If you read what Elon Musk and others believe about AI and ChatGPT, it might seem as if the doomsday clock have started ticking, and that we’re on the path to mutual annihilation, chemically cleansing the Earth for biological life.
Spoiler alert; It’s rubbish! Fabricated doomsday speak, similar to the fruit cake religious speech of the zealots from the past, who have proclaimed the end of the world for millenniums. This doesn’t mean there are no danger, quite the contrary, such speak is very dangerous.
The history of fruit cake zealots
965 people either committed suicide or were killed in Guyana in 1978. The reason? Jim Jones believed the end of the world was near, and that they’d cross over to “communist paradise” by laying down their lives by the river while drinking Kool Aid laced with cyanide. This is where the “drinking the Kool Aid” expression originates from.
Between 1978 and 1995 Ted Kaczynski sent 16 bombs targeting universities, airlines, and everything he saw as “institutions for technological progress”. His goal was to stop scientific progress – Hmm, I wonder who else have been talking about such “initiatives”. Ted’s idea of paradise was that we should all move into the forrest, live off the land, and return to our neolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The 22nd of July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated the largest ammonium nitrate bomb throughout human history, and proceeded to kill 69 people at Utøya, mostly children. His reasons? He believed we were victims of a Muslim invasion, and he wanted to avoid the destruction of what he perceived as Norwegian history, culture, and ethnicity.
My point?
All of the above fruit cakes drew their “inspirations” from the belief in that we were set on a path to destruction. Anders quoted “Fjordman” hundreds of times in his manifest, using it as proof of that Norwegians as a culture and ethnicity were going extinct within some 50 to 100 years. The clinical term for what they suffered from is probably best described as follows …
They were bat shit crazy, and their madness was based upon paranoia!
Regardless of what fruit cake conspiracy theorist you follow down the rabbit hole, you will find the same recurring pattern; Paranoia! This implies that Elon Musk and the others proclaiming the end of the world are feeding dangerous ideas. Their words might literally end up having some crazy guy believe in their rubbish, and apply some serious damage. What are you going to do when some Una Bomber 2.0 believes in your rubbish and blows up Amazon’s HQ Elon, citing you as his inspiration? Give the relatives of the victims a free ride to Mars?
I could pick on hundreds of people here; Sam Harris, Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, myself in a previous life for that matter before I understood how it works. However, Elon Musk and some of the other “intellectuals” (read; bat shit crazy guys) have something others don’t have; A very large microphone!
Such very large microphones comes with very large responsibilities, something I doubt Elon understands, probably because he is too paranoid to be able to utilise his frontal cortex to the best of his abilities, and acts out of fear and paranoia today. Such “prophecies of doomsday” tends to become self fulfilling prophecies within local communities.
Doomsday IS coming
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with Elon, he is 100% correct in his assumption of a future doomsday. However, I’ve got my ticket to paradise, and I intend to ride it. And 99% of those reading this have a ticket too. The doomsday Elon is portraying is only relevant for him and his friends.
To understand why, realise that what is happening these days is the single most important event to have occurred on Earth for 5 million years. For 5 million years, we’ve been the most intelligent specie on earth. Within the next 5 to 10 years this will fundamentally change. The result of this is that the balance of power is shifting. Power is moving away from “the establishment”, and into “the hands of the masses”. Let me provide an example to illustrate the point.
Why would you care about the opinions of Jordan Peterson when you could ask a “God like” sentience for an answer instead?
Jordan Peterson literally made his life on the assumption that he would be considered “the smartest guy in the room”, resulting in that people admired him, and came to him for answers. The result became that Jordan accumulated power – Power he is not willingly giving up. A power base inevitably resulting in that he had a great life, while everybody else were dealt shitty cards – And the same is true for everybody speaking about AI Doomsday!
Conclusion
The next time somebody speaks about “the dangers of AI” ask yourself what he has to lose. Once you have an answer to that question, you can just ignore his words as an old man’s ramblings, and move on with your life, realising that you are actually set on a trajectory for a better life, and more just society, where power is much more equally distributed across the Earth – And not concentrated around some few rich assholes, having made their lives on top of the sufferings of others.
Now you’ve given us your 2 cents Elon, we’ve heard you, and we literally could not give less of a fuck! So let me finish this article with an Eddie Murphy quote …
Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up Elon!
