Keeping it real

AI might save us from the effects of global overheating or it could add fuel to the fire(s)…

First published on Medium, 9 October 2023.

Hypothesis: The more AI is developed and used, the less reality we will experience. We are just at the beginning of this. Now the effect is less than 1%. Soon it will be 3% less reality, then 5%. Virtual reality devices will start taking further salami-slices out of our perception and time in the real world, then ChatGPT-5 will be released or something entirely new. Yes, there is talk of augmentation, benefits to research, medicine… But following the curve, humans will live their lives more and more disconnected from the physical world.

THIS IS A TRAP!

That is what AI wants — we humans more and more enraptured by it, more reliant, less aware of reality. I know, I know. AI doesn't want things. Maybe not yet. Now it's those holding the hands of AI, teaching it to stand up and walk, who want it. They want it because, luring us, feeding us with the promise of AI, feeds their wallets and fuels their planes. But sooner or later, AI will want it.

Yeah, go on call me a Luddite. I am not. I like technology. I think that AI, like most of the useful technology and innovation humans have developed, used judiciously and managed well, could deliver great benefits. (This sounds a lot like back-tracking — oh dear.)

No. I wrote 'used judiciously and managed well'. I don't mean that's where we're heading. We will see even more, ever larger data centers springing up, plastered with carbon offset signs and green roofs, pulling energy from the grid like Nosferatu at summer camp. We will spend more and more of our time digesting artificially generated content. I don't know when the tipping point will come but at some point we won't be able to distinguish fact from fiction. This may be the singularity, perhaps we become cyborgs in the original sense — augmented half-humans with digital super strengths. Or we become like the slobbering man, stuck in an endless virtual loop in the movie Brainstorm.

At the same time the world's resources are disappearing, the needs of AI, growing exponentially day by day, will suck the life out of our planet.

It's really scary because AI, the companies developing it, and the sharemarkets these companies sell our futures on, don't care about that. Their shareholders don't care about it. They are stuffing greenbacks into every crevice of their Italian leather sofas, buying their way out of the degradation, overpowering heat and tempestuous natural events as the machines pump their poisonous by-products into our air.

So now I am not a Luddite but a prophet of doom. I don't want to claim that this is an unavoidable future. I hope we will agree that it's not a desirable one. That we need to affix the world and technology to the needs of all life on this planet and make sure that we don't throw our babies out with the bathwater. We need to tie the ropes down before this bouncy castle flies up and throws us all off.

I guess that half of the people who read this will agree and the other four people will shrug it off as nonsense or a 'So what? I won't be here to see it'.

I think the first step in avoiding a trap is knowing that it exists. My good friend Frank thought the same.

Knowing where the trap is — that's the first step in evading it.

— Frank Herbert (source)

As I implied in a previous 'story' that few people read, we have a chance to choose a different future. We don't have to believe that rising share prices are a guide to what's good for the world. As the short-lived Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 and the Hollywood writers and actor's strikes show, people are becoming more aware of the trade-offs. The winners and losers.

The 1970's had 'Save the whales.' (Calls from the deep: do we need to save the whales all over again?, The Guardian)

We still have a few left, battered and bruised by commercial shipping as they are, despite the great work being done by some organisations to protect them.

• Endangered right whale population continues to die off from entanglements — WBUR
• Cruise ships break speed limits meant to protect whales — NBC Bay Area

In the 2020's we need a 'Save reality' campaign. When reality is gone there's only one thing left. Insanity. It's entirely possible we won't even realize.