In an Alternate Universe, Trump and Musk Drink Ayahuasca, Find God

Transformative storyteller Ari Kuschnir joins Breaking the AI Barrier seminar

Even in the month or so since I decided to launch our upcoming seminar on Artificial Intelligence, Breaking the AI Barrier, these tools have become far more ubiquitous while the entire cultural conversation around them keeps shifting rapidly. Just today in The New York Times, technology critic Kevin Roose notes:

I think all the arguing about whether A.I. is good or bad obscures a more interesting thing happening right now, which is that this stuff, in its present form, has become genuinely useful. ChatGPT is the sixth-biggest website on Earth. Something like 43 percent of Americans in the work force use generative A.I. I can’t think of another technology, besides maybe the smartphone, that has gone from “doesn’t exist” to “basically can’t function without it” in less time… I used to feel like a crazy early adopter for using A.I. all the time, but now I feel as if I am actually closer to the median of the people I know, in terms of my daily usage.

Roose also notes, aptly: “The mental model I sometimes have of these chatbots is as a very smart assistant who has a dozen Ph.D.s but is also high on ketamine like 30 percent of the time.”

When it comes to AI, we are in the midst of a massive societal transformation that is happening rapidly and continually accelerating. While fascinating, this also makes it difficult to discuss and categorize — a moving target. The accelerating evolution of AI seems woven into other societal changes happening all around us, such as the shift from a flawed democracy to a bizarre form of authoritarianism that spreads its messages using deceptive AI (such as Trump’s horrifying “Gaza Trump” video) and machine-learning algorithms to keep people trapped in false ideologies and buggy conspiracy theories.

So far, it has been hard for artists and storytellers to keep pace with the speed of this AI transmutation. Ari Kuschnir is one creator who has put AI to good use. A founder of m ss ng p eces, a creative agency that produces advertising campaigns and short films, as well as a transformational storyteller, Kuschnir has been utilizing the video-making capacities of Artificial Intelligence in powerful and surprising ways. Last August, his short video of Trump undergoing a spiritual awakening after drinking ayahuasca went viral, with millions of people seeing it across the Internet:

Kurschnir followed it up with a video of Elon Musk undergoing a similar “dark night of the soul” and shamanic breakthrough. With this series, he created a wishful “story world” where our techno-feudal and authoritarian overlords have sudden breakthroughs to become the wisdom teachers humanity needs now:

Another video in the series explores Sam Altman’s unsatisfied yearning to be loved as his reason for building a massively controlling AI super-intelligence:

He has also made videos of RFK apprenticing with an indigenous bruja, and Netanyahu on a vision quest to the desert. Ted commissioned Kuschner to produce a piece for their 2024 conference. He made this short about a crystalline extraterrestrial apparition and humanity’s predictably jaded response:

arikuschnir

A post shared by @arikuschnir

I admit I have complex reactions to Kuschnir’s AI-enactments of alternate realities. This is one of the reasons I thought it would be interesting to invite him to share about his work (including the specific techniques he uses to produce these videos in only a matter of hours) and then hold a discussion around his films, as part of a deeper investigation of AI and the future of human creativity.

Derek Beres, one of the hosts of the Conspirituality podcast, criticizes Kuschnir’s video of Trump as a prime example of spiritual bypassing and “White Savior complex.” He writes:

This AI-generated video features Trump going on an ayahuasca hero’s journey, being transformed from a selfish narcissist into a shaman healing others with newfound spiritual knowledge. He becomes, well, Alan Watts, meditating in Buddhist robes, banging on hybrid djembe-bongos, counseling others.

The arc of the video is well-known to anyone familiar with Joseph Campbell’s work, yet is steeped in spiritual bypassing and political ignorance. The notion that a man who has exhibited nothing but selfish, self-serving behavior in public life for over two generations would magically be “healed” after one ayahuasca ceremony is so satirical and absurdist that Kafka would balk at its very suggestion…

The comments on the AI-generated video are as disconnected from reality as the video itself. The expected Trump stans found it; no surprise. But those in the “spiritual community” continue bypassing reality under the illusion that a few ounces of jungle juice would—as has been said of Trump since 2016 in these spaces—turn him into a “light worker.”

The only person who could make such a claim is someone who’s never been personally affected by one of his disastrous policies—or at least doesn’t realize they’ve been affected, if they’ve been indulging in right-wing media. More likely the former, however.

I see Kuschnir’s work differently. Whether he intends it consciously or not, his videos remind me a bit of Jeff Koons’ kitsch sculptures of porcelain puppies, cartoon characters, and steel bunnies. Koons fecklessly exacerbated American pop cultural tropes to the level of monstrous, frozen absurdity — as with Kuschnir’s films, I am not sure he meant this entirely ironically. But the films can be also read that way: They satirize a culture where everything is meant to be immediately accessible and utterly stress-free, whether the desired result is push-button fascism or an equally facile enlightenment. Whatever the films mean ultimately, I find them compelling, thought-provoking, and entertaining.

“Breaking the AI Barrier” runs from July 6 to July 30, with sessions on Sundays and group inquiries on Wednesdays. It’s a space for those who sense that AI is not just a technical event, but a psychic threshold. Kuschnir will help us explore that crossing — not with answers, but with deeper questions and insights into his rapid-response, AI-art-making process.