The rise and fall of freedom
I guess we just didn't see it coming.
***WARNING***
Do not read this if you have bouts of depression, or an unstable mental condition. Some will find this quite disturbing. It is a logical projection of our future, and I sincerely hope I am wrong. If I did not believe knowing can help repair the coming calamity, I would not have written this:
It is noted that every great civilization has risen and fallen within a cycle of approximately two hundred years. Has ours finally come about sixty-years late?
I am reminded of a dusty old movie where a kid (a young Matthew Broderick) plays Tic Tac Toe with a military behemoth named ‘WOPR’, a computer that predicts ‘endgame’ results of attack & defend strategies. In the 1983 movie “War Games” “WOPR” (pronounced ‘Whopper’) was codenamed “Joshua” by its creator, Falken.
Well ladies, gentleman, (and gender-dysphorics) there’s a new Whopper in town and this one brings greater destruction than nuclear weapons, is primed and its detonation cannot be stopped! How long have we got? That depends on what phase of the destruction we are focused upon.
The initial blast radius is estimated to destroy several million middle-class careers, but that is just the beginning! This ‘weapon’ is so perfectly designed that I cannot see how it will be possible to avoid it. If this was a Jumanji movie, we would quickly see there is no way to win this game! No heroic-ride up a mountain to put back a stone! We did it to ourselves. Unless there is a ‘magic reset’ this is a game where the wealthy and evil (not all are exclusively both), win!
What the hell (perfect word choice, here) am I talkin’ about?? The two letters of our alphabet that changes us forever, “A” and ‘I”. Artificial Intelligence? Ohhhh, ya had me worried. I thought it was something serious! You’re just a Sci-Fi geek that watched too much Star Trek growin’ up! Guilty as charged, but I come bearing facts. This is NOT about AI becoming sentient beings and willfully and methodically wiping us off the planet, although, I can’t say that wouldn’t happen, uhh… But I digress…
This destructive weapon is a cancer that will erode almost everything a conservative holds dear! The good news is you will still have God. The bad news is, nothing else. Remember when I said the initial blast radius would take out several million middle-class jobs? This corrosive weapon has more penetrating power than a billion bunker-busters! Once it ignites, it burns for eternity. The only way it could run out of fuel would be a catastrophic world-changing event bigger than nuclear war.
Maybe a large meteor strike, a Sun storm perfectly aimed at Earth, or twin super volcanos simultaneously erupting could reset us? But, without getting that lucky, this ‘weapon’ rewrites the story of American freedom and removes all possibility of a democracy from the face of the planet. Democracy, gone? Them are pretty big words old man! How likely would a democracy endure when roughly 85% of the world population has no job? If you were lucky enough to be in the 15% you would be a ‘George Jetson’, where all you do is press a button or two and come home tired from a full day’s work!
Now, you are getting waaaay out there. Where’s the facts to back up these outlandish claims? Elon Musk has not only warned us, but actually helped create this “weapon of mass destruction”. I love Elon, he has tried so hard to move us forward and make life better. In fact, he may have seen this coming and decided Mars was a future haven from the hell on Earth that was coming. I am sure he doesn’t quite see it that way, but to conservatives it will be Hades.
To the poorest (used to living on welfare checks) there might be improvements! To the top wealth-accumulators it will be glorious! To the liberal ‘Socialism is better than Capitalism clan’, they will have their government take care of their every need. And, as the WEF (World Economic Forum) has predictively posted (a few years ago) on their website, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy!”
So, what facts tell us the conservatives are going to get such a raw deal? ChatGPT started as a ‘gleam in the eye’ of Elon Musk, Sam Altman in the year 2015. In 2018, Elon left the company and has recently stated, “We are not far from dangerously strong AI.” After taking over Twitter he paused OpenAI’s access to the social media platform’s database which it was using for training purposes. He cited the fact that the company is no longer open-source nor a nonprofit. The company became a “capped profit” corporation in 2019 and received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft. Source of facts:
What is Elon Musk’s relationship with ChatGPT, the famous AI chatbot? - AS USA
Exhibit “A” will show how infectious ChatGPT has become. This article says:
OpenAI: Everything To Know About The Company Behind ChatGPT (lifestyleasia.com)
OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022 and within a week, the application saw a spike of over a million users!
In fact, ChatGPT is THE fastest growing platform in the world according to this:
Time it took for popular apps to clock 100 mn users | Deccan Herald
ChatGPT emerged as the fastest-growing platform in the world as it clocked 100 million users in just 60 days!
Instagram took two-and one-half years to get 100 million users. Google did it in one year, and TikTok blazed to 100 mil in just nine months. ChatGPT, not even trying did it in two! So far, I think I have proven there is an insatiable desire for ChatGPT. But, if you thought that was all, B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothing yet! (Creds to BTO). Now, exhibit “B”
This shows how progressive each version of ChatGPT has become:
ChatGPT Pro: What's the difference between free and paid? | Mashable
Nearly 30 percent of professional workers have used ChatGPT at work, according to a new poll out of Fishbowl, a social network for professionals. We're using the AI chatbot to message people on dating apps; to write essays for school; create malware, and more. And users are doing all of that for free, thanks to the company potentially paying millions of dollars a month so we don't have to pay anything.
So, it can write a few essays, play Cereno De Bergerac, and scam some boomers, big deal! The important thing here to note is ChatGPT is far from ‘finished’! In fact, it will never finish! Think about it. What is the ‘endgame’? There isn’t one! This is Alice’s frickin’ rabbit hole!
If ChatGPT can write malware, it can write itself and we are now seeing exponential growth in each version. You know how the original Speak n Spell sounded? Haallo I Kahh sey wuurrds! About 40 years later my browser reads news articles on the fly in a pleasant human voice, right? Well, ChatGPT can make that 40-year advancement in one version! (Less than six months)
Although there is no endgame, there are goals driven by the billion-dollars Microsoft has invested. It is ironic that Capitalism will destroy Capitalism, but to make the big bucks AI needs to shave away expensive, needy, sensitive, inferior humans and replace them with cheap, constantly working, stronger, machines! Companies like Amazon will immensely benefit, and middle-class workers will lose their livelihoods. Most of the fast-food jobs are also ‘easy-pickens’.
Teachers are in AI’s crosshairs, as well as writers of movies, books, streaming shows, greeting cards, if two sentences are strung together, ChatGPT can do it as well as those inferior humans while saving company execs mucho dinero! And this my friend is only the beginning! Now, with most new innovations there has been a smooth buffer of years to acclimate to the harsh changes, like going from horses to cars, or sails to steam engine, but with the nearly vertical learning curve of AI, I believe this happens in such a short time that it will leave hundreds of millions of Americans ‘high and dry’!
Today’s AI can replace several million right away. Can you imagine what these vertical improvements will be able to do in just six months to a year? It only gets smarter and more capable and each basically self-written version results in exponential growth. Face it, our puny brains cannot begin the conceive of what advancements AI will make to itself driven by the greed and power of Microsoft. And now is a good time, since I just insulted Microsoft to mention AI’s ability in the wrong hands, to target and eviscerate enemies effortlessly!
Another famous quote from Elon Musk is the next world war will be won with AI. It would be child’s play for AI loaded with Google’s, Facebook’s (Yeah, I know. But nobody calls them ‘Meta’) and Microsoft’s databases to find ways to ruin or for that matter kill anyone! I am not suggesting AI would grow sentient and do this, but it is just a matter of time until an evil human directs AI to kill.
AI, go into the medical records and change prescription for (person targeted). That person dies. I do not pretend to be as smart as ‘exponential AI’ and I was able to see that possibility. AI would know every move every one of us makes and could simply cause a collision in such a way it would be imperceivable. Again, “me dumb as post compare to AI in year or two”!
So, let’s ask ourselves what happens when hundreds of millions lose their jobs? Well, under our current form of government, we suddenly have hundreds of millions of homeless people! How long do you think the voters will keep our democratic Constitutional Republic with hundreds of millions pooping in the streets? There would have to be mass starvation? How else could it work?
A serendipitous fact; ChatGPT was written in Python, a coding language even used in Windows. But that makes me wonder if we misinterpreted the ‘Adam & Eve’ story and have in fact still been in the Garden of Eden and ChatGPT was the bite of knowledge and the snake was Python? Just a silly thought, but if not, they do say “Although, history never repeats itself, it does echo.”
As you can guess, this story does not have a happy ending especially for Constitutional conservatives because the only solution my puny brain can devise is a universal basic income and a ‘You will own nothing and be happy.’ The hardworking, God-fearing middle-class will become 100% dependent on government where ever they take us! I am not quite sure how a government paying everyone gets the money but the wealthy will be at their wealthiest until almost no one can buy their products. The ultimate end is the crash of all crashes. I pray that I am wrong about this future, but how can AI continue without causing this trainwreck? What jobs will be left for the middle-class? Please, please prove me wrong in the comments.