Counter-Currents
Part 1
Jacques Luzi
Ce que l’Intelligence artificielle ne peut pas faire
Èditions La Lenteur, 2024
For both pragmatic and mystical reasons, industrial society worships technology, and it is the adoration of technology which stymies any democratic debate or questioning regarding the legitimacy of the technocratic class in power. The dependency on machines and the devotional association which many ordinary people have with machines stands in the way of any effective critique of that class’s project to transform natural gifts into artificial ones.
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8 comments
In short, I see AI as just the next step in the march of automation, but instead of blue-collar factory workers and farmers having their jobs eliminated, automation is now coming for service workers, artists, bureaucrats, professionals of many kinds, and white-collar workers in general. It’s all in the name of “efficiency”, but of course society is supposed to be more than just a system for the owners of the machines to make money.
To what degree should we say that companies need to hire humans to weld car bodies and design posters, rather than robots and AI software? How should we balance the property rights of factory owners with the “right” not to have your town’s livelihood gutted by robots? How should we balance the desire to spur innovations with the desire to ensure that people still have jobs? How should we balance the livelihoods of the rich and poor? What about work versus leisure?
The best idea I can come up with is simply that companies are restricted to automating away no more than, say, 2% of their jobs per year. Then, they can gradually take advantage of new innovations without the next advance in automation throwing tens of millions of people out of work.
It’s also important that AI doesn’t become an inscrutable, unaccountable uber-bureaucrat that rules over us. “Nothing I can do. The computer said that…” (But isn’t it practically like that already?)
We need to have a 3-tier economy: (1) a benevolent, ethnocentric, scientifically advanced elite; (2) a highly automated sector for production of mass goods and AI-mediated services; and with (3) most of the population returned either to the land as small farmers (break-up all corporate farms; “deindustrialize” agriculture) or to resurrected craft guilds, with any shortfalls in income supplemented with universal basic income.
This sounds a lot like Faye’s Archeofuturism.
I think a lot of whites would prefer local craftsmen (except for the cost…). We wouldn’t want to go back to having two thirds of the population engaged in farming, but I for one would rather buy foods, dishware, cutlery, furniture, and other domestic goods – even vehicles – produced by local craftsmen than by machines in a factory on the other side of the planet.
The endpoint of capitalism seems to be mass production of decently good and decently cheap goods outcompeting all other producers. It’s kind of like how mass-produced music did away with local and family musicians, and how national sports teams having national competitions have largely done away with local sports teams having local competitions. It’s like how national chains (Walmart, McDonald’s, etc) have killed off their less efficient local competitors. There is value to cheap, decent-quality goods, but it’s mostly the value of saving money. There is a different kind of value in supporting your neighbors and townsmen; it’s the value of community and regional diversity.
That’s the trade-off – money versus community – and unfortunately money seems to win. But to get back to AI and automation, I hope for a future where automation can do enough of the necessary things to provide us with enough resources that we can afford to spend them supporting and fostering human communities.
What these psychopathic creatures are doing to the boy there to make their f-ing low-budget “B-movie” is clearly child abuse under criminal law. He is totally frightened and his whole body and arms are trembling.
https://youtu.be/mJvj55f489E?feature=shared&t=732
Toddlers are very impressionable, they can be damaged and traumatized for life into a “fearful disordered personality”. Added to this is the fact that the child is at an age when he is normally afraid of strangers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_anxiety
At that age, bonding and trust are everything. A shock of this kind can lead to a lifelong loss of trust in any kind human relationship and existential fears.
The same, when irresponsible parents leave their children alone in an overheated car. The child gets the fatal imprint of not being able to rely on anything.
Fairly recently there was a gathering of technocrats on a TED like stage in a small forum. Musk was being, interviewed, or is it worshipped it is often hard to tell if there is both happening. Musk describes an economy as a simple division problem. “That is all it is”, he claims. The point was that AI would solve all of man’s economic problems – creating abundance for everyone. Then, he ends saying, “The only thing is that people won’t have meaning.” He said it with enthusiasm and self congratulation. It wasn’t out of malice. He was proud that he could solve all but one of mankind’s problems. These people are unhinged.
Of course, there is the usual mountain of exclusions and pile of reductions in that as well. Someone will own and fix and advance the robots. Who will that be? Well, Yuval Harari has the answer. Laugh at and mock the useless. Of course, he being of no use as a producer and a pariah as a consumer, perhaps the bots will liquidate him too in a move to increase efficiency.
We must not be luddites. Technology is a tool that man must be the master of not subordinate and a slave to. In 20th century America we have shredded the fabric of society. Now as it lay in tatters, those who laud the creation of abundance are going to dislodge the mass from any means and put them through extreme privation and deprive them of meaning. What happens when a society based on every man for himself no longer offers affluence and growth? I know a lot of people in the professional class for whom relationships are merely transactional networking opportunities. True colors get shown when nothing it seems is on offer or to an advantage.
Human relations in the post-American market are already false and shallow. Will that improve as the bots displace everyone? Or will Lord of The Flies be the rule?
Tolkien left us a map. The dwarves in their vanity and greed dug and dug and dug and dug. They unearthed unspeakable and ancient demons – forces that even they could not control.
I am not anti-technology. The issue is whether commercial concerns coupled with utopian visions led by techno-cognitively gifted savants with unsophisticated and myopic thinking done in a vacuum of ignorance is the path forward. I don’t think so. I think Guillame Faye was headed in the right direction if only to make sober choices about which technologies to develop and utilize and which to forbid usage in order to remain human and avoid disaster.
This is relevant to our new President. He has taken the bait from the techno-optimists. They believe that the solution to all problems is mass prosperity. Does that solve problems or does it mask them? Duty and responsibility; sober contemplation based on comprehensive thinking that accounts for man’s social technology, his nature and the positive and negative effects of utilizing mechanical technology are not features of a merchant order. Prepare to live through their Golden Age. It has never been a better time to seek the company of high quality humans with whom you can ride the tiger.
“Will Artificial Intelligence ever be able to affect the evolutionary course of Homo sapiens and if it ever could, would or should we welcome that?”
Jean-Francois Gariepy’s book, The Phenotypic Revolution, addressed this in 2018 and says no, do not ever let the machine have control over your genetics.
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