AI and the Faustian Bargain

On the road to depopulation or extermination? Which is no bargain at all.

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Amking

, after listening to the podcast I did with the East Meets West, monotheist doom brothers, recommended a podcast called The Great Simplification, Nate Hagens interviewing Daniel Schmachtenberger. Amking I think was referring to their work about localization, ecology and food production, but the first one I listened to was about Artificial Intelligence.

Daniel Schmachtenberger: “Silicon Dreams and Carbon Nightmares: The Wide Boundary Impacts of AI”

Episode 132

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Jul 17, 2024

I am not one who worries about AI very much. After the Chat GPT craze last year I was a bit concerned about the destabilizing potential of deep fakes, and ubiquitous technological surveillance, but I have more or less given it up to God, in the sense that there is very little I can do about the danger of AI, so why worry about it?

It is not AI I worry about, near as much as the true believers in AI, particularly those who have a hand in building AI. That danger became all the more clear, after listening to this podcast.

I will try to summarize the first half hour, in a few paragraphs.

Much of the marketing for AI is about how it is going to be a great tool for addressing climate change. Better modeling of things like warming trends or the melting of glaciers, to more effective techniques for aerosol based geoengineering, optimization of censors for pipeline leaks, dreams of renewable and nuclear breakthroughs, the AI will be able to crunch vastly more data than we have heretofore been able to manage, speeding up progress in reducing the worst impacts of climate change.

The reality is, one of the most active uses of AI, in efficiency gains, is fossil fuel production. Every single one of the major AI companies are working with fossil fuel companies, improving efficiencies for extracting fossil fuels. Which is why Jevon’s Paradox is so important, because the more we increase the use of renewables, the more fossil fuels we produce, the more energy overall we use. Every so-called gain in efficiency or renewables has been more than met with increased energy use, really during the whole of the industrial and now technological revolution.

The three primary uses for AI in fact, are fossil fuel extraction, improved weapons of and management of war, and expanding the reach of surveillance.

There is a lot of money in marketing AI, how it is going to improve our lives, fix climate change, save the planet. That marketing is paid for by fossil fuel and AI companies servicing fossil fuel companies. Those who would rather warn about the dangers of lethal AI autonomous weapons or ubiquitous technological surveillance or the extinction of the species and destruction of the planet, don’t have a lot of money or institutional support for marketing.

The general consensus in the AI community is, progress to a technological, AI singularity is inevitable, you can’t stop it, so the goal is to get there first, because if anyone is able to control it it will be the one who finally designs it, and of course everybody believes they would build a utopia with it, or at least make it the least dystopic compared to anybody else.

The process of transforming all hydro-carbon based life into silica based “life” forms is inevitable; that is, the extinction of every living thing and even the body of the earth, transformed into something like the borg of Star Trek fame. It is inevitable, so there is no ethical obligation to fight it.

Nick Bostrom, Ted Chu, Nick Land, Alex Karp, Ray Kurzweil, all are said to be more or less in line with the idea that all hydro-carbon based life will be transformed to silica, that we will all become one with the machine, or rather, every atom within us and every other atom of every living thing and non living thing on earth will be transformed into the machine.

That is a synopsis of the first 30 minutes of the podcast.

Not so fast…

There are some reasons to be skeptical about all this, not least electrical load. The total energy used globally for server farms, running the internet and AI, if it were a nation, would be 17th, most energy used. The heart of AI research in America is in California and the greater West Coast, but the energy needed to expand the energy use of AI would collapse the energy grid in California at least, but likely much of the west. There is a rush to build more nuclear, to support the growth of AI, but that proves mostly an overly-expensive boondoggle going nowhere. America seems hardly competent enough anymore, to build nuclear facilities.

AI thus far too, is really only good at speeding up the process of what humans are already doing. So far it looks mostly derivative. As to higher order technological advancements, things humans have been unable to do, like vastly more efficient batteries, or room temperature cold fusion, etc, there is no evidence yet AI is capable.

This all suggests a couple of things to me, where Nate Hagens nor Daniel Schmachtenberger are willing or able to go.

First, Climate Change is proved a scam the transhumanists don’t even believe in, merely a tool used to manipulate the masses into supporting their AI induced extinction. What could climate change even mean anyway, if the world is going to be transformed into a borg cube?

Second, Climate Change is proved a psyop, while so much of the work of AI goes into fossil fuel extraction. More fossil fuel extraction pays for more AI progress. They know consumer renewables like electrical cars to be a lie, because they want all that electricity for AI, and they don’t really believe in climate change anyway.

Third, all the promise of AI, better renewables, better nuclear, better education, chat-bots for old people in nursing homes, is mostly just spin to get you to support more lethal war, more sophisticated propaganda and expanded surveillance, on the way to extinction

Fourth, they need the electricity you are using. If we are all just atoms waiting to be subsumed into the machine, then it is as nothing to simply eliminate us and take our energy consumption to feed AI growth. Depopulation, by vaxx, pollution, toxicity, war, is merely derivative of the idea that we are all going to be extincted by AI anyway. The less people, the more electricity for AI, the same amount of hydro-carbons as feedstock for the silica revolution.

Fifth, does humanity have to smash the machine to save humanity?

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Faust’s bargain with Mephistopheles was, he would be gifted with unlimited learning and progress in understanding, eternal life, until such time as he felt content, he would be hauled off to serve in hell for eternity. He never imagined he could feel content, he would always thirst for more knowledge.

Oswald Spengler called modern European but more broadly western culture, Faustian. To an extent, particularly among our idiot elite intelligentsia here in America, the name fits. America’s leadership, the deep state plus technocracy, can never have enough power, they will not stop until they have absolute, total, global control, they will never stop. AI to them means primarily, total information control, the ultimate dream of every tyrant who ever lived.

I don’t believe America is purely Western or Faustian. I think the majority of Americans got on board the eternal progress train because we thought it would give us total consumer choice, the American Dream ever expanding. We were told we would lift the whole world out of poverty. But now that is all being taken away, given to illiterate migrants, or Israelis or Ukrainians, or simply taken. Hardly anyone assumes any longer, for certain, today’s kids will have a better life than their parents.

We Americans did not sign on to being subsumed into the machine, the destruction of all life on earth, or even autonomous, lethal, AI weaponry and ubiquitous technological surveillance. Americans did not sign on to a dream of a great replacement, all the property of American Citizens taken and redistributed to a flood of barbarians and to build an AI singularity. We never were asked, would you like to have every atom of your body and your children’s bodies, disassembled to build a thinking machine?

Americans might want to get content with good work, strong families and communities, a life more in rhythm with the earth, build our own civilization, for people and all the creatures of the earth to thrive - let the AI Faustians be hauled off to serve in hell for eternity.