An eclectic essay including many thoughts from great minds of the past and present as they pertain to current realities.

Read by Harold Bloom (1930 - 2019): “today Bloom is probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world.” (Oxford Bibliographies)

”Thank you. This is very clarifying.” (Bloom May 2018)

Previously published:

June 2018 - Vidya, the journal of The Triple Nine Society (IQ at the 99.9 percentile)

June, August, October 2018 (in three parts) - MBE Business Magazine

Amended: June 2022

Personal Essay Number Nine

By David Ralph Mackereth (dmackereth@canimac.com)

Everywhere you turn today; it seems there are new approaches used by Artificial Intelligence (or more commonly, just ‘AI’) that will impact the future of humanity. Often these predictions provoke a feeling of dread, and I have started to believe the essence of this reaction relates to the specific words ‘Artificial’ and ‘Intelligence’. I think it is time to assess disparate Additional Identifiers to the standard words Artificial Intelligence, in our attempt to arrive at ‘the best of all possible worlds’, in this case ‘the best of all possible words’. Throughout the article, I have taken the liberty of sampling substitute words for AI along with their Applicable Implications. As a prelude to our journey, we are reminded by British logic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951), “the world we see is defined and given meaning by the words we choose”, and “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”. Algerian-French post-structural philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) assists with our groundwork preparation with, “There is nothing outside of the text.”

Working through the references supporting this article, I began to believe that the human pursuit of AI may have unintended consequences. This obsession with AI brings to mind the struggles of the characters in the immense play ‘Faust’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), whom many consider the last ‘Universal Genius’, written over two hundred years ago. As American writer and editor Frank Magill writes in his summary on Faust, “His final vision is that of all humanity, striving onward to turn the chaos to order, seeking a dimly imagined goal which is represented in the final scene by an endless stairway.”, and “he dissects the philosophical problem of human damnation brought about by the desire for knowledge and personal happiness.” (1) Wikipedia posts, “Faust is an erudite who is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.” We will view periodically the thoughts and opinions from literate and Deep Thinking knowledgeable gurus, as we work towards revealing any Arbitrary Irrationalities.

As AI is developing, we should always keep in mind the changing players and their Ambitious Interference: “Remember when the Internet was an unchartered frontier, a free-for-all, an egalitarian Wild West. Innovative start-ups produced much of the exhilaration and excitement. Today the energy and momentum have shifted almost entirely to the Big Five [Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft]. Like colonialist empires scrambling to consume as much of the map as possible, the race for Internet control has been won. In addition to the platforms they already own, the Big Five are now on the way to owning Artificial Intelligence, voice assistants, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, home automation, and every other technology that will rule tomorrow.”, as reported in Adbusters [Media Foundation] No. 136. Canadian journalist Haroon Siddiqui reported in a Toronto Star article on April 8, 2018, “Facebook and Google actually operate as a duopoly with Facebook having 2.1 billion users while owning WhatsApp with 1.2 billion, Messenger with 1.2 billion, and Instagram with 700 million for a total of 5.2 billion monthly users. Google has approximately 3.5 billion searches a day and owns YouTube with its 1.5 billion monthly users.” Since the current population of planet Earth is only 7.5 billion, these behemoth companies are HUGE, with their Allowable Intrusions.

A similar situation existed prior to 1911 when the all-encompassing Standard Oil ruled the most important commodity of the time. Fortunately, Standard Oil was broken up into 34 competing companies, and we read in LINFO, “Historians of the future will likely continue to view the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust as an important milestone in the unending struggle to restore and preserve free competition.” (2) Abhorrently Insidious behaviour is suggested by Jim Balsillie of Blackberry (Research in Motion), as noted by Professor and Research Chair (University of Waterloo) Marcel O’Gorman in a March 31, 2018 Globe and Mail article, “If you want to figure out the motivations of tech capitalists, look at the outcomes and infer from there.” Canadian singer-song writer Loreena McKennitt recently stated, “I’m convinced that ambition and technology have raced ahead of law, policy and norms.” (3) American computer engineer and venture capitalist Bill Joy, in his article ‘Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us’ (Wired, April 1, 2000) carefully states, “but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system.” In this instance, AI represents Amassed Influence using Analytic Impertinence.

In an April 2017 Discover magazine article by executive communications strategist Carl Engelking we find, “A World Economic Forum 2016 global survey of 800 CEOs (44 percent) indicated they believe AI will make people ‘largely irrelevant’ in the future of work.” An Economist feature section ‘GrAIt expectations’ states, “One European bank asked Infosys [Headquarters in India] to find a way of reducing the staff in its operations department from 50,000 to 500.” (4) Robert Collins reports in The Stand, “The most important question in 21 st century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous people.” (5) In a Time magazine article (January 29, 2018) journalist Charlie Campbell reported that Eric Schmidt, then executive chairman of Google parent [Alphabet Inc.] stated, “Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said that whoever masters AI will become ruler of the world, and China’s AI prowess will overtake the U.S. within a decade. By 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.” At least China is fully transparent with its Social Credit System to be operational in 2020, as Adbusters No. 137 records, “Citizens will be measured by a score ranging from 350 to 950 points based off five category ratings: credit history, contracted obligations, personal characteristics, contracted obligations, behaviour and preferences, and interpersonal relationships. [Aldous] Huxley and [George] Orwell never went far enough between them; the global endgame wasn’t a superficial façade over empty consumption or a surveillance state owned and run by an omnipotent, faceless authority.” We must constantly remember, “Janus, the Roman god, contained both beginnings and endings within him. That duality characterises AI, too.” (4) There are a plethora of examples of what AI means to the future of Big Business and Governments; however, these few hopefully demonstrate that we all need to keep The Big Five and Governments front and centre to avoid Absolute Insensitivities, Alarming Inhumanity, and Authoritarian Intimidation.

Now let’s go off and discover The Wonderful Wizardry of AI.

Ray Kurzweil (American inventor and futurist) writes in The Singularity Is Near (2005), “if the universe didn’t allow the evolution of life, we wouldn’t be here to notice it. Yet here we are. So by a similar anthropic principle, we’re here in the lead in the universe.” (6) I am not certain if there is a better illustration of hubris, than assuming dominance over everything, with this Anthropic Ingrained thinking. Also we read the following in Homo Deus by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, “Having deciphered the mute laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Humankind now does with them as it pleases. Everything that happens in the cosmos is judged to be good or bad according to its impact on Homo sapiens.” (7) Harari further describes the extraordinary influence humans have exercised on planet Earth, “Since the appearance of life, about four billion years ago, never has a single species changed the global ecology all by itself.” (7) We can add in pessimistic German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788 - 1860), “Everyone takes the limits of his own version for the limits of the world”, providing Accommodating Ingeniousness. And with Faust (8) we get:

I call him happy who still hopes to rise

To the surface in this sea of error

The very things we don’t know, we could use

And what we do know we have no use for

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986) reveals, “The Earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.”

Continuing this theme, we hear from Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018) on Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543), “When – On the Revolutions – appeared in 1543, it was attacked by Protestant theologians who held the premise of a heliocentric universe to be unbiblical. Copernicus’ theories, they reasoned, might lead people to believe that they are simply part of a natural order, and not the masters of nature, the center around which nature was ordered.” (9) In Harari’s ‘Sapiens’ we learn, “So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel and dream in the language of numbers, which can be understood by computers. – Our DNA still thinks we are in the Savanah. – Homo sapiens have no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. – In order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an [A]lternative [I]magined order.” (10)

As we build a technical understanding of AI, we should reference some highlights from quantum physics. It was previously a given that the Speed of Light is a constant representing the maximum velocity in the universe. Having Admitted Inaccuracies, we now discover events such as entanglement (with its instantaneous speed over any possible distance), and galaxies receding faster than the speed of light. We continue to struggle with the conceivable concepts of both dark energy and dark matter. Future discoveries might expose that we understand less than the approximately 4 % of the known universe which we currently believe we apprehend. As a Discover article, by astrophysicist Christopher J. Conselice (May 2018) reports, “When we count the galaxies throughout the whole history of the universe, we arrive at a total of 2 trillion. That is a factor of 10 higher than we previously thought.” Remember, at one time the Ancient Greeks thought they understood the entire universe, with their Abstract Infinities.

It should be obvious to us that there is a great deal going on in our world that will remain Arguably Incomprehensible. Investigative solutions reporter Steve Volk writes in the March 2018 Discover issue, “Quantum physics might be vital to our awareness, cognition and even memory. The neuron, contrary to all current scientific understanding, wasn’t the essential or first cause of the human thought process.” Tom Rosamila, Senior VP of IBM System states, “There are many problems that will never be penetrated by a classical computer. To create knowledge from much greater depths of complexity, we need a quantum computer.”, as we attempt to control the Allusive Internet of Things. Borges adds, “It is clear that there is no classification of the universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.” Mephistopheles considered Faust a likely victim, for Faust was trying to obtain the unobtainable. (1) In American physicist Richard Feynman’s (1918 - 1988) ‘Sum-Over-Paths’ we have particles traveling between two points through an infinite number of pathways, and we observe from reading American historian Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ (1980), there are many possible ways of witnessing human history (by evaluating all humans), producing Astounding lIlusions within science and the past.

Further quotes from Homo Deus bring our focus to the human mind: “the most up-to-date theories also maintain that sensations and emotions are biochemical data-processing algorithms. We won’t be able to grasp the full implications of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence if we don’t know what minds are. Consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn’t do anything. How is it, then, that when billions of electric signals move around in my brain, a mind emerges that feels ‘I am furious!’? As of 2016, we have absolutely no idea. The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. The theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn’t contradict our cherished beliefs. Fiction isn’t bad. It is vital. In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.” (7) This censorship is Achieving Inefficiencies within the human setting. Kurzweil adds in, “Biotechnology will extend biology and correct its obvious flaws.” (6) And then we have British Chemist Leslie Orgel’s (1927 - 2007) Second Rule: the process of natural selection is not itself intelligent, clever or purposeful, but the products of evolution are more clever than we are. Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky in the April 11, 2018 TED Talks Daily indicates the human mind is most flexible, “There are about 7,000 languages spoken in the world, and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7000.” Allowing us to create with Aspiring Inventiveness!

According to some AI experts, computing power is the All Important contributor to the ultimate goal of AI: conquering the universe! Kurzweil points out, “Biological human thinking is limited to 10 to the 16 calculations per second (cps) per human brain (based on neuromorphic modeling of the brain regions) and about 10 to the 26 cps for all human brains. Once we achieve an optimal computational efficiency, the only way to increase the computational power of a computer would be to increase its mass. If we increase the mass enough its gravitational force becomes strong enough to cause it to collapse into a black hole. So a black hole can be regarded as the ultimate computer.” (6) Which resembles an Actually Inconceivable possibility; however, I cannot wait to access my black hole computer…Whoops, I am disappearing! With quantum computing, a qubit is the smallest unit of information and unlike classical systems, which are in one of two possible states labelled 1 and 0, a qubit exists in a superposition of these two states, settling on one or the other only when a measurement is made. A recent article by book critic and technology writer Lev Grossman and co-founder at Memory/Well Jay Newton-Small in a Time Special Edition on Cybersecurity indicates, “19 terabytes, The Web we know, and 7,500 terabytes everything else.” This tiny sliver of the web that is publicly accessible (0.25%) is Amazingly Infinitesimal.

It appears we are all struggling for an Adequate Interpretation of ‘Intelligence’ in Artificial Intelligence and we find in Homo Deus, “no matter how one defines intelligence it is quite clear that neither intelligence nor tool making by themselves can account for the Sapiens conquest of the world.” (7) We are born with our innate intelligence, and generally spend the next 80 to 90 years Acquiring Individual knowledge through our five senses. This effort is all in the hope of amassing some measure of wisdom; the pinnacle of human achievement. You never hear the words ‘Artificial Wisdom’ when someone comments on another person Attaining Immense wisdom. As central Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) suggested, “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. What can I Know? What things will be forever outside human understanding?” Possibly the promoters of AI are looking to make better use of Swarm Intelligence in moving Human 1.0 to 2.0, but Harari indicates, “Knowledge that does not change behavior is useless. But knowledge that changes behavior quickly loses its relevance. The single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.” (7) Proving the Persian adage, ‘And this too shall pass’, should apply to our current fixation with AI. Since we still do not have a mutually agreed definition of Knowledge, we should be skeptical of other’s Acceptable Inclinations. In Faust (8) we find:

Through a maze of error and ignorance.

And all this misery goes to show

There’s nothing we can ever know.

American Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), the notable linguist, cognitive scientist, and a leading public intellectual provides the following August Insights, “Mind-reading technology is impossible and dangerous. Like nuclear weapons, it’s a complex problem we should leave alone. – We need to have a way of determining where our thoughts are. Nobody knows how to do that. – The kind of thinking that we have introspective access to is typically in words, but I should say, there’s nothing much understood about this. – The problem isn’t the notion of thinking. It’s just so vague that you can’t ask a serious question about it. – We don’t even have the kind of technology that will enable us to understand the most elementary computations of language, the simple thoughts, like why one word follows another. – You don’t study the lungs by asking what cells compute. – Let’s ask ourselves how the biological system is picking out of the noise, things that are significant. – You just can’t get to that understanding by throwing a complicated machine at it. – Why do cells split into spheres and not cubes? It is not random mutation and natural selection; it’s a law of physics. – The internal system itself is not a process, because it doesn’t have an algorithm. – There is no reason to assume that all of biology is computational. There may be reason to assume cognition is. – It’s worth remembering that with regards to cognitive science, we’re kind of Pre-Galilean, just beginning to open up the subject.” As always, Chomsky is Acutely Informative.

The AI Team wants to create as much cps as possible, be it by humans or machines. The resulting AI devices would replace most of the human routine tasks, and ultimately, humans. In an AI-dominated future, our 7.5 billion individually-developed algorithms would be reduced to two or three humanoid algorithms, maybe even ONE, making humans Apparently Irrelevant. Harari reminds us, “Algorithm is arguably the single most important concept in our world. Emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals.” (7) The loss of billions of potential algorithms might be a Weak Link in the Human 2.0 chain, causing Anxious Insecurity. Keeping in mind, as McKennitt advised, “British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who says humans are only meant to know about 150 people anyway.” (3) We find in The Singularity, “Sexual reproduction itself was an evolutionary innovation that accelerated the entire process of biological adaptation and provided for greater diversity of genetic combinations than nonsexual reproduction.” (6) It brings to mind Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s (1828 - 1910) famous quote, “Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” AI seems to be headed for a ‘Happy Family’ future, with human uniqueness disappearing. What is the result to human creative arts when there is only happiness? Shakespeare’s body of work, the great operas, epic poems, etc. would no longer be of interest. Loreena McKennitt informs us, “Digital monopolies have since moved in with disruptive practices, allowing fake news and ‘alternative facts’ to proliferate.” (3) And according to Tom Siebel, a Silicon Valley veteran, there are so many firms peddling AI capabilities of unproven value that someone should start ‘an AI fake news channel’. (4) The ‘F’ word synonyms for ‘Artificial’: fake, false, and fabricate further enhance the thinking a superior word should have been chosen by the AI community to support their ‘Intelligence’. Research professor of cognitive science Margaret Boden writes in Discover, October 2016, “Computer’s don’t suffer, are perfectly nonjudgmental, and utterly undemanding when it comes to aesthetics.” The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim, according to Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930 - 2002). Humans 1.0 and 2.0 would be left with Academic Imposters working with Algorithmic Impotence to produce Artistic Insanity.

We will also need to constantly subdue and conquer Anticipated Ignorance as we read from an article in The Stand. “What if, however, artificial intelligence puts the human race at mortal risk not because machines develop consciousness (at present, no one has generated anything like consciousness) but simply because artificial intelligence becomes so ordinary, so mundane, and so ubiquitous that humans only notice it too late they’ve allowed it to take over their lives. The Algorithms won’t revolt and enslave us. Rather, the algorithms will be so good in making decisions for us, that it would be madness not to follow their advice. Algorithms are about to change what it means to work, and what it means to be human.” (5) We may then witness Archetypal Indiscernibility of the human. Increased speed for repetitive events can be generated by AI. Let’s follow an AI machine amateur golfer in the year 2200, as it returns to its pod revolving around planet Earth after a typical morning of golf, and comments to its companion. “I was able to play 2.5 billion games of golf in four minutes, which resulted in my handicap decreasing by .0000000000042. What would you like to do for the rest of the day, in this Almost Idyllic world? I would gather American author and political activist Helen Keller (1880 - 1968) would not wish to be among these AI Its with her observation, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” And American poet and author e. e. cummings (1894 - 1962) reflects,

humanity i love you because

when you’re hard up you pawn your

intelligence to buy a drink

World celebrated neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar (b. 1991) in ‘Idolatry of Innovation’ may be closer to the mark with, “humans have become so obsessed with innovation that they have completely ignored their soul.” This brings to mind the Faustian Bargain Agreement Implying the abandonment of spiritual values or moral principles to gain material benefits. We do find some hope in a Scientific American March 2017 article by scientist, author and entrepreneur Gary Marcus, “But Turing’s test has not aged well. A truly intelligent machine should be able to understand ambiguous statements, build a piece of flat-packed furniture, pass a fourth-grade science test, and more. The difficulty of these tasks underscores the fact that, hype aside, human-level artificial intelligence remains far in the future.” How would such a human-like AI couple act? We can imagine AI-1 returning from a 20 minute work day in 2400, and tells its partner AI-2, “We were able to produce 425 million gadgetbotics today during the shift, all 100 percent in conformity with the client’s order.”, supporting Absurd Innovations, and avoiding Annihilating Iterations.

We should now contemplate the success humanity has had on Planet Earth, prior to preparing plans to remake the Milky Way and Universe into a preferred habitat for humanity, which would prove to be an Astrophysical Improbability. As stated in Homo Deus, “Since the appearance of life, about four billion years ago, never has a single species changed the global ecology all by itself.” (7) French Existentialist philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980) suggests, “Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.” The human skill set has achieved Apogean Inimitable success in changing very large environments (the Earth) – bring on the Milky Way and our future Abstruse Invasions.

We get further evidence of human feelings of superiority from freelance journalist Michael Stone in Discover May 2018, “Scientists estimate, thousands of species are lost annually due to the human-caused sixth mass extinction.” In Sapiens we are told, “We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer” (10). The AI family of developers are working diligently to get to Human 2.0, and then to move on from the Earth, in their Acquisitively Implacable approach. Where is the empathy for the other 14 million organisms living on Earth? One of Merriam Webster’s definitions for cancer is: something evil or malignant that spreads destructively. Evaluating the human experience on Planet Earth, must place humanity within this definition. Stephen Hawking told the BBC, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race … It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” This theory plays out like a plot from a Sci-fi movie, humans clashing with their extinction and toward Abandoned Immortality.

Kurzweil and Team believe it could all lead to something called ‘The Singularity’, which is where humans and machines could meld into one entity. In Discover May 2017 conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats writes, “For us to trust them to act on their own, it’s important that these machines are designed with ethical decision-making in mind. The study of ethics goes to Plato and Aristotle, and there is a lot of wisdom there.” This is further emphasized in Home Deus, “Robots and computers have no consciousness because despite their myriad abilities, they feel nothing and crave nothing.” (7) In this example we would become a Non-Human 2.0 unable to Avert Immutable forces. Even Kurzweil has doubts with, “Deep Learning has brought about machines that can ‘see’ the world more like humans can, and recognize language. But does the brain learn this way?” (6) French analytical philosopher Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941), with his influential thoughts on reality, steps in with, “That diversion of life towards mechanism is the real cause of laughter.” While remembering, humans are born into an Analog Inherited natural environment. Wittgenstein adds in, “Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world.” Senior Editor Will Knight informs us in the April 11, 2017 MIT Technology Review, “Even the engineers who build these apps cannot fully explain their behavior. It might be part of the nature of intelligence that only part of it is exposed to rational explanation. Some of it is just instinctual. How well can we get along with machines that are unpredictable and inscrutable?” Should we be following Abnormal Ideals?

Speaking of engineering, I have not yet addressed the Automatic Imbalance of AI on global events. Climate change and nuclear destruction are two forces brought on by humans that could result in our extinction. Hopefully, we can eliminate AI as a third human-created threat. We have Elon Musk advising us, “The pace of progress in artificial intelligence is incredibly fast. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most.” A ‘Not-for-Profit’ venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, invests in high tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology. According to Wikipedia, the In-Q-Tel Corporation is bound by its Charter agreement and annual contract with the CIA, which sets out the relationship between the two organizations. A review of the In-Q-Tel website lists 227 or so high tech companies in which they have made Ambiguous Investments. Also In-Q-Tel provided funding for the company that Google ended up acquiring, that was then turned into Google Earth, as recorded in Wikipedia (Google Earth). As political commentator Fareed Zakaria points out in his ‘The Post-American World’ (2008), “The United States spends more on defense research and development than the rest of the world put together.” Which goes a long way to providing the basis for American Independence. In an Economist Special Report ‘On The Future of War’ dated January 27, 2018, we find, “China is now adding heavily armed [A]rtificial [I]slands in the South China Sea”, leaving one to ponder if AI will lead to Aggressive Intentions.

From British journalist Luke Harding writing on the Snowden affair, we learned that Microsoft was the first to provide PRISM [US surveillance program] material [their Accumulated Input] in September 2007, followed by Yahoo in March 2008, and then came Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, Skype and AOL (between January 2009 to March 2011). Apple held out for five years, and was the last major tech company to sign up, exactly a year after Job’s death. (11) This Audaciously Infamous group are all the more troubling as Harding further states, “In the debate over who ruled the internet, the NSA provided a dismaying answer: We do. The agency (GCHQ) [Government Communications Headquarters, in the UK] predicts that by 2015, 90 percent of all internet traffic will come from mobile phones.” (11) On July 27, 2015 the Independent newspaper reported on an open letter calling for a ban on killer robots signed by thousands of experts (including robotics and artificial intelligence leaders), which included Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, and Elon Musk. This letter claims totally Autonomous Immoral killing machines could become a reality within years, not decades. This eclectic group of leading international experts are doing their part to prevent Amazonian Imperialism. Our Angelic Innocent Albert Einstein warned us against ill-considered ‘progress’ with, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”, with his Apocalyptic Indication.

Harari instructs us in Homo Deus that, “Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the belief and feelings of individual humans. Many of the most important agents in history are intersubjective. Money, for example, has no subjective value. The value of money is not the only thing that might evaporate once people stop believing in it. The same can happen to laws, gods, and even entire empires.” (7) Philosopher of Science Paul Feyerabend (1924 - 1994) advises us that, “Science and myth overlap in many ways.” Harari further states, “You cannot organize masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination.” (7) Quite possibly, we are Attributing Inordinate realities to the Wizardry of AI. The Gens X and Y are even getting into the act according to Adbusters 136, “Younger generations don’t put much stock in religion, but their souls are being uploaded to the Cloud every day.” Millennials could be relying more than they should on Alexa’s Improvising intelligence. This younger group may be attempting to avoid an Agnostic Inquisition.

McKennitt points out, “Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, admits they consciously understood they were designing addiction into the Facebook technology but ‘did it anyway’”. (3) We really do need to manage our lives to avert Apple Indigestion and forestall Addictive Impulses. To be fair to our younger folks, we should keep in mind a preeminent Socrates quote from 2,500 years ago, “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” Indicating not all that much has changed over the years and Chatbox with its Automated Integrated messages can assist younger entrepreneurs in differentiating themselves from older business people. Kurzweil begins his ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’ (1999) with these quotes, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms” by American poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser, and has British cosmologist and theoretical physicist John D. Barrow asking, “Is the universe a great mechanism, a great computation, a great symmetry, a great accident or a great thought?” Borges concludes, “There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal, with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is Divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.” We should contemplate on our Assumed Impressions.

Scottish poet and author Charles Mackay in his book ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’, published in 1841, demonstrates humanity’s propensity to follow emotions and not intellect, as he works through topics such as: Alchemy (2,500 years up to the 19th century), The Crusades (12th and 13th centuries), Witch Mania (16th to the 18th centuries), The Tulipomania (17th century), etc., and we may find AI in a future book along these lines. Here is one final Aristotelian Instruction from Faust (8):

Well, that’s Philosophy I’ve read,

And Law and Medicine, and I fear

Theology, too, From A to Z:

Hard studies all that have cost me dear.

And so I sit, poor silly man

No wiser now than when I began.

I realize I have taken great liberties with my AI samplings, but have not gone as far as the Sami of Northern Scandinavia with their 1,000 terms for reindeer. Now, click your heels together three times, return to Earth, stay the course and Adroitly Inhibit those who wish us to Avoid Intuition, while we contemplate if an AI machine would replace French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes’ (1596 - 1659) “I think, therefore I am” with “I think, therefore Am I human?”

(1) Masterpieces of World Literature, 1952, Frank N. Magill, Editor

(2) The Dismantling of The Standard Oil Trust, 2004, by the Linux Information Project

(3) Why I’m Leaving Facebook, by Loreena McKennitt in the Toronto Star, April 23, 2018

(4) The Economist – GrAlt expectations, Special Report March 31, 2018

(5) Yuval Harari Reveals the Future of Mankind, October 2017, by Robert Collins in The Stand

(6) The Singularity Is Near – When Humans Transcend Biology, 2005, by Ray Kurzweil

(7) Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow, 2007, by Yuval Noah Harari

(8) Faust, 1808 and 1832, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(9) On the Shoulders of Giants, 2002 – Edited, with Commentary by Stephen Hawking

(10) Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind 2015, by Yuval Noah Harari

(11) The Snowden Files – The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, 2014, by Luke Harding