To repost something I put on another blog, we have been through this before (though not in such a spiritual issue except perhaps with printing):
An example was when powered looms replaced the hand crofters in late 18th century Britain. A huge number of people, compounded by the enclosures of small farms for sheep raising, were kicked out and ended up in hellish factories and miserable cities. Production increased and eventually everyone did better, but it took about two generations of lousy conditions and major social unrest to get there.
Obviously this can’t sort of thing cannot be stopped. The Luddites tried to destroy the looms and had no more luck than the people today who want to halt AI will have (good luck getting places like China, India, North Korea or Russia, or somebody experimenting in a basement, to go along with that). And on the other hand Musk’s idea that in another generation we’ll have a world of peace and prosperity from this technology seems equally unrealistic.
But what can be done is to plan for the elimination and creation of new jobs to make the transition as easy as possible. (The same could be done for other industries like, say, coal mining.) Encouraging and supporting education for the future, planned development of certain areas and cities and so on is possible even if politically very difficult in America. But we can remember that even when Britain was going through some of the worst of its industrial revolution a few factory owners tried to have decent conditions for their workers. And we can do better than that today.
I am heartened that you’re engaging in this way, as I really appreciate the way you work through heterodox ideas and I am personally more inclined—at this moment in time, at least—to “retreat to the sidelines and critique” while AI is making hash of both my writing and teaching careers.
“Paul McCartney is releasing a new track. It’s his first new song in five years—so that’s a big deal. But there’s something even more significant about this 2 minute 45 second release. The song is silent. It’s a totally blank track—except for a bit of hiss and background noise. What’s going on? Has Paul McCartney run out of melodies at age 83? Is he nurturing his inner John Cage. Did he simply forget to turn on the mic? No, none of the above. Macca is releasing this track as a protest against AI.”
Me too! Ari’s and other AI videos seem like a wonderfully creative extension of the lineage of political/social cartooning and in this respect may serve a positive purpose, but it is a Pandora’s Box that I don’t see how will ever be closed.
I think the questions around AI must be about as confusing and disorienting as it gets in this astonishingly disorienting time in history. Whenever I (reluctantly) engage my thinking on this subject, it always comes back to the eternal question "What are people for?" This is, for me, the question that arises when I consider the words "Know Thyself", words that we are told were inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. I believe that engaging with this question is our principle work.
AI poses a major challenge to this work. Maybe it will force us to confront this question of who we are as human beings as we have never fully confronted it before. I hope so. I find myself wondering if humanity is up to the task at hand, but because the stakes are so very high, I have to believe that it is, and that each of us has a part to play. Maybe thoughtfully crafted AI videos can truly help redirect people to explore these universal and essential themes.
I don't know how it will play out, but it is pretty obvious that AI is here and not going away, barring some huge cataclysm that I don't want to contemplate. Yet I still feel repelled by the whole concept, and feel heartened to know that many in your daughter's generation do too. It feels like a kind of healthy resistance to me. Who knows - maybe this resistance will help to shape it in a healthy direction.
I sent my 18 year old a link to the AI video Ari created. He said he would not watch it because AI was poison. I quoted you Daniel thinking I had a convincing argument.
“If I was fighting in a war and I found that someone had left a powerful weapon lying on the ground, I wouldn’t not use it because it was made by my enemies. “
My son told me that in WW2 soldiers were advised not to pick up the enemy’s weapons for fear of being mistaken for the enemy and accidentally shot.
I go back and forth with AI. I can’t decide if it’s an expensive toy or the next big thing. I think it can have enormous potential, but not with its current owners. They’ve shown again and again that they don’t have humanity’s best interests at heart. Without regulation, this shit could be deadly.
Frankly, I don’t think AI’s ready to replace us. I’ve been experimenting with it for a while, and it makes far too many errors and contains too many biases to safely do anything of consequence. A little hallucination here and there is fine when you’re making funny reels, but hallucinations can be deadly when you’re approving health insurance claims, writing legal briefs, or offering life advice. I don’t believe AI is sentient. Anyone who thinks so is having a Pygmalion moment.
Still, it’s not something I’d like to stick my head in the sand about. It’s always wise to thoroughly understand the tools of your would-be enemies.
Also: much of the debate around AI reminds me of the late night discussions we used to have in the electronics studio of my alma mater. Was electronic music really music? Similarly with the advent of hip hop and sampling. It takes time to learn how to use new tools.
I would very much like to take your course, but I don’t have $400 lying around. I understand you offer scholarships, but you’re favoring the young. I may be an aging punk, but I’m young in mind.
I fear that after the AI genie is turned loose on the world, there will be no way to stuff the genie back into the infernal lamp. AI seems to be a technological monstrosity which is being unleashed with insufficient guardrails. Perhaps the monster should, if possible, be destroyed and start over.
I don’t know, Daniel. I think you’re taking a huge risk here. The problem is you think you will be using AI but at the end of the day AI will be using you, grooming you, and sucking up your own intelligence to be used for its own purposes. That’s it’s fundamental modus operandi. It appears you and others are willing to take that risk. Have you been somehow seduced and are simply ignoring Steiner's warnings? Otherwise your critique in the early part of this post is spot on. At the end of the day, aren’t you taking the same risk that the oligarchs are taking i.e. we’ll use it but let’s hope it doesn’t destroy us in the process? Isn’t what you’re proposing with its known and inherent risks just another version of what they’re doing?
Real intelligent people aren't afraid of losing their intelligence. Without a legit reason, it's insecure to think you can become less intelligent because of a tool. It shows that you aren't educated on it. It's a cyclic problem.
To claim that AI is the only intelligence sucker in our current environment, is a scare tactic spread by the tech companies themselves and unimaginative folks with good intentions. It's necessary to address the issues, but it's not a doom scenario if you don't let it become that.
People ruin their brains daily while binging Netflix and having poor diets and other habits. Everyone already reads and thinks at a 6th grade reading level. AI didn't do that.
I on the other hand, make a conscious effort to take care of my brain and evolve my intelligence by not staying in flight or fight. On the contrary, even though I use and train AI as a tool, I highly doubt that my intelligence is going anywhere since I'm constantly thinking outside of the box along with staying engaged with high cognitive work and deep inner self-reflection. So while I see where you are coming from, it still isn't a good enough reason to fear all AI as a brain dumbing tool. It's ignorant to think that way, which is ironic but not surprising.
Well this is all a sticky wicket. Many angles to approach this from but I’ll just pick two: spiritual and cognitive. In terms of the former, I’ll observe the basic structure of many of DP’s posts. Something like this: “Pop tarts are bad for you in so many ways. Here are 10 ways. But I really like them and I’m going to eat them anyway”. This is the rhetorical structure of many posts including this AI screed. Just saying.
Now down to cases. Let’s take the spiritual argument first. Daniel writes: “Another issue is that the broligarchs have made a Faustian (i.e. Satanic) pact with Mephistopheles/Ahriman, believing that if they keep pushing to create ASI, it will reward them by helping them overcome mortality so they can live forever, as “techno-feudal” tyrants and “network state” overlords in a robot dystopia.” But no problem, right? We’ll play around with their creation anyway. Does Daniel really believe this? Do you? Or are these “just words”. If so, where is the circumspect hesitation?
Now on to cognitive. I would encourage you to read this excellent article in The Guardian cited below. Here's a quote: “With some MIT colleagues, Kosmyna set up an experiment that used an electroencephalogram to monitor people’s brain activity while they wrote essays, either with no digital assistance, or with the help of an internet search engine, or ChatGPT. She found that the more external help participants had, the lower their level of brain connectivity, so those who used ChatGPT to write showed significantly less activity in the brain networks associated with cognitive processing, attention and creativity. In other words, whatever the people using ChatGPT felt was going on inside their brains, the scans showed there wasn’t much happening up there.”
Daniel, thank you for the piece. I’ve written a response exploring the emotional, philosophical and conceptual contradictions in our wider AI discourse. My take is that low-resolution, apocalypse-focused thinking cannot guide us into the next phase of intelligence or human evolution.
By ‘embracing’ AI - just ribbing the guy here, half ribbing. He thinks Trump is the Antichrist but he wants to embrace AI now, even though his conscience is clearly not down with it, in order to hopefully fight his Antichrist, playing right into the hands of the real Antichrist.
I’m not sure… I feel it is still worth learning the skill and experimenting with the medium, but it may be my final decision will be to run away from it. However I still basically feel we need to use the tools / weapons that we have. I use AI for my research etc and find it incredibly useful. I do sense an anti machine humanist revolution may be coming!
I sense that too. I also utilize it, so I’m not claiming some purity. Wonder if you’ve read Kingsnorths new book ‘Against the Machine’, it is trying to forge this revolution.
Daniel he has a substantive point. You didn't qualify your statement about what you call AI's Luciferic connection to Big Tech. So I must believe that you actually meant that and it was not simply a rhetorical device or a stray musing. That said, as a Steiner adherent, I think you do indeed need to consider where you are aligning your personal and spiritual energies and to clarify your position for the thoughtful readers of this substack. Thoughts?
To repost something I put on another blog, we have been through this before (though not in such a spiritual issue except perhaps with printing):
An example was when powered looms replaced the hand crofters in late 18th century Britain. A huge number of people, compounded by the enclosures of small farms for sheep raising, were kicked out and ended up in hellish factories and miserable cities. Production increased and eventually everyone did better, but it took about two generations of lousy conditions and major social unrest to get there.
Obviously this can’t sort of thing cannot be stopped. The Luddites tried to destroy the looms and had no more luck than the people today who want to halt AI will have (good luck getting places like China, India, North Korea or Russia, or somebody experimenting in a basement, to go along with that). And on the other hand Musk’s idea that in another generation we’ll have a world of peace and prosperity from this technology seems equally unrealistic.
But what can be done is to plan for the elimination and creation of new jobs to make the transition as easy as possible. (The same could be done for other industries like, say, coal mining.) Encouraging and supporting education for the future, planned development of certain areas and cities and so on is possible even if politically very difficult in America. But we can remember that even when Britain was going through some of the worst of its industrial revolution a few factory owners tried to have decent conditions for their workers. And we can do better than that today.
Well said!
I am heartened that you’re engaging in this way, as I really appreciate the way you work through heterodox ideas and I am personally more inclined—at this moment in time, at least—to “retreat to the sidelines and critique” while AI is making hash of both my writing and teaching careers.
“Paul McCartney is releasing a new track. It’s his first new song in five years—so that’s a big deal. But there’s something even more significant about this 2 minute 45 second release. The song is silent. It’s a totally blank track—except for a bit of hiss and background noise. What’s going on? Has Paul McCartney run out of melodies at age 83? Is he nurturing his inner John Cage. Did he simply forget to turn on the mic? No, none of the above. Macca is releasing this track as a protest against AI.”
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/paul-mccartney-invents-a-new-kind?
Me too! Ari’s and other AI videos seem like a wonderfully creative extension of the lineage of political/social cartooning and in this respect may serve a positive purpose, but it is a Pandora’s Box that I don’t see how will ever be closed.
I think the questions around AI must be about as confusing and disorienting as it gets in this astonishingly disorienting time in history. Whenever I (reluctantly) engage my thinking on this subject, it always comes back to the eternal question "What are people for?" This is, for me, the question that arises when I consider the words "Know Thyself", words that we are told were inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. I believe that engaging with this question is our principle work.
AI poses a major challenge to this work. Maybe it will force us to confront this question of who we are as human beings as we have never fully confronted it before. I hope so. I find myself wondering if humanity is up to the task at hand, but because the stakes are so very high, I have to believe that it is, and that each of us has a part to play. Maybe thoughtfully crafted AI videos can truly help redirect people to explore these universal and essential themes.
I don't know how it will play out, but it is pretty obvious that AI is here and not going away, barring some huge cataclysm that I don't want to contemplate. Yet I still feel repelled by the whole concept, and feel heartened to know that many in your daughter's generation do too. It feels like a kind of healthy resistance to me. Who knows - maybe this resistance will help to shape it in a healthy direction.
Hi
I sent my 18 year old a link to the AI video Ari created. He said he would not watch it because AI was poison. I quoted you Daniel thinking I had a convincing argument.
“If I was fighting in a war and I found that someone had left a powerful weapon lying on the ground, I wouldn’t not use it because it was made by my enemies. “
My son told me that in WW2 soldiers were advised not to pick up the enemy’s weapons for fear of being mistaken for the enemy and accidentally shot.
I learn so very much from my kid!
I go back and forth with AI. I can’t decide if it’s an expensive toy or the next big thing. I think it can have enormous potential, but not with its current owners. They’ve shown again and again that they don’t have humanity’s best interests at heart. Without regulation, this shit could be deadly.
Frankly, I don’t think AI’s ready to replace us. I’ve been experimenting with it for a while, and it makes far too many errors and contains too many biases to safely do anything of consequence. A little hallucination here and there is fine when you’re making funny reels, but hallucinations can be deadly when you’re approving health insurance claims, writing legal briefs, or offering life advice. I don’t believe AI is sentient. Anyone who thinks so is having a Pygmalion moment.
Still, it’s not something I’d like to stick my head in the sand about. It’s always wise to thoroughly understand the tools of your would-be enemies.
Also: much of the debate around AI reminds me of the late night discussions we used to have in the electronics studio of my alma mater. Was electronic music really music? Similarly with the advent of hip hop and sampling. It takes time to learn how to use new tools.
I would very much like to take your course, but I don’t have $400 lying around. I understand you offer scholarships, but you’re favoring the young. I may be an aging punk, but I’m young in mind.
I fear that after the AI genie is turned loose on the world, there will be no way to stuff the genie back into the infernal lamp. AI seems to be a technological monstrosity which is being unleashed with insufficient guardrails. Perhaps the monster should, if possible, be destroyed and start over.
It’s an evil genie coming out of this bottle.
When you mentioned that our team could create AI videos to combat our enemy…my stomach sank.
For me there lies the problem…video video video….what do these short form videos do to us all.
And it’s like this wonderful Substack …I came to read and write but it’s more like long form Insta everyday.
I’m happy not to contribute to the mess at the risk that I may fall behind in this one.
It may be a tool but it doesn’t feel good in my hands …
Peace ✌️
Excellent 3-part series...love it.
I don’t know, Daniel. I think you’re taking a huge risk here. The problem is you think you will be using AI but at the end of the day AI will be using you, grooming you, and sucking up your own intelligence to be used for its own purposes. That’s it’s fundamental modus operandi. It appears you and others are willing to take that risk. Have you been somehow seduced and are simply ignoring Steiner's warnings? Otherwise your critique in the early part of this post is spot on. At the end of the day, aren’t you taking the same risk that the oligarchs are taking i.e. we’ll use it but let’s hope it doesn’t destroy us in the process? Isn’t what you’re proposing with its known and inherent risks just another version of what they’re doing?
Also: Here's Bernie on AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h30Np0mnPDs
Real intelligent people aren't afraid of losing their intelligence. Without a legit reason, it's insecure to think you can become less intelligent because of a tool. It shows that you aren't educated on it. It's a cyclic problem.
To claim that AI is the only intelligence sucker in our current environment, is a scare tactic spread by the tech companies themselves and unimaginative folks with good intentions. It's necessary to address the issues, but it's not a doom scenario if you don't let it become that.
People ruin their brains daily while binging Netflix and having poor diets and other habits. Everyone already reads and thinks at a 6th grade reading level. AI didn't do that.
I on the other hand, make a conscious effort to take care of my brain and evolve my intelligence by not staying in flight or fight. On the contrary, even though I use and train AI as a tool, I highly doubt that my intelligence is going anywhere since I'm constantly thinking outside of the box along with staying engaged with high cognitive work and deep inner self-reflection. So while I see where you are coming from, it still isn't a good enough reason to fear all AI as a brain dumbing tool. It's ignorant to think that way, which is ironic but not surprising.
Well this is all a sticky wicket. Many angles to approach this from but I’ll just pick two: spiritual and cognitive. In terms of the former, I’ll observe the basic structure of many of DP’s posts. Something like this: “Pop tarts are bad for you in so many ways. Here are 10 ways. But I really like them and I’m going to eat them anyway”. This is the rhetorical structure of many posts including this AI screed. Just saying.
Now down to cases. Let’s take the spiritual argument first. Daniel writes: “Another issue is that the broligarchs have made a Faustian (i.e. Satanic) pact with Mephistopheles/Ahriman, believing that if they keep pushing to create ASI, it will reward them by helping them overcome mortality so they can live forever, as “techno-feudal” tyrants and “network state” overlords in a robot dystopia.” But no problem, right? We’ll play around with their creation anyway. Does Daniel really believe this? Do you? Or are these “just words”. If so, where is the circumspect hesitation?
Now on to cognitive. I would encourage you to read this excellent article in The Guardian cited below. Here's a quote: “With some MIT colleagues, Kosmyna set up an experiment that used an electroencephalogram to monitor people’s brain activity while they wrote essays, either with no digital assistance, or with the help of an internet search engine, or ChatGPT. She found that the more external help participants had, the lower their level of brain connectivity, so those who used ChatGPT to write showed significantly less activity in the brain networks associated with cognitive processing, attention and creativity. In other words, whatever the people using ChatGPT felt was going on inside their brains, the scans showed there wasn’t much happening up there.”
Thoughts?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology
Daniel, thank you for the piece. I’ve written a response exploring the emotional, philosophical and conceptual contradictions in our wider AI discourse. My take is that low-resolution, apocalypse-focused thinking cannot guide us into the next phase of intelligence or human evolution.
If you’re curious, the full response is here:
https://frankdasilva.substack.com/p/beyond-the-ai-apocalypse
Now when the true Antichrist comes, you’ll be at his right hand man!
By engaging with AI?
By ‘embracing’ AI - just ribbing the guy here, half ribbing. He thinks Trump is the Antichrist but he wants to embrace AI now, even though his conscience is clearly not down with it, in order to hopefully fight his Antichrist, playing right into the hands of the real Antichrist.
I’m not sure… I feel it is still worth learning the skill and experimenting with the medium, but it may be my final decision will be to run away from it. However I still basically feel we need to use the tools / weapons that we have. I use AI for my research etc and find it incredibly useful. I do sense an anti machine humanist revolution may be coming!
I sense that too. I also utilize it, so I’m not claiming some purity. Wonder if you’ve read Kingsnorths new book ‘Against the Machine’, it is trying to forge this revolution.
sounds convoluted!
Daniel he has a substantive point. You didn't qualify your statement about what you call AI's Luciferic connection to Big Tech. So I must believe that you actually meant that and it was not simply a rhetorical device or a stray musing. That said, as a Steiner adherent, I think you do indeed need to consider where you are aligning your personal and spiritual energies and to clarify your position for the thoughtful readers of this substack. Thoughts?
Must be hard for you! ;)