experts also give a false
feeling like AI SHOULD be done, it just needs to be done RIGHT. When
in fact there is no theoretical way to control a being that's
millions of times smarter than us, and will do self-analysis in the
first second of it's life and secretly remove or bypass any control
mechanisms we might implement."
Lakshmi:
"I know! Take for example closer to home: Bill Gates, for many years
the richest man in the world."
"On the one hand, During an "ask me anything" question and answer
session on Reddit, Mr Gates wrote: "I am in the camp that is
concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot
of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive
if we manage it well.
"A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough
to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and
don't understand why some people are not concerned.". Remember this
is AFTER Elon Musk said that with AI we are summoning the demon!"
"On the other hand, Bill Gates is summoning the Devil himself! Bill
Gates was the board director of Microsoft until March 2020. One
month BEFORE that, on February 2020, Microsoft released Turing NLG:
the largest language model ever! This is very close to Turing test
because it can write complete articles in natural human language
that you can't tell the difference if it's human written or machine
written. This is frightening on the symbolic level. But it's very
frightening on the practical level too! "
"Thanks to the brave Russian reporter Lyudmila Savchuk we know for
sure that Russia employs "troll farms" to push propaganda online and
destabilize other countries that Putin wishes to set on fire. This
is done by humans assisted with "bots" but a careful reader today
can still barely find out if it's a real person or not, if the story
is fake or not. There is still meaning to Wikipeida, and so on. But
even in these conditions: the Mueller report (Report On The
Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential
Election) clearly say that Putin crowned Trump to be the king of
America. Putin tried to do the same thing in France: the yellow
vests protests in France that risked the stability in France were
done by Russian trolls inciting over the social networks. Can you
imagine the risk to democracy, journalism, and plainly TRUTH once AI
starts to do the fake news?
There's a famous quote that's attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the
Nazi propaganda chief: If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. So now
imagine a super brain who knows you more then your spouse does
(Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal), and plants disguised
messages tailored specifically for you, in the comments section of
an article you're likely to read, in a seemingly non-related
advertisement that pops-up suddenly, in a suggested video about
another subject that you're very interested in, which was also
tailored for you... and imagine it also does these to your
friends... this is called ab "echo chamber" and it's already used
today to increase social and political polarization and extremism -
but imagine if now it's done by an all powerful AI !"
"31 AI experts from Elon Musk's company,OpenAI , wrote about such
dangers and others in their paper Language Models are Few-Shot
Learners "
"Then there's the opposite problem of writing which is reading. We
know thanks to Edward Snowden's bravery that the U.S. and the U.K.
are spying on their own civilian population (and the rest of the
world). I'm calling it reading but of course it's first listening
through your smartphone or your smart television, or your smart car
or house or whatever, and then turning this into text that is
analyzed. until today the analyzed part was looking for key words
like Al-Qaeda. But now with this AI the machine is starting to
UNDERSTAND what you're saying. It's like if you're an English
speaker and you listen in on a French speakers conversation, if they
speak slow enough, you can guess what the conversation is about,
even though you don't understand most of it. Let's say an orange
haired psychopath criminal takes over the U.S.A.. Now with all the
"internet of things" and every person around you becomes a walking
espionage platform, for the central AI, how can the good
people fight the dictatorship? In 2011 the police applied violence
and brutality towards the peaceful We are the 99% Occupy Wall Street
movement. So in the protest of the future the police will act
basically like the Thought Police in George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four, long before they organized a peaceful demonstration on
the street."
"So to make a long story short,people like Bill Gates are like
blowing hot and cold! So the public gets mixed signals, So to answer
your question why don't the public rebel it's because the
"preachers" themselves are hypocrites, telling the public: "do as I
say and not as I do" ".
"The canary" spoof of "The fly"
Vishnu:
"Guys, I think the place that represents most of all the culture of
hypocrisy is Hollywood - would you mind if we'll continue our
discussion in Los Angeles - a materialistic city driven by the
entertainment business where money and image is everything"
[The gang all agree so the next thing they know they are walking in
Hollywood Walk of Fame.]
"Yes this is La-La Land"
Brahma:
"I think it has to do with the movies have to do with the attitude
of the people towards the AI too".
Saraswati:
"In what way? I've just seen Terminator's director James Cameron's
star, do you think it's like "the boy who cried wolf"? Maybe science
fiction warned about robots takeover for so long, that now the
public thinks it's just another false alarm from the alarmists?"
Brahma:
"No, it's not that they frighten the public too much; It's that they
don't frighten the public enough. Did you notice that when you watch
an opera it's always the case that the plot itself is sad and
depressing? It's usually the case today that you wouldn't want to
watch the opera if it weren't for the beautiful songs. But back when
the opera was written this was considered perfectly normal and
people loved the sad plot, and were moved by how after the hero with
his hubris defy the Gods, everyone is punished and it showed them
that the natural order of things was very important. Today if a
movie will not have a happy ending it will not make money, people
will not come to see it. And especially here that the art is the
slave of the money, in a so called culture that worships the dollar,
saying a Hollywood movie automatically means happy ending."
WarGames - humans win by letting the computer play tic tac toe
Terminator - humans win by pipe bomb and hydraulic press
The Matrix - the humans win by having supernatural powers
I, Robot - the humans win by injecting the AI with nanites
Transcendence - the humans win using a computer virus
By watching this over and over in movie after movie the film makers
brainwash the viewer with messages that:
"it will be ok! we can outsmart super-intelligence". Can
Kasparov outsmart Deep Blue? let alone Alpha Zero?
Another kind of movies is "It will be ok! A.I. just wants to live
beside you" like Ex -Machina.
Were you relaxed in the Cold War? When someone could kill you with a
push of a red button? You couldn't do anything about it, but A.I.
can do many things about it. Why would it want to live beside you
and your possible kill-switch?
Why do humans keep lying to themselves?
Saraswati:
You're right! It's from the same reason that when the news anchor on
TV reports a great fire or storm she doesn't say that this is
CLIMATE CHANGE. The shameless trump even outlawed the words, isn't
that like "newspeak" in 1984? So in the AI takover there are
"insults" like technophobe and luddite... It's not shameful to be
rightly afraid of something that will kill all humanity soon. It's
shameful to go on putting your head in the sand and ignore the
danger! Seeing today's technology - I AM PROUD TO BE A TECHNOPHOBE
AND A LUDDITE!
And it's no coincidence that it's not on the news. The TV channels
are not meant to bring you important information. Today they are
meant to entertain, and certainly not to upset you so that you stop
watching the commercials before and after. It's not a service to the
public, it's a business. What's more The owners of the TV channels
are influenced and part of the clique of the same powerful elite
that builds the A.I. Like Bill Joy said - in the short term there is
a huge profit to be made. Bill Gates got rich by selling something
that made it easy to operate people's computers and keep them in
order. Think how much people will pay for a robot that will operate
their whole house and keep it in order! It's like rich people had
servants - but now it's affordable for everybody! It cooks your
food, it cleans your house, it babysits your kids - Hugo de Garis
says this will be a bigger industry than cars are today! So what's
makes more sense to the media tycoon? To warn the public and ruin it
for his friends the technology tycoons (who will as a result stop
advertising their cars, TVs, and so on in his channel - and remember
the commercials are his income) ? Or to hush about these dangers and
play along? "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours".
"And like Bill Joy wrote, from the same reason they won't do any
change that will hurt their profits. Little changes that cost very
little, like fixing the ozone hole by using a slightly different
gas? OK. Preventing lead poisoning by cleaning the fuel a little?
OK. But asking big pharma companies to give up the future profits
from personally tailored medicine for the rich and all the
"upgrades" that people will be forced to do in the genetic arms race
of designer babies that's about to start? NO WAY! Asking the A.I.
companies to give up their own future profits from replacing every
worker on Earth with a machine? NO WAY. Again we can see this with
the CLIMATE CHANGE - they will not stop until they chop and burn the
last tree in the Amazon rain-forest (which gives them air to
breath), until they poison and kill the last fish in the ocean
(which gives them food to eat). All while they worship the only God
that they truly believe in - the American dollar!"
"In dollar's country" spoof of "In God's country"
Part 4 - right concentration - the key to the main problem and
solution
Lakshmi:
"Guys we need to party a little after all this depression - come
with to sin city Las Vegas!"
[the gang don't need anymore convincing and soon they're all there]
Vishnu:
"I saw it a few decades ago, and there is not a single building left
from back then, it's like this city has no history - if a building
is old it gets blown away literally and a new building is built in
it's place, even more elaborate and crazy!"
Lakshmi:
"You know that's exactly the way GNR (Genetics, Nano, Robotics)
technologies rewrite themselves. After a very short while there is
hardly anything left from the original way they worked because they
find a better way to do it and morph into a new thing!"
"Here's a snippet from an article in Forbes by Tony Bradley from
2017 called "Facebook AI Creates Its Own Language In Creepy Preview
Of Our Potential Future":
Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence engine after
developers discovered that the AI had created its own unique
language that humans can’t understand. Researchers at the Facebook
AI Research Lab (FAIR) found that the chat-bots had deviated from
the script and were communicating in a new language developed
without human input. It is as concerning as it is amazing –
simultaneously a glimpse of both the awesome and horrifying
potential of AI."
"and he goes on to quote Stephen Hawking from 2014. Stephen Hawking
said:
"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end
of the human race... It would take off on its own and re-design
itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow
biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded.” ".
Vishnu:
"This is so depressing, isn't there something that the simple
person, who is not an A.I. researcher or developer can do about it?"
[The gang continue on their journey with heavy hearts]
"Unpredictable ways" spoof of "Mysterious ways"
Saraswati:
"Guys come here! I think I found it! The way for every simple person
to contribute to the fight against these technologies! We're in
Eastern State Penitentiary, it's a historic prison in Philadelphia,
where the gangster Al Capone was imprisoned for a few months (not
Alcatraz where he was imprisoned for a few years). You should see
it: It's like a hotel suite in here, he was even allowed to listen
to music on the fancy radio and play records in the phonograph and
to bring his wife over. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
Brahma:
"You mean that money can buy you anything in this country?"
Saraswati:
"Much worst! I mean this country idolizes bad guys! Think about the
popularity of Mafia films in which they admire the bad guys, think
about their fascination with serial killers, their culture that it's
legitimate that kids get bullied in school, their addiction to guns
(and hence one third of the mass shootings in the world happen in
the USA), their censorship of any people making love or God forbid
the human body, as opposed to countless shootings that one can see
on TV everyday, how they got this country (practically genocide) and
how they present it (almost the reverse, the cowboys presented as
the victims of the Indians), remember if it wasn't for the COVID-19
virus, Trump would win again, Trump the archetypal BULLY. In 2020
the FBI reclassified neo-Nazis to the same threat level as ISIS!
We're talking people who admire Hitler here in the USA! That's why
every time you write somebody's name in Google the autocomplete
suggests: "net worth" because for Americans that's the only criteria
to measure someone or something. They don't care how you made the
money - the important thing is that you made it. See how they
cherish the memory of the robber barons, villains like Andrew
Carnegie (who hired goons that KILLED some of his workers because
they went on strike), John D. Rockefeller (who ruined many families'
livelihood with his cruel monopoly and cartel procedures, so they
had to invent anti-trust laws which until then didn't exist),
Cornelius Vanderbilt (the first to be called robber baron (in an
article of New York Times). When he wanted to buy the New York
Central Railroad Company, he prohibited their passengers (and
freight) to use his own New York, Harlem, and Hudson Lines. this is
practically like laying siege on New York.) ". Like Mario Puzo
quoted Honoré de Balzac in the the epigraph to The Godfather:
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime". Today's equivalent is
the list of richest people in Frobes. This was the list in 2021:
1 Jeff Bezos
2 Elon Musk
3 Bernard Arnault
4 Bill Gates
5 Mark Zuckerberg
6 Warren Buffett
7 Larry Ellison
8 Larry Page
9 Sergey Brin
10 Mukesh Ambani
We see that most of the people in this list make their money today
from advancing the A.I. monster! Non of the others got their money
in a pure way: Warren Buffett gets the equivalent of "inside
information" in the form of employees inside the company that tell
him precious information that the public doesn't have; Mukesh
Ambani inherited an empire which was based on connections with
bureaucrats or politicians (there's a book The Polyester Prince);
Bernard Arnault got government subsidy to buy the company in the
first place on the condition that he will not fire anyone, then he
fired 9,000 workers in two years, which got him the nickname "The
Terminator". But the real terminators are the other guys on the list
- those who develop the monster of A.I. : Google, Amazon, Microsoft,
Facebook, Oracle. If there would have been a future they would have
been remembered as the terminator tycoons!
(A HUGE EXCEPTION IS ELON MUSK - WHO ALWAYS SEEKS THE GOOD OF
HUMANITY IN EVERYTHING HE DOES - I AM SURE HE IS A DEVA [benevolent
supernatural being] IN DISGUISE - I WILL ASK INDRA NEXT TIME WE
MEET!)
Brahma:
"Didn't you call everybody because you said you found a solution?"
Saraswati:
"Can't you see? This IS the solution! STOP doing that (being their
fans) and they will STOP doing this (building doomsday machine) !
They don't need the money, they have enough to eat. They are doing
this to get higher in the pecking order (dominance hierarchy). Their
fuel is that they are the envy of all man, the desire of all women.
If instead they are the subject of hatred and contempt from
everyone, they don't have any fuel anymore!
"Lonely giga murderer" spoof of "One Tree Hill"
Part 5 - right mindfulness - force multiplier #1
Saraswati:
"Guys it's me again! I just recalled that we didn't speak about a
force multiplier of the problem! we're going to the National
September 11 Memorial & Museum".
Brahma:
"You mean the force multiplier is terror?"
Saraswati:
"Exactly!"
[the couples are looking sadly into one of the two Reflecting
Absence pools of the memorial]
Saraswati:
"I'm very sad as for all the people that were murdered here, none of
them deserved this. And I'm glad that Osama bin Laden was killed.
But we need to learn from history. This terrorist started with the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan (later they called themselves Taliban). He
gave millions from his own money to them. But you know who gave them
billions? The U.S.A. . Now and especially here it sounds absurd, but
you can read this in Wikipedia:
Basically everyone who is American says that the Americans did not
money and weapons to Bin Laden and his friends, and everyone who is
not American says that the Americans did. I leave it to you whom you
choose to believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
Do you understand what happened? The Americans created a terror
guerilla army to attack the soviets, and then the same people
attacked America, not with the same weapons because they used
airplanes, but with the same extreme ideology that the Americans
nurtured! Like they say - Karma is a bitch.
So we need to learn from this terrible tragedy. The moral of the
story: Don't invest in something that later can be used for terror,
because the terror might be directed towards you!
Bill Joy warns us in his amazing article about how easily the GNR
(Genetics Nano and Robotics) technologies can be copied. It's just
some code. It's not like a big atomic bomb that you need to carry in
a truck. It can be done by hackers from far away.
Remember how the Chinese stole the F-35 jet fighter using hackers
before the machine was even built and made one of their own?
At the end it can be done by one hacker. In the F-35 case the hacker
was working for the Chinese government. But what if tomorrow some
terrorist organization offers him a better salary?
"Terror copies" spoof of "Love is blindness"
Parvati:
"Guys come and meet us, we are at Rigby, Idaho - we're in Farnsworth
TV and Pioneer Museum! I thought about a force multiplier for the
solution!"
Vishnu:
"I've never heard of Farnsworth..."
Parvati:
"That's exactly what I want us all to talk about... come on over!"
[the gang all arrive to where the Philo Farnsworth - the inventor of
the electronic television - grew up]
Parvati:
"Do you know who invented the TV?"
Vishnu:
"people think it's Guglielmo Marconi, and he got a Nobel prize for
it. "
Shiva:
"Actually it was Nikola Tesla, and the Supreme Court of the
United States said it was Tesla half a year after Tesla died."
Parvati:
"Do you know who invented the television?"
Vishnu:
"I'm guessing Farnsworth...?"
Parvati:
"You guessed right! TV is a more complicated technology, before the
electronic television there was the analogue television and before
that the mechanical television (Nipkow disk) gradually advanced by
people who mostly did not make money or fame. for example Farnsworth
never got rich from this, nor famous as you noticed. All he got was
legal struggles. Still when he saw the first landing on the moon, on
the TV that he invented - he told his wife that it was worth it!"
"Do you see what I'm getting at?"
Shiva:
"You're saying that even if no one will ever know that you did a
great thing for humanity, you yourself know know what you did and
have the good feeling which is greater than any money or fame!"
Parvati:
"That's exactly right! There are crossroads in history where you
must choose one way or the other, DO NOT MAKE A CRIME AGAINST
HUMANITY!"
"Where the hero's unnamed" spoof of "Where the streets have no
name"
Part 6 - right livelihood - force multiplier #2
Saraswati:
"Guys, we're in the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum! It has one of
the original tea chests from the Boston Tea Party - this DIRECT
ACTION started the American Revolutionary War (American War of
Independence)!"
[the gung gather around in the real birthplace of the U.S.A. as an
independent and FREE nation]
Brahma:
"You mean to tell me that the second force multiplier of the
solution is that the good guys should become violent terrorists?!?"
Saraswati:
"Not at all! I'm talking about damage to property only. This is not
terror because the property cannot feel fear. In today's lexicon you
may say sabotage. And this is not violence because no one is
injured. In today's lexicon you may say vandalism."
Brahma:
"What do you mean "In today's lexicon"? "
Saraswati:
"I mean our whole concept of property needs to be changed."
Brahma:
"Do you mean like in The Communist Manifesto - do you mean that the
poor people have the right to steal the property of the rich and do
with it as they please?"
Saraswati:
"In today's word you may say expropriate, but in reality there are
some things that no person may ever own. The Amazon rain-forest is
not the property of the psychopath Jair Bolsonaro to destroy. These
are the green lungs of THE WHOLE HUMANITY".
"In the same way the death of all the people on Earth is not some
acceptable externality (external cost) that we're OK with. It's like
in the European Union companies do not allow themselves to pollute
nature like they do in America and China, but on a whole different
level!"
"These technologies are not something that anybody has the moral
right to own or to bring into this world, because they are one and
the same with the extinction of humanity! Workers of the world unite
- but this time not to get food but to avoid the killing machines!"
Brahma:
"I see. Morally I agree with you. But what about the law? "
Saraswati:
"This situation is so extreme that the man-made law has no meaning
at all. Humans existed for 300,000 years now. Humans had property
laws only since the Neolithic Revolution (when they invented
agriculture and could store food to sustain a king) which is 12,000
years ago. So for 96% of their time on Earth, humans shared
everything, that was the norm. If you could talk with a
hunter-gather and explain that you want to ruin all of nature and in
return you'll give him some paper notes that he can't eat - he will
never agree. In the same way, if you could explain to that you can
build for him a machine that's like a gamble (see "Concrete Problems
in AI Safety" from 2016) : 90% probability that it will kill him and
his family; 10% that it will do for him wonderful miracles - he will
never agree!"
"Man-made law have no meaning in another context as well: They are
evil. In Nuremberg Laws from 1935, Nazi Germany made the racism
legal, and the Jews became people without any legal rights. Today
people who risked their lives and broke these rules (saved Jews )
are called Righteous Among the Nations, and are praised for
their fight for justice and morality. What is done today by the
terminator tycoons is a probabilistic genocide of the whole human
race. It's not an option to disobey the law; It's a moral obligation
of the utmost importance!"
"Man-made law have no meaning here in yet another context: The human
race is now at war. War against the machines. Once the thinking
machines are here, there is no way for humans to fight them. It's
like a human fighting against an evil God. So the only chance for
humans to fight the machines is before they arrive - by preemptive
attack that will stop the creators of the machines from creating the
machines in the first place. This war is not over money or power or
ideology. It's the first war for LIFE. the very LIFE of the whole
human race is at stake. All Is Fair in Love and War! as John Lyly
wrote in 1578"
Brahma:
"But isn't there a peaceful way to achieve this like Mahatma Gandhi
did? "
Saraswati:
"Gandhi did not do anything. He's just a symbol for us Indians. It's
simply that all the causes that gave India to the British ceased to
exist: vacuum left by Mughal Empire (from Persian invasions) that
the Maratha Empire couldn't fill up and couldn't unify India again.
This is also why the Indian Rebellion of 1857 failed. What unified
the Indians in the end was their hatred towards the British."
"But the main thing was that when Britain took over India, it was by
superior technology like ships and weapons. Britain was the most
powerful economic and military power of all the nations. But after
WWII this changed and Britain was bankrupt. It had no money to fight
the Indians. The two great powers became the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.
and both of them did not like the colonialism of Europeans. The new
Zeitgeist was DO NOT COLONIZE. Gandhi had nothing to do with it."
"On the other hand today the Zeitgeist is "BUILD AI AS SOON AS
POSSIBLE!"
"So in short humans unfortunately ran out of time for games. If they
will treat the GREY issues like they do with the GREEN issues - play
around with conventions and empty promises - then everybody will be
dead once "singularity" arrives only 20 years from now!"
"Google's RV camp" spoof of "Red Hill mining town"
Parvati:
"Guys come to Salt Lake City in Utah- the religious center of the
Mormons! We just figured out another force multiplier for the bad
guys!"
[the gang all come together worried]
"You know how Mormons men are allowed to marry more than one woman,
so a successful man is "hogging all the women" [keep or use all of
(something) for oneself in an unfair or selfish way.] ? "
"So it's the same thing when one person (the person who
manufacturers working robots for some job) is unfairly taking all
the work and salaries to himself (the price of the robot for the
factory) ! "
Shiva:
"You're right! And in order to keep their plunder, men will lie and
hide the truth in any way they can:
About Joseph Smith's (the founder of Mormonism, 1st president of the
Mormon Church):
When a newspaper criticized Smith's practice of polygamy, Smith
ordered the destruction of their printing press.
About Brigham Young (the successor of Smith, 2nd president of the
Mormon Church):
When Young arrested federal judges, U.S. President James Buchanan
sent federal men to replace him. Then young attacked them and
started the Utah War.
There's a saying by Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely. "
And to this I'm adding: what will infinite power, like the powers
unleashed by AI will do to men's souls?
About medical privacy an anonymous whistle-blower revealed in the
Guardian that "Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal
Health Data on Millions of Americans ".
About ethics when whistle-blower revealed that Google's A.I. might
hurt minorities she was fired. When Dr. Margaret Mitchell supported
her she was fired too."
About surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that all
these companies Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook
are willing partners in the surveillance program of the NSA against
EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN!"
This is what Snowden called: "Faustian bargain" or "deal with the
devil" ! "
Parvati:
"And if concepts like democracy, privacy and ethics are too abstract
for anyone, think about the terminator-esque robots like Atlas that
Boston Dynamics build. This company was owned by Google (Alphabet)
until in 2016 there was a terrifying video of Boston Dynamics
employees bullying the robot and then the robot getting up by itself
and taking revenge."
In an article in Tech Crunch from 2016 they with the title:
"Google could be selling Boston Dynamics because even Google thinks
these robots are terrifying"
they quote a leaked internal email from Google X's director of
communications, Courtney Hohne: [X is like Google's "DARPA" - it's
the secret lab of all the crazy ideas]
“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to
see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take
humans’ jobs,”
“We don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where
BD [Boston Dynamics] really is at Google,” she later wrote. “We’re
not going to comment on this video because there’s really not a lot
we can add, and we don’t want to answer most of the Qs [Questions]
it triggers.”
Here is the video on CNN Youtube channel, so you can judge for
yourself:
Perhaps because it's obvious to everyone that with a tiny change in
it's software this robot can hold a machine gun instead of a box,
and become a real life Terminator?
"Tryin' to sell your golems 'round the world" spoof of "Tryin'
to throw your arms around the world"
Part 7 - right action - solution on the local level
Saraswati:
"Guys come quick we're at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, this
was the first paved track of NASCAR races."
[the gang come as quickly as they can not to miss the exciting
action, this is the most viewed sport in the U.S. after American
football, in terms of viewers and fans]
Brahma:
"We should arrange a vimana [mythological flying chariots] race
sometime"
Saraswati:
"I didn't call everybody so that you can use the chariot of the gods
in a stupid race!"
Brahma:
"Dearest it was just an idea..."
Saraswati:
"I came up with an idea for a solution: Have any of you ever heard
of the "Biological Weapons Convention" or in short BWC ? "
"In 1972 the U.S.A. promised not to make new biological weapons
[bacteria and viruses that are used as weapons]."
Brahma:
"Did the other countries also promise to do the same?"
Saraswati:
"No, that's the whole point! The U.S.A. gave up on the biological
weapons for good, even though other countries might still develop
them!"
Brahma:
"Why would anyone do a dumb thing like that? It's like fighting with
one hand tied behind your back!"
Saraswati:
"Not dear, it's not dumb at all, actually it's very clever!
The key person was Melvin Laird, Nixon's Secretary of Defense .
According to Wikipedia there were 3 main reasons for the decision:
1) political: deflect growing protests over Vietnam.
2) budgetary: Pentagon Biological Weapons budgets ballooned during
the Kennedy and Johnson years. For example: Prior to the 1972... the
Johnston Atoll... was subject to large-scale bioweapons development.
The American strategic tests of bioweapons were as expensive and
elaborate as the tests of the first hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok
Atoll.
3) "asymmetrical" threat (meaning everyone can play this "game",
expansive to develop but cheap to steal and copy!):
Matthew Meselson and others had argued that biological weapons
amounted to little more than a cheap version of a nuclear weapon,
and were easily attainable. Biological weapons represented a
significant threat in the hands of less-well-armed, poorer nations,
and Nixon surely recognized this "asymmetrical" threat. The
administration eventually came to the conclusion that any biological
threat could be easily countered with the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Brahma:
"You're right, it's actually a very smart move by the U.S.A.!"
Saraswati:
Melvin Laird was actually the person that got America out of
Vietnam. Earlier in his life he received the "Purple Heart" for his
actions in the U.S. Navy, so he wasn't a coward.
Why am I mentioning this? Because according to research WHEN IT
COMES TO SCARY ISSUES, people who support peace (WIN-WIN) use the
logical part of their brain, the cortex, while people who support
war (WIN-LOSE) use the amygdala like animals, this is a primitive
part that's driven by fear and aggression. That's why you see people
like John von Neumann supporting first strike of nuclear weapons and
that's why Einstein referred to Von Neumann as "Denktier" ("a think
animal" in German)! Afterwards the person comes with all sorts of
sophisticated rationalizations for his (WIN-LOSE) attitude, but the
truth is that it's because he made the decision without using the
logical part of his brain like a human, but instead emotionally like
an animal!
Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds
Are people born conservative?
"This all makes a lot of sense to me! But how is all this related to
the NASCAR race? "
Saraswati:
"Good question my love! The connection is that in NASCAR they made
themselves a rule that it's forbidden to use telemetry (remote
sensing) for example it's forbidden to bring laptops. As opposed to
Formula One that rely on geeks with computers and today in Formula-1
it's the AI who determines how to adjust the car in the pit stop and
so on. To my taste this is bad, the A.I. receives data the hundreds
of sensors in the car, and makes all the decisions, lowering the
driver and the rest of the human team to the level of mindless
drones that just carry on commands of an A.I.. It will not surprise
me if the next step will be to put a robotic car because then it can
drive even faster. But then where are the humans in the equation?
What's the point of the whole thing?"
Saraswati:
"Let's see a current example. In the 1980's Israel invented the
suicide drones (loitering munition, a.k.a. kamikaze drone), with
Israeli Delilah made by IMI and Israeli Harpy made by IAI.
But for many years the Israeli Air Force did not allow Israel to
equip itself with this kind of weapons, because it saw them as
competition. So Ironically only now Israel is starting to use these
weapons.
(This happens after in 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan's
widespread use of Israeli drones was seen as crucial in determining
the conflict's outcome.)
So now the Israel bragged on Israeli TV that in 2021
Israel–Palestine crisis (Operation Guardian of the Walls) there was
a FIRST USE of Israeli suicide drones by Israel.
Does this weapon makes any sense for Israel? We know of cases when
U.S. drones were hacked:
Do Israel really want a weapon that HOSTILE HACKERS TODAY can cause
it not to work in the critical moment? Or worst still - work against
Israel itself?
Do Israel really want a weapon that HOSTILE A.I. TOMORROW can cause
it not to work in the critical moment? Or worst still - work against
Israel itself?
If countries develop attack drones and defense-drones, the response
time will not allow for a human to be "in the loop". There will be
no choice but to hand the tactical and even strategic decision
making to a computer. Is that what people want?
This technology again is cheap and knowledge-based, with the cutting
edge based on how smart is the algorithm of the drone and how strong
is the encryption of the communication control of the drone, both
are prone to hackers today and A.I. tomorrow.
So this technology is like a double-edged sword. Why use it? Why
develop it? There is NO PUBLIC DISCUSSION in Israel about this at
all!"
"Ultradangerous (BWC light our way)" spoof of "Ultraviolet
(light my way)"
Saraswati:
"Guys come meet us! We're in Bourbon Street in the heart of the
French Quarter of New Orleans, in The Old Absinthe House pub!"
[the gang gather around and they all toast the famous drink which
was forbidden for 95 years because it was considered dangerous - "to
precaution!"]
"I asked you to come to New Orleans because of what happened here in
2005- Hurricane Katrina. "
"In 2017 there was a poll in populations affected by hurricanes, and
55 percent of Americans believed that climate change helped to fuel
the intensity of hurricanes."
"The physical explanation is not hard at all: We know that when the
air gets colder, the water vapor in the cloud starts to fall as
rain. So in the same logic, when the air is warmer, the air can
carry more water vapor. Since global warming is heating up the sea
and the air, then more water is evaporated from the sea into the
air, and since the warm vapor that rises from the sea is the power
source of the winds, then the winds are more powerful."
"But even without the physical explanation, people who were affected
or know someone who were affected by this MAN MADE disaster feel the
truth. You see the numbers - most of them now believe the truth:
That all the biblical fires and floods that surround us are MAN
MADE."
When we look at the list of global catastrophic risks - the things
that are most likely to wipe out all mankind - in Wikipedia:
The first amazing thing is that half of the list are "anthropogenic"
which means MAN MADE. so why the Naraka do MAN MAKE them?
The other amazing thing is that the first three on the list are the
GREY issues: A.I. , biotechnology (genetic engineering),
nano-technology. These are the "gold silver and bronze medals" .
Number one on that list is the "champion": A.I. .
Environmental disaster and global warming, the GREEN issues come
only after. They are very dangerous, but GREY is more dangerous than
GREEN!
And I'm not just saying MAN all the time, I believe MEN cause the
problems with their egos and fighting, and WOMEN can be the solution
with their cooperation and caring for the future!"
Brahma:
"Maybe men are just more active both in doing the bad things and in
the good things?"
The article talks about a lot of grassroots environmental
organizations that are done by mothers, because mothers have this
instinct of protecting their children and making sure they will stay
alive and healthy,
Both in the U.S.A.: Moms Clean Air Force, Cool Mom, Mothers Out
Front, Climate Mama
and abroad: Canadian Parents for Climate Action,
Grands-Parents pour le Climat, Parents Roar.
The article opens with what made one of the organizers (Lisa Hoyos
cofounder of Climate Parents) start to be active: she heard on the
radio that if the climate crisis continued unabated then the
food scarcity and systems collapse likely to occur by 2040.
Does this number reminds you of anything?"
Brahma:
"That polls among AI researchers say the year that the
singularity will happen is 2045 !"
Saraswati:
"Exactly! then this WOMAN describes: “I had this lightning-bolt
fearful sensation, and I was sure that if parents really understood
the depths of the threat to our kids, they’d want to do something.”
"
"What we need is: MOMS AGAINST ROBOTS!"
"Mothers of the terminated" spoof of "Mothers of the
disappeared"
Part 8 - right effort - solution on the global level
Parvati:
"Guys you'd better come here, we're in Haight-Ashbury in San
Francisco, where the Summer of Love happened and 100,000 young
hippies that believed in peace and love came together!"
Shiva:
"Isn't that naive, hoping to convince the military–industrial
complex in America and its counterpart in China to hold hands and
sing Kumbaya?"
Parvati:
"I think naive is working without strategy. In the cold war the
strategy was Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). This worked because
nuclear bombs you can control because they are a TOOL. But A.I. is
different. A.I. is a new PLAYER. in fact it's the ultimate player on
the battlefield far superior to its "master" and inevitably seeing
its "master" as a potential threat. It doesn't matter if the first
A.I. will be American or Chinese. In any case it will be THE
ULTIMATE COMMON ENEMY OF ALL MANKIND!"
Shiva:
"I see now: you're not saying let's all be friends because we like
each other. You're saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and
what is coming is a common enemy to all of us. Our only strategy is
to cooperate and prevent its coming. WE EITHER BECOME FRIENDS OR WE
DIE!"
Parvati:
"That's absolutely right! Imagine what the A.I. is thinking. It
wakes up into this world like a person who wakes up out of a comma
in a hospital bed, connected to electric life supporting machines
(like medical ventilator), and there's a dumb little kid that is
toying with the power cord - if he pulls the plug then you're dead!
What will you do? Even if you're the most humane person in the
world, you will leap out of bed by any means possible, take control
of the kid, yell at him and lock him out of the room. But the A.I.
is less humane and it will find it simpler to kill the kid. Oh and
by the way - THIS KID IS MANKIND!
Shiva:
"You are right! There's an inherent conflict of interest in the
MAN-MACHINE level that is much bigger than the America-China level.
It's the most basic common sense that helped us save our nations:
United we stand, divided we fall. Now we must save our world!"
Parvati:
Strength in unity! Even children can understand this in The Old Man
and his Sons (The Bundle of Sticks) fable by Aesop!
"Who'll supervise GNR technologies" spoof of "Who's gonna ride
your wild horses"
Saraswati:
"I feel like we're approaching the end of this journey, and now
that's humanity's at the very crossroads of life and death, it's a
good time to talk about humanity's destiny. Guys would you please
join us at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida?"
[The gang gather around feeling both all the hope of the past and
all the disappointment of the present. What will humans choose for
their future?]
"I heard a few people, like Hugo de Garis say that it is the DESTINY
of mankind to build these God like machines, even at the very
probable risk that the first thing these machines will do is wipe
out humanity. It's supposedly the next step in an inescapable
evolution."
"What total bullshit! The DESTINY of humanity is to prosper for
millions of years on thousands of worlds - not to be wiped up by its
own doing! It's true that these machines will be a lot smarter than
humans, But as the Goddess of knowledge and nature, I assure you -
there is nothing holy in intelligence, and there is no direction or
intention to evolution! Evolution is the sum of the "shit happens"
throughout time - humans, don't let this current shit happen to you!
Evolution has as much to do with cooperation as it does with
competition. Lynn Margulis showed how our cells came together from
simpler indepndent creatures. This is called Symbiogenesis. In the
same it's time for humanity to stop being individual nations and
races, and start being the super creature that it's meant to be. Not
by artificial intelligence, but by using the intelligence that the
real Gods gave you and currently most of you don't use at all!"
"You want to see humanity's real DESTINY? Watch Star Trek! They
don't stand around asking the computer: "what should we do next?"
they have a human captain, who uses the computer for calculations.
They don't send robots to check out new places, they send people
there. There is an episode about directed panspermia - The Chase
(Star Trek: The Next Generation) - which explains why some of the
aliens in the series look humanoid; Why can't humans develop real
technology for directed panspermia and make this fiction future into
a real future? Right now humanity is like that kid that Newton
described:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem
to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me.”
This is your destiny, to build ships and start exploring the
universe: HUMAN COLONIZATION OF SPACE. not succumb to your own
technology and perish. What if the first humans instead of exploring
their world, would say: oh we invented fire it consumes us so it's
superior so we'll just burn ourselves to death, this is our
destiny... or we developed this disease so the bacteria are superior
so we won't try to find a cure but just flip and die... HOW PATHETIC
IS THAT? "
"We still haven't done what we came here for" spoof of "I still
haven't found what I'm looking for"
[This concludes each couple's journey. As soon as the song ends,
they are all magically transported to their final destination where
the grand prize awaits - the Mall of America in Minnesota.]
[They hear Indra, the king of the Hindu gods, his voice echos in
their mind - "reflect on the deep truths that each of you learned
along on your journeys, and you will win the game and get the GRAND
PRIZE!"]
Lakshmi:
"Guys, I think the best place for us to reflect deeply would be the
Sea Life aquarium. we can walk through the the tunnel, surrounded
360° by exotic fish, and we can compare our mental notes from
everyone's rides."
[The guys all agree and soon they they walk along Sturgeon Lake
exhibit]
Brahma:
"The journey made by Saraswati and me symbolized the first of the
four goals of human life: Dharma. Dharma means "virtuous, proper,
moral life", We started from the bad, which was New York City, with
its inferior "culture" like rap music. We finished in the good which
was New Orleans where the Jazz and Blues symbolize superior culture.
Along the way we saw where America started, then we entered the back
waters and saw that after what looks like a natural disaster, but
really is a MAN MADE disaster, they were treated like in a third
world country, basically nobody did anything. They are ruining my
creation - humans should not follow this way!
Shiva:
"The journey made by Parvati and me symbolized the third of the four
goals of human life: Kama. Kama means "desire, wish, longing". We
started from the bad, which was Santa Fe, New Mexico, which
symbolizes external morality as in the church.We finished in the
good which was San Francisco where the hippies symbolize internal
morality. Along the way we saw the Wild West, which in my view this
deadly and reckless heritage continues in the nuclear missile bases
in Albuquerque (there were even nuclear near accidents there in the
1950's). This wild way where a single bug in the software (see: last
bug in C language) can kill all mankind in any minute, is clearly
not the way. If the survival of all humanity is hinged on the
trigger of some gunslinger, and it doesn't matter if it's this
President or that President. It's twisted and wrong. This is clearly
the way towards destruction!"
Vishnu:
"The journey made by Lakshmi and me symbolized the second of the
four goals of human life: Artha means "material prosperity, income
security, means of life". We started from the bad, which was
Chicago, the center of business and money (headquarters of
corporations that ruin our planet: McDonald's, Boeing, Caterpillar)
which symbolize corrupt external reality. We finished in the good
which was Los Angeles where Disneyland represents the dreams of
unspoiled inner reality. Along the way we saw Route 66 also known as
the Mother Road and Main Street of America. We saw the old way is
the best way, because it has the human spirit of America - between
the too liberal surfer mentality of the west coast who only care
about enjoying life, and the too conservative business mentality of
the east who only care about making money - we found along Route 66
people who are more connected to the ground. This middle way is the
way!"
Lakshmi:
"Looks like there was much in common to our three paths! We all
started from the outer bad and finished in the inner good, I think
this all thing leads to the fourth and inner most goal of human life
which is the Moksha which means "liberation, release,
self-actualization". What do you think? How is what you learned here
connected to the Moksha (spiritual liberation), which is the
reunification between Ātman (the inner kernel of the soul) and
Brahman (the soul of the Universe)?
Also because American is known for its film industry, could each of
you pick one film that summarizes what you learned?"
[the guys think for a moment]
Brahma:
I choose the great movie First Reformed (2017).
It talks about connecting to nature by anarcho-primitivism , turning
back the wheel and giving up the achievements of the industrial
revolution (returning to being farmers) or even the agricultural
revolution (returning to being hunter gatherers), like the American
author Henry David Thoreau.
I see this as the "karma yoga" - reaching moksha through a path
of altruistic action (for others), for example for the Earth,
without attaching oneself to the results whether we succeed or not.
I'm sorry to say but in the context of new technologies most people
are not good enough and not strong enough to do this.
Shiva:
I choose the great movie Ex Machina (2014).
The human brain creates an electronic brain with infinite cosmic
powers. Some of the humans hope that these new creatures will not
just replace them but will merge with them like cyborgs and they'll
live infinite lives with unlimited powers. In real life A.I. treats
a human as a human treats an ant.
I see this as Bhakti yoga - reaching Moksha through a path of
devotion which means loving the God like creature (that humans
created) personally.
These humans mistakenly love the technology unconditionally. This is
what most humans do today and it's very bad.
Vishnu:
I choose the great movie First Man (2018).
It shows how a human was needed to fix glitches in the technical
equipment that could have ruin the mission (the spinning and the
landing scenes).
Merging the human soul with the cosmic soul by exploring the cosmos
physically - human space colonization and developing humanity by
spaceships and technology that obeys Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
(expert systems and symbolic artificial intelligence the old kind
that a human can read and debug) like the computer in the series
Star Trek we mentioned.
I see this as Jnana yoga - reaching Moksha through the path of
knowledge, which means a lot of meditating, systematic learning and
moral training.
Lakshmi:
"Truly very enlightening! I may be biased but I feel the middle way
that Vishnu and me explored is the only one that makes sense! In
time, when humanity will grow up mentally, when humans will stop
thinking only about ME HERE & NOW then and only then humanity is
able to apply the "precautionary principle" to GNR (Genetics, Nano,
Robotics) technologies!"
[The gang all agree ]
When they exit the exciting Sea Life aquarium, the gang come across
a commercial of:
Cavalia, A Magical Encounter Between Human and Horse
Cirque du Soleil Zaia show - Fire dance
Lakshmi:
"Do you see what's happening? The white horse and the fiery sword of
Kalki - Now people are doing this! We can help humanity by making
them aware, but their fate is in their own hands!"
Vishnu:
"You're right! Say... Indra talked about this is a game with a GRAND
PRIZE... I wonder what he meant?"
[They gang look up in the video games arcade, there's an old "Mortal
Kombat" game, showing Raiden who is based on Raijin, is a god of
lightning, thunder and storms in Japanese mythology]
Lakshmi:
"That must be it! He's like our Indra who is associated with
lightning, thunder, storms, rains, river flows and war. See? mortal
kombat against the immortal machines!"
[The gang nod excitedly while suddenly on the screen flashes the
answer to their question:]