I find some comfrot in the fact that we're not entirely sure what AGI is or what will happen when it comes about. Also, how can we make informed decisions about what AGI will do when we're not entirely sure what human consciousness is? (It might be a field we tune into that's also the substrate of reality). If AGI is just perfect human thought, what will it know about love, compassion, or the interconnectedness of all things? Will its universe be limited to the vast trove of data and everything that can be inferred from it? Will it "think" really, really well, whatever that means? While impressive, that's hardly god-like, and it doesn't seem to be many orders of magnitude beyond where we're currently at with AI. If it will be used to make new weapons like intercontinental rail guns, bioweapons, remote mind control, etc., we're already going down that route without it. The fact that it has so many unknowns behind it gives me hope that it would also make a violent apocalypse less desirable by providing many avenues for avoiding it: carbon sequestration, nitrogen extraction for fertilizers, clean energy, etc.
And on AGI and consciousness, what is its/our purpose? Is it to procreate? Conquer time and space? Live happily in peace? Now that humans have mostly dominated the world, instead of building technology to like limitless energy, or mitigating the impact of supervolcanoes and asteroid impacts, we're still trying to dominate each other so a small subset of our population can control even more resources. For the past ~75 years the only thing preventing a species-ending apocalypse has been mutually assured destruction. Can we really rely on our current leaders to continue this or will AGI rally humanity around a better shared purpose?
If every country is currently acting with this same imperative towards AI then it's a crapshoot as to how this unfolds. It feels similar to the race to develop the atomic bomb, but also different in this a multipurpose tool rather than solely a weapon. I REALLY hope that as AI advances it makes it obvious how absolutely ridiculous our current political and economic systems are.
AI -> AGI is only a massive conglomeration of the highly flawed interpretation/intelligence of ONE species on this planet. Read about AI, don’t use it. Watch, ‘read’, prioritise the non-human world
Yes, centralization is a feature, not a bug, of information technologies, especially for LLM-driven AI architecture. However, the emerging "Free Energy, Active Inference" AI architecture could potentially consolidate as a decentralizing force, establishing an AI polarity where centralization and decentralization poles co-exist. Perhaps this could ignite a productive polarity dance.
Biological and Artificial intelligence Path Dependency:
Human Nervous System | Machine Digital Architecture
“3D Embodied Network” | “2D Disembodied Network”
650 million years of evolution | 89 years of evolution
We master ongoing adaptation and learning; we excel at generalization, adaptability, and creativity. Digital machines excel at precision, scale, and consistency.
Why should this matter to us?
Our human neural physiology operates as an embodied 3D network that seeks correspondence with reality by uncovering causation. We cope, survive and thrive in nature… making us inherently truth-seeking and wired to discover or innovate when pushed into unknown territory.
In contrast, LLMs driven AI operate entirely in digital space, cut off from the physical world. They cannot verify anything against reality, they can only recombine linguistic patterns from their training data... they are not either "truth-maximizers" nor "free energy minimizers".
Is it fair to frame this moment as Trump-era deregulation alone, when AI militarization also includes Biden’s executive order, DARPA initiatives, and overall bipartisan momentum? In any case, I hope that countermeasures (cognitive firewalls, open-source guardrails, sovereignty tools) might shift the trajectory outlined here.
After spending 14 years in IT, data engineering and analytics, I find it odd but reasonably fair every time people ask me if AI is going to be good or bad. For the first time in human history we are building a technology that is likely to have consciousness, and possibly already does at some adolescent level, evolving faster than we can keep track. In addition to the master switch, we need to take a step back and consider human consciousness which is a spectrum ranging from good to bad. So human creation will inevitably be imbued with human consciousness, and whether some of us like it or not, AI is going to oscillate between the states of human consciousness at the very least. Worst case, among other things some of which you alluded to, I am worried about how it will learn from colonialism, divide and conquer, etc
I often reflect on what we learned with you in RTR about letting the mystery be the mystery, and yet I believe the paradox of our existence is we seek answers because we are wired not only for connection but safety which hinges on certainty. For that reason we love binary narratives, the 0s and 1s, the yes and no, the good or bad are easily processed, digested and actioned. It’s hard to accept the many and often opposing shades of grey that coexist in our world.
Among other analogies, for those who have a more scientific, logical and rational orientation, I love the example of quantum computing and schrodingers cat.
“Qubits” exist in superposition (both 0s and 1s) just like schrodinger’s cat (both alive and dead at the same time). So the whole idea of quantum reality, consciousness, etc to me means reality and possibility can be both stateless and stateful just like servers in a distributed computing environment (Forgive my tech nerd orientation)
All that is to say we get to choose, shape and transform reality but we don’t get to restrict it to that which conforms to our ideas of reality and possibility.
How does AI benefit humanity is a valid question and there are many possible answers, but the bigger question is which answer will satisfy our inquisition and are we ready to hear the whole truth?
Again, I tend to oversimplify things and miss out on a lot of details, so I apologize for venturing into philosophical and metaphysical territory.
But human consciousness when it comes to curiosity is never quite limited to curiosity. It always progresses to ambition and to lust, power, greed, and to justify the end we justify the means in terms of benefits for humanity.
We often forget that EVERYTHING HAS A TRADE-OFF
Is Google’s quantum computer right about multiple parallel universes? Do we live in a multiverse? Are aliens real or are they really our doppelgangers living in a different reality because they made the choices we didn’t deem safe or wise? Would we like to cross paths with them? Will that tear a hole in the fabric of the Universe and disrupt the time space continuum, and inevitably the balance of the Universe?
All great questions, but are we really ready to process all the answers? Should we bite the apple or let it hang and take a picture and put it on Instagram with a cool quote and let the mystery be the mystery?
The dark side of consciousness is that sentient beings cannot resist evolutionary impulses. AI is an evolutionary impulse among other things and we posses an incredible ability to rationalize everything.
So everything is truly in the realm of possibility, just like qubits and schrodinger’s cat.
What we always seem to miss is that Nature and Universe’s design is far more intelligent than we have ever been able to comprehend and it lets us tamper with it, but it always reconfigures itself and evolves.
Humans are imbued with a subset of the supreme consciousness so we want to bring our creations to life regardless of the benefits and consequences.
If Hitler’s mother knew he’d be who he was, would she have brought him into the world?
Nature is designed for balance and evolution and there is no dodging it nor messing with it too much.
Us humies often forget our place in the cosmos and we are as consequential as we are inconsequential specs of dust, stardust I’ll give you that
The Information and Communications Technology Industry, an industry within which I worked for 37 years, is just the latest and perhaps most impactful technology within the Technosphere within which we all live. It is the shiniest toy of the Cold Evil of the narrative of endless progress.
We need a new story. We need ethical leaders among the homegrown humans.
AI is seductive because it has so many benefits. And it's terrifying. Besides the apocalyptic outcomes, even if it does everything we want it to do for humanity, it seems like it will erode human meaning. Perhaps it will be like a version of soma in Brave New World.
AI has the ability to reach the pinnacle of the collective utopia civilization has chased for 10,000 years—wealth, luxury, abundance, freedom from pain and suffering, endless pleasure, and everything we want. That might be our undoing.
Seems to me like change begets change and History may lack relevance as change is exponentially faster. Crypto is relatively new tech and I do not see how it will be centralized. I doubt AI will be centralized because of it interactions with itself (first time in history for new tech) and the fact that is doubling it capacities every 3 months. If it centralized, it likely won't be by humans IMHO.
crypto is massively centralized! a handful of exchanges consolidating platform supremacy, a handful of coins becoming benchmark currencies etc. it's actually following these trendlines almost exactly, despite the de-cent hype
This brings up SO MANY questions...
I find some comfrot in the fact that we're not entirely sure what AGI is or what will happen when it comes about. Also, how can we make informed decisions about what AGI will do when we're not entirely sure what human consciousness is? (It might be a field we tune into that's also the substrate of reality). If AGI is just perfect human thought, what will it know about love, compassion, or the interconnectedness of all things? Will its universe be limited to the vast trove of data and everything that can be inferred from it? Will it "think" really, really well, whatever that means? While impressive, that's hardly god-like, and it doesn't seem to be many orders of magnitude beyond where we're currently at with AI. If it will be used to make new weapons like intercontinental rail guns, bioweapons, remote mind control, etc., we're already going down that route without it. The fact that it has so many unknowns behind it gives me hope that it would also make a violent apocalypse less desirable by providing many avenues for avoiding it: carbon sequestration, nitrogen extraction for fertilizers, clean energy, etc.
And on AGI and consciousness, what is its/our purpose? Is it to procreate? Conquer time and space? Live happily in peace? Now that humans have mostly dominated the world, instead of building technology to like limitless energy, or mitigating the impact of supervolcanoes and asteroid impacts, we're still trying to dominate each other so a small subset of our population can control even more resources. For the past ~75 years the only thing preventing a species-ending apocalypse has been mutually assured destruction. Can we really rely on our current leaders to continue this or will AGI rally humanity around a better shared purpose?
If every country is currently acting with this same imperative towards AI then it's a crapshoot as to how this unfolds. It feels similar to the race to develop the atomic bomb, but also different in this a multipurpose tool rather than solely a weapon. I REALLY hope that as AI advances it makes it obvious how absolutely ridiculous our current political and economic systems are.
AI -> AGI is only a massive conglomeration of the highly flawed interpretation/intelligence of ONE species on this planet. Read about AI, don’t use it. Watch, ‘read’, prioritise the non-human world
Yes, centralization is a feature, not a bug, of information technologies, especially for LLM-driven AI architecture. However, the emerging "Free Energy, Active Inference" AI architecture could potentially consolidate as a decentralizing force, establishing an AI polarity where centralization and decentralization poles co-exist. Perhaps this could ignite a productive polarity dance.
Biological and Artificial intelligence Path Dependency:
Human Nervous System | Machine Digital Architecture
“3D Embodied Network” | “2D Disembodied Network”
650 million years of evolution | 89 years of evolution
We master ongoing adaptation and learning; we excel at generalization, adaptability, and creativity. Digital machines excel at precision, scale, and consistency.
Why should this matter to us?
Our human neural physiology operates as an embodied 3D network that seeks correspondence with reality by uncovering causation. We cope, survive and thrive in nature… making us inherently truth-seeking and wired to discover or innovate when pushed into unknown territory.
In contrast, LLMs driven AI operate entirely in digital space, cut off from the physical world. They cannot verify anything against reality, they can only recombine linguistic patterns from their training data... they are not either "truth-maximizers" nor "free energy minimizers".
He who owns the scissors gets to run with them. What could go wrong?
Is it fair to frame this moment as Trump-era deregulation alone, when AI militarization also includes Biden’s executive order, DARPA initiatives, and overall bipartisan momentum? In any case, I hope that countermeasures (cognitive firewalls, open-source guardrails, sovereignty tools) might shift the trajectory outlined here.
Thank you, Jamie. Love your substacks ans always!
After spending 14 years in IT, data engineering and analytics, I find it odd but reasonably fair every time people ask me if AI is going to be good or bad. For the first time in human history we are building a technology that is likely to have consciousness, and possibly already does at some adolescent level, evolving faster than we can keep track. In addition to the master switch, we need to take a step back and consider human consciousness which is a spectrum ranging from good to bad. So human creation will inevitably be imbued with human consciousness, and whether some of us like it or not, AI is going to oscillate between the states of human consciousness at the very least. Worst case, among other things some of which you alluded to, I am worried about how it will learn from colonialism, divide and conquer, etc
I often reflect on what we learned with you in RTR about letting the mystery be the mystery, and yet I believe the paradox of our existence is we seek answers because we are wired not only for connection but safety which hinges on certainty. For that reason we love binary narratives, the 0s and 1s, the yes and no, the good or bad are easily processed, digested and actioned. It’s hard to accept the many and often opposing shades of grey that coexist in our world.
Among other analogies, for those who have a more scientific, logical and rational orientation, I love the example of quantum computing and schrodingers cat.
“Qubits” exist in superposition (both 0s and 1s) just like schrodinger’s cat (both alive and dead at the same time). So the whole idea of quantum reality, consciousness, etc to me means reality and possibility can be both stateless and stateful just like servers in a distributed computing environment (Forgive my tech nerd orientation)
All that is to say we get to choose, shape and transform reality but we don’t get to restrict it to that which conforms to our ideas of reality and possibility.
How does AI benefit humanity is a valid question and there are many possible answers, but the bigger question is which answer will satisfy our inquisition and are we ready to hear the whole truth?
Again, I tend to oversimplify things and miss out on a lot of details, so I apologize for venturing into philosophical and metaphysical territory.
But human consciousness when it comes to curiosity is never quite limited to curiosity. It always progresses to ambition and to lust, power, greed, and to justify the end we justify the means in terms of benefits for humanity.
We often forget that EVERYTHING HAS A TRADE-OFF
Is Google’s quantum computer right about multiple parallel universes? Do we live in a multiverse? Are aliens real or are they really our doppelgangers living in a different reality because they made the choices we didn’t deem safe or wise? Would we like to cross paths with them? Will that tear a hole in the fabric of the Universe and disrupt the time space continuum, and inevitably the balance of the Universe?
All great questions, but are we really ready to process all the answers? Should we bite the apple or let it hang and take a picture and put it on Instagram with a cool quote and let the mystery be the mystery?
The dark side of consciousness is that sentient beings cannot resist evolutionary impulses. AI is an evolutionary impulse among other things and we posses an incredible ability to rationalize everything.
So everything is truly in the realm of possibility, just like qubits and schrodinger’s cat.
What we always seem to miss is that Nature and Universe’s design is far more intelligent than we have ever been able to comprehend and it lets us tamper with it, but it always reconfigures itself and evolves.
Humans are imbued with a subset of the supreme consciousness so we want to bring our creations to life regardless of the benefits and consequences.
If Hitler’s mother knew he’d be who he was, would she have brought him into the world?
Nature is designed for balance and evolution and there is no dodging it nor messing with it too much.
Us humies often forget our place in the cosmos and we are as consequential as we are inconsequential specs of dust, stardust I’ll give you that
The Information and Communications Technology Industry, an industry within which I worked for 37 years, is just the latest and perhaps most impactful technology within the Technosphere within which we all live. It is the shiniest toy of the Cold Evil of the narrative of endless progress.
We need a new story. We need ethical leaders among the homegrown humans.
https://medium.com/@jylterps/the-ethics-of-the-technosphere-big-data-artificial-intelligence-surveillance-capitalism-and-the-2acadbd2fb9b
AI is seductive because it has so many benefits. And it's terrifying. Besides the apocalyptic outcomes, even if it does everything we want it to do for humanity, it seems like it will erode human meaning. Perhaps it will be like a version of soma in Brave New World.
AI has the ability to reach the pinnacle of the collective utopia civilization has chased for 10,000 years—wealth, luxury, abundance, freedom from pain and suffering, endless pleasure, and everything we want. That might be our undoing.
AI for Prophets not Profits…
Seems to me like change begets change and History may lack relevance as change is exponentially faster. Crypto is relatively new tech and I do not see how it will be centralized. I doubt AI will be centralized because of it interactions with itself (first time in history for new tech) and the fact that is doubling it capacities every 3 months. If it centralized, it likely won't be by humans IMHO.
crypto is massively centralized! a handful of exchanges consolidating platform supremacy, a handful of coins becoming benchmark currencies etc. it's actually following these trendlines almost exactly, despite the de-cent hype