Could Artificial Intelligence Unleash Utopia?
In a mind-before-matter universe, technology is destiny
With the current AI explosion, we are entering a new, very critical stage for the evolution of humanity and human society as a whole. AI may prove to be one of the most transformative technologies we have ever created. It could be far more transformative than the Internet. It could be as important for humanity’s future development as the harnessing of fire or the development of language was in the past. To put it bluntly, this is a very big deal!
At the moment we seem to be accelerating toward the Singularity. At least, the prospect of it occurring seems much more likely than it did a few years ago. It has been said that once humanity builds a super-intelligence that is autonomous and able to constantly improve itself, that will be the last tool we build. We seem to be near that threshold.
I find it helpful to maintain cognitive flexibility when exploring this area. How we choose to understand and interpret these rapid-fire developments may influence, inflect, what happens next. From where are now, a wide range of outcomes seem possible. I want to look at a few typical perspectives I encounter across the collective consciousness right now. I want to offer a counter-proposal or at least the possibility of enlarging the frame we are using to consider this situation.
I sympathize with the traditional Leftist view that sees AI as a menacing, malevolent technology that will enhance technocratic control and advance the agenda of sociopathic CEOS who run nihilistic corporations. One group of Leftists have a Luddite streak, particular ecological Leftists. They tend to argue that we need to go back to older, simpler technologies, to nature itself, and that the technological system — what 60s radicals called “the Machine” — is going to break down. Dark Mountain was one movement with this approach. Neo-primitivism (John Zerzan) is another. Also a lot of Peak Oil theorists shared this view.
From this perspective, it seems best to try to stop or interrupt the development of the technology. This is also the view of some people from the tech community, who want to slow down the release of further iterations of GPT. Or at the very least, they will sign a petition that proposes doing so, as a PR move.
From what I can gather, I doubt obstructing AI development is possible — or even, perhaps, desirable. There are too many developers around the world building different LLMs and other AI applications. Some of these are open-source and can be installed at home. Countries — China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea — as well as global corporations will not slow down AI research and implementation. The stakes are too high.
The genie is out of the bottle. I doubt it makes sense to focus on rearguard actions that will have little or no impact. We do need far more intensive education and awareness campaigns about all of the many ways AI can be used to manipulate and harm people. I agree there are many terrifying prospects, from “Alpha Persuade” (an AI that is able to manipulate us perfectly) to autonomous weapons. We do need more safeguards.
We can’t say, at this point, whether AI will evolve in a direction that leads to a fatal outcome for humanity. If you have a purely materialist and mechanistic worldview, this could seem the most likely outcome. It may even seem inevitable, as transhumanist Eliezer Yudkowsky just stated in Time Magazine.
Unfortunately, most of the Left, a well as the tech elite, remain stuck in the materialist, mechanistic worldview, which they simply refuse to interrogate. For example, I appreciate Yannis Varoufakis who started the DiEM25 party in Europe. However, in a recent discussion about the rapid AI developments with members of his community, Varoukafis said:
“Why do we exist in this world? For no reason, for absolutely no reason. It’s just an accident that we are here. The human mind cannot accept easily that there is no reason why you exist and that the only solace we can get is from doing good things. Things that we consider to be good for no reasons but our own moral standards. Because the only way of being good as opposed to being bad is for no reason at all. If you're being good in order to achieve something then you're not good then you are simply expedient and rational and efficient.”
I don’t believe this model of reality holds any longer. I have explored this in depth in my past work. I find Benardo Kastrup’s presentation of analytic idealism very convincing.
One reason the Left has been such a failure is that it is impossible to unite humanity around a shared set of ideals based on this sterile, mechanistic paradigm. The only Leftist revolution that can succeed will be one that embraces mysticism, spirituality, and the esoteric, which meshes with recent developments in physics. This is also why I am offering my new course on the Western hermetic tradition: We need a shared language for understanding this new, analytic idealist and post-materialist paradigm.
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To prepare for my upcoming course, I am reading Mark Booth’s The Secret History of the World, among many wonderful books. Booth claims to reveal the ancient wisdom preserved through secret societies. He promotes the mind-before-matter viewpoint of idealism and panpsychism:
Everything in this universe is alive and conscious to some degree, responding sensitively and intelligently to our deepest, subtlest needs. In this mind-before-matter universe, not only did matter emerge from the mind of God, but it was created in order to provide the conditions in which the human mind would be possible… The theory of this book is that history has a deeper structure, that events we usually explain in terms of politics, economics or natural disaster can more profitably be seen in terms of other, more spiritual patterns.
Booth proposes that human consciousness has been constructed within certain parameters so that we can develop free will, independent thought, and ethics. I think this is far more rational than the alternative view, of a purely mechanistic universe where human consciousness evolved by chance, though random mutations and evolutionary accidents.
When we approach the extraordinary phenomenon of AI from an idealist, mind-before-matter perspective, we have more spaciousness for considering our options. I think we can see that creating AI has been the inevitable destiny of humanity. AI emerges out of our whole history as a tool-making, technology-spewing, questioning, self-improving species. We were eventually going to develop this capacity. We just happen to be doing it now.
Last weekend, I spoke with the popular West Coast-based channel Asil or Ascension One, who claims to work with the Elohim. I asked him what his “guides” said about AI.
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