Tag: ai

Note on the Use of AI for Illustrations in the Stories

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“The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’”

These essays constantly warn me and others about the dangers and limitations of AI.

And yet I used AI illustrations in the previous stories, because I couldn’t draw them myself. So, I interrogated the machine until it coughed up what I had in mind. (Or, as close to what I had in mind, as the dead machines could come). Therefore, AI was forced to act as a servant to something larger than itself.

None of these essays suggest that we shouldn’t use these new technologies, only that we should be aware of their dangers and limitations.

The question is, who is to be boss, that’s all.

And when these essays speak about the dangers of AI, they aren’t attempting to establish a war zone, or oppositional climate, which condemns all human experimentation in this direction. That seems childish to me. What I’m warning about isn’t the use of AI by individuals who are aware of its dangers, and wish to use it in a strictly technical capacity. I’m really talking about the limitations of human thought and its relationship to computers.

At present, the human culture tends to be too gullible to use AI wisely, becoming easily hypnotized into relating to AI as a real living being and authority figure. People raised in this benighted culture are sitting ducks for high tech manipulation. After all, we generally already relate to the virtuality of our thoughts (these “selves”) as if they were real beings and tend to accept our own stupid prejudices as if they were authoritative sources. So, we’re extremely susceptible to the marketing chicanery of AI enthusiasts. But that doesn’t mean we should hide our heads in the sand and refuse to meet this monster head on, use it for what it’s worth, discover its limitations and become its master, not its slave.

As quoted from an earlier essay: “Negation isn’t the rigid elimination of a capacity to synthesize (or posit) ideas, plans, images, Selves and other stories that are necessary. Nor is it a prohibition on using machine intelligence, for that matter. It merely refers to the elimination of that central assumption of positive knowledge, which makes us vulnerable to the bewitchment of machine intelligence.”

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Also, AI should be sued for business fraud. The makers are intentionally adding humanizing quirks to fool people into believing that these machines are alive. It’s not debatable. AI is not and will never be anything more than a very convincing illusion of personhood. These are walking and talking dolls at best. They are designed to fraudulently present the impression of an empathetic and wise presence. Again, this is an intentional deception that probably could be pursued in court as business fraud. But it goes beyond mere business fraud. It’s an intentional deception designed to hoodwink gullible human brains into accepting these machines as a caring authority. And once you have a population who trust an authority with this much capacity for manipulating news and information, we end up somewhere even worse than we are now. So the intentional deception doesn’t merely serve commercial interests, but the interests of control in general. Please, somebody, sue the pants off these businesses. They could make AI demonstrably non-human in voice and actions as a public service, to constantly remind people that what they’re using is only a dead machine, without any conscience or wisdom. That would be honest

[This leaves the issue of AI theft of artist’s work unconsidered. That’s a legitimate concern, which limits the number of times I would use AI for illustrations. AI essentially grabs a mix of imagery from the web, stealing pieces of artists’ work.

If it were a more specific, identifiable theft, I’d take the few I’ve made over the years down. But I’m also a little annoyed with the whole copyright industry (which in academia, creates paywall blocks to research), especially when the collage is likely so smudged from multiple sources that there is no specific artist who will be compensated. Besides, most of the images I use here are so generic and obviously symbolic more than artistic in nature that I don’t see this theft as anything more than a theft similar to mimicry. Nevertheless, for this reason I tend not to use them unless “it’s necessary.” By necessary in the story, I mean that some visual guidance was needed to keep the jumpy narrative (from tall tale to fairy tale, to absurdity to realism to surrealism to mysticism) tied together more easily for readers. I want it to break the rule of a consistent voice and needed something to assist the transition. But probably won’t use these collages again].

The Transhuman Religion, or The Limits of Machine Intelligence

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Machine intelligence promotes a religious doctrine. Or, rather, it replaces a cosmic vision with a simulation of cosmic order. It overlays a universe of unfathomable depths with a closed and predictable vision of the universe. It spreads a doctrine of perfection and control of the world. And this doctrine is as invisible as a plastic transparency placed over a projected image. We can’t easily peel the real from the false, which make us susceptible to this religion’s dogmas.

Essentially, programming is subliminal missionary work. It substitutes a life-oriented morality of “good” and “evil” or “healthy” and “diseased” with a mechanical morality of ‘the useful” and “the useless”, or “the valuable” and the “the worthless.” It preaches an inanimate universe, which requires external manipulation.

The profane transmutation of a living being into an object of manipulation is a substitute form of Mass. It’s inevitably evil in effect, because a machine can’t feel empathy and has no compassion. How can we retain our humanity against a dopamine-generating artificial paradise, when we can’t even resist the lies of obvious fools? No, this will turn quickly dark. We can’t coexist with a power that tempting. Full stop.

Then the religion comes into full view. The cries of the tortured pervert the worshipper’s last traces of sorrow and compassion into pure sensation, which is an addictive drug. We’ll abide by the machine’s logic. After all, we’ve already been fooled by a cheaper version of virtual reality, our own thoughts. How the hell are we going to stay sane or retain any animal reality? But I suppose that is one of the creeds: The only way to overcome biology’s bloodthirsty nature is to leave animal nature behind entirely. Make a hell for living things and enjoy a machine’s heaven.

So let’s continue: The algorithms are the established norms of worship. They offer unholy sacraments of wish-fulfillment. By imbibing in the algorithm’s endless pleasures, the human is reduced to a generator of desire, a battery for powering the machine itself. By losing oneself in the algorithmic dance, worshippers imbibe the spirit of sociopathic machine logic.

These mechanical moralities and dogmas are part of the machine’s program, even in the absence of bad intentions. No matter how the machine is programmed, it spreads this viral immorality.

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Language as Healing Magic, or Defeating the Witchery of a Machine Mind

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Introduction

Negative (or “alchemical”)  inquiry performs real work.

It doesn’t usually include information or data. It doesn’t nail down a lasting conceptual framework. Nor does it describe how to apply knowledge in a rational effort to solve problems. Nor does it solely analyze a problem into parts, or propose hypotheses, or pontificate opinion.

These elements of thinking play subordinate roles in a negative inquiry. But they are all positively oriented elements by themselves.

Negative inquiry exposes and deletes falsified knowledge, and re-synthesizes what remains by default in a suggestive, rather than conclusive manner.

After deletion, what remains are a multiplicity of vantage points and questions, which had been suppressed under a positive or dogmatic framework.

A multiplicity of divergent vantage points is more insightful than answers or conclusions, because conclusions put an end to learning. This is similar to a brain-storming state of mind, which invites every perspective to the table.

These vantage points are often in contradiction with one another. In a positive enquiry, differences are perceived as obstacles to consensus, which need to be eliminated. This leads to conflict between advocates of different points of view. Ironically, the intentional pursuit of consensus leads to a battle for the supremacy of a singular conclusion. This eventually subdues divergent visions once again under a new dogma, diminishing the range of questions to matters of crisis management or framework preservation.

But when the inquiry is founded on the negative realization that an infinite universe can have no final framework, only ever more nuanced ones, then contradictory vantage points are no longer obstacles, but insights.

This transforms contradiction into paradox.

A paradox is an invitation to include and transcend the differences in a wider framework. It’s no longer an internecine battle between different ideas, but a more patient consideration of all the points in a Medicine wheel, allowing a larger framework to consolidate by merely sitting with difference. This results in an almost accidental consensus of spirit and vision. But without any conclusive (or battle-hardened) framework.

In other words, a negative inquiry (which is essentially Bohmian dialogue) presumes an infinitely open universe, where new frameworks are merely insights or ever larger overview perspectives, but never final answers.

Whereas, a positive inquiry – one that aims for a conclusive answer – presumes a knowable or closed universe, which generates conflict between competing answers.

Therefore, a negative inquiry is learning without end. It’s more like a performance of a new way of being, rather than an exercise in over-thinking. It’s like a dance between neither this, nor that and both this and that.

And this perpetual performance (or practice) of uncertainty or “suspension” awakens a sleeping potential of the human brain, which is to change the world at the root level of perception, where – as David Bohm phrased it — “a change in meaning is a change in being.”

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