With capitalism hellbent on recreating a world of warring feudal states it seems appropriate we get the court politics and attendant crackpots. Where is my Rasputin, Trump asks.
Once the US military and, say, DARPA get prioritized as to SOTA AI access, one can be confidently assured that "domination" will be the objective, with other countries round the globe finding themselves in various states of vassalage due to systems infiltration thence subservience to American-controlled AI agents.
Well, the Pentagon can at least dream about such fantasies, but US techbro oligarchs are actively promoting the ideologies as noted above to essentially colonize humanity with an all-embracing HAL, with them behind the curtain...they think — or rather hope.
Ehm, like, wow. Thanks (sincerely) for taking time in between to provide this treatise that opens other doors that're waiting in my stacks of second-hand books. Except for finding this era of the Bay Area to be two notches too polished for me any more, I wish I were in the neighborhood for the conference you note. Thanks especially for the lead to Becker's work. I find, amongst folks I'm around in this tired, post-industrial river community are still all a-twitter over the wondrous new world coming, a' la the Jetsons, at last, and cannot even contemplate that we're being lied to in the greatest Promethean scam and 'droid worshipping movement since, I dunno, the railroad stocks scandal of the late 1890s. Sometimes, (often) with really intelligent people, with honest-to-god degrees and oodles of privilege.
I find myself avoiding touching the hems of any of these digital predators: I utilize open-source operating system and word-processing software to run my 14 year old laptop, I've gotten proficient on my 1947 Remington Rand desktop manual typewriter, I don't stream, I don't subscribe to 'Tech' that promises 'convenience' and 'freedom' and a 'friction-free' existence. I endeavor to follow the old newsman's code of 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable' with regard to tech (which pretty much relegates me to the kitchen at gatherings, with the person who found serenity by doing the dishes), and have intently read Kingsnorth and McGilchrist on the subject. The thing I'm considering lately, is, will a well-placed steel ball from a better slingshot disable one of these self-titled god-like men's android creations, or is something with greater kinetic energy required?
I shall re-read this piece once I get another couple hundred pounds of deadfall oak split and stacked. Winter's coming, but I'll leave you with a mind-and-heart changer here: Molly Tuttle with a fine cover of a Neil Young bit from a better day - "Helpless" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWZ5_uKL428&list=RDk8mtXwtapX4&index=6
Nice. The political implications of this folly, the scale, are staggering.
FWIW, last January I wrote something about the long history of this alchemy, with implications for its long future. https://thenewcuriosityshop.substack.com/p/ai-and-alchemy
With capitalism hellbent on recreating a world of warring feudal states it seems appropriate we get the court politics and attendant crackpots. Where is my Rasputin, Trump asks.
Once the US military and, say, DARPA get prioritized as to SOTA AI access, one can be confidently assured that "domination" will be the objective, with other countries round the globe finding themselves in various states of vassalage due to systems infiltration thence subservience to American-controlled AI agents.
Well, the Pentagon can at least dream about such fantasies, but US techbro oligarchs are actively promoting the ideologies as noted above to essentially colonize humanity with an all-embracing HAL, with them behind the curtain...they think — or rather hope.
Reminds of the year 1000AD.
Ehm, like, wow. Thanks (sincerely) for taking time in between to provide this treatise that opens other doors that're waiting in my stacks of second-hand books. Except for finding this era of the Bay Area to be two notches too polished for me any more, I wish I were in the neighborhood for the conference you note. Thanks especially for the lead to Becker's work. I find, amongst folks I'm around in this tired, post-industrial river community are still all a-twitter over the wondrous new world coming, a' la the Jetsons, at last, and cannot even contemplate that we're being lied to in the greatest Promethean scam and 'droid worshipping movement since, I dunno, the railroad stocks scandal of the late 1890s. Sometimes, (often) with really intelligent people, with honest-to-god degrees and oodles of privilege.
I find myself avoiding touching the hems of any of these digital predators: I utilize open-source operating system and word-processing software to run my 14 year old laptop, I've gotten proficient on my 1947 Remington Rand desktop manual typewriter, I don't stream, I don't subscribe to 'Tech' that promises 'convenience' and 'freedom' and a 'friction-free' existence. I endeavor to follow the old newsman's code of 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable' with regard to tech (which pretty much relegates me to the kitchen at gatherings, with the person who found serenity by doing the dishes), and have intently read Kingsnorth and McGilchrist on the subject. The thing I'm considering lately, is, will a well-placed steel ball from a better slingshot disable one of these self-titled god-like men's android creations, or is something with greater kinetic energy required?
I shall re-read this piece once I get another couple hundred pounds of deadfall oak split and stacked. Winter's coming, but I'll leave you with a mind-and-heart changer here: Molly Tuttle with a fine cover of a Neil Young bit from a better day - "Helpless" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWZ5_uKL428&list=RDk8mtXwtapX4&index=6
Tim Long, Just Up the Hill from Lock 15
re: "alchemy," you might appreciate my colleague Adin Lears' essay: https://www.boundary2.org/2025/04/adin-lears-bitcoin-vitalism-and-the-elixir-of-life/