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Artificial Intelligence is not Human

When we think about artificial intelligence, the images that come to mind are from Terminator, Ex Machina, Eagle Eye, or maybe AlphaGo. 

But I believe that is missing the point. It makes us think that AI will happen sometime in the future when it is already here.

Today AI narrates videos on YouTube. If you listen carefully, the narration still feels slightly off, but I know many people who can’t tell the difference unless you point it out. 

There is the fear that AI mass deployment will displace the workforce, and if you can’t work, how will you get paid? And if you don’t get paid, who will continue to be the insatiable consumer that powers the capitalistic economy? 

These are good topics for debate, but AI is already used in a subtle but powerful way. 

Artificial Intelligence is used to control human perception. And when you can control someone’s perception, you have a high degree of control over their behavior. 

You may think that you are immune to this. But if you use a smartphone, a search engine, or any social media, you are in the middle of it. 

There is so much content generated every second that no human mind can ever process it all. So we need a filter. We need a way to sift through all this data and find the information that is relevant to us. 

When you search for something, you will get the first ten most relevant results out of millions or sometimes billions of entries. But who decides what “most relevant” means? 

You could argue that the end-user decides because if the results were not relevant, they would use a different search engine. But it is not that simple. The order in which results show up impacts how much you trust the result. And what happens if a business is pushed on the second or third page? It becomes invisible to you because you trust the engine, so if that business has fallen in rank with the search algorithm, then for sure, they are no longer relevant to you. Right? 

Social media takes this to a whole new level. Not only do you expose yourself to “only what you like,” which reinforces your confirmation bias, but AI has the power to subtly but surely affect your feed. So you are more gradually exposed to a product or a concept in a way that you feel is natural, and therefore it was always “your idea.”

This ability to alter perception is what I mean when I say Artificial Intelligence is not human. It is a mistake to assume it has human capabilities, interests, or even goals. It does not. 

Think about it.

It used to be impossible (or extremely expensive) to track a group of people, a target population, and slowly alter their perception of reality by gradually changing the information they are exposed to. Not because it was hard to do, we’ve known how propaganda works for a long time. 

The difficulty is the focus and effort you would have to put into it, track everything, and do micro-adjustments on the fly. But where humans fall short, AI shines. It is trivial for a computer to keep track of large data sets, to apply a gradual change, and monitor the response. 

What a human controller needs to do now, is to simply instruct the AI what the goal is and then relax. The algorithm will apply subtle but precise pressure to shape the target audience’s behavior.

And this is both good and bad. 

Parents are well aware that techniques to shape behavior are useful to help their children rid themselves of harmful habits. An AI assistant would make this very easy, with constant reminders and suggested actions based on the latest data. 

But what happens when the controller behind the AI does not have your best interest at heart? When, instead of being used to create empowering habits, it is used to develop addiction and further unconsciousness in people. 

Is there a way out? 

I believe it is. And it has to do with expanding your awareness.

Pay more attention to your thoughts and monitor your emotions. Ask if this is truly important to you or have you been conditioned to perform a particular activity? Determine what is important in your life and write it down as a guide system. 

Mystic schools say that the mind is an excellent tool but a lousy master. And we are now in the era where the mind can be greatly amplified to our benefit or be used to sink us into unconsciousness. 

Why are you doing what you are doing? Who is in control of your thoughts, emotions, and desires? What informs your opinions?

Things are never going to get back to “normal”

This post will depart from the usual topics, but it will describe the underlying vision of what I have written so far.

“The world is changing” is probably the understatement of the year.

The latest “COVID” situation has amplified existing trends, and there is no going back.

Here is why.

There are three guiding stars that I look at when I try to predict the future:

1. Consciousness

2. Artificial Intelligence

3. ETs (as in “aliens”)

They may seem random or disjointed if you are new to these, but Consciousness unites them all.

Let’s start with the Aliens.

If you think there is no evidence for alien contact, start with Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project and go from there.

I could speculate why we don’t have “mass contact” yet, but let’s focus on observing how “normal” aliens have become: from the Vatican scientist writing about the subject matter to governments declassifying various documents, to the plethora of alien movies in the past decade.

Many people have different feelings about ETs, but I doubt many humans on the planet today have not heard of the words “aliens” or “UFO.”

So why are ETs so important?

It is primarily because their presence forces us to ask interesting questions:

  • What is our place in the larger Universe?
  • What is our relationship with other beings and possibly other dimensions?
  • Will they save us?
  • Will they destroy us?
  • What will happen with organized religion and our old belief systems?

And the most critical question for me is about technology: what kind of energy systems are they using to zip around the Universe? I bet they are not strapping a hydrogen bomb to their bottoms and hope for the best, as most of our rockets do.

Imagine for a moment what we could do on this planet with such a powerful and stable energy system. There will be no point in mining coal, extracting oil, or burning trees, just to mention the basics. That alone would have a massive impact on the quality of our air and the regeneration of our forest. But the more important aspect is that of self-reliance. Anyone on the planet would have their basic needs covered for free.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Imagine all humans on the planet free from the daily grind, from worry, from meaningless work, and instead just creating stuff out of being inspired to do so. Those humans would be very hard to control, convince to go to war in another country or be forced into compliance. The power structure we have on the planet today would be very upset by this.

The ET issue is connected with an expansion of awareness. And there is a solid case to be made that you need the expansion of awareness first, before being open to a harmonious open contact where we treat these beings like our distant cousins and not like our Gods or our Destroyers.

Let’s shift our focus to Artificial Intelligence.

Most people don’t realize this, but AI is here, and it is everywhere. Do you have a smartphone? Then you are linked to a powerful AI system that helps run your device while collecting data about you.

All of your activity online is tracked and analyzed by powerful AIs to spot trends, to create a more tailored experience, and, for sure, to try to control your perception as well.

AI use is not all bad. AI is a tool. As RFK Jr mentioned in his talk with Tucker Carlson (24:00 time mark), an AI system was deployed, as a test, to determine how effective the vaccines really are. Unfortunately, the system was shut down because the results did not align with the mainstream view. Still, the point is, AI is a powerful tool that can be used for good, and it can sift through a mountain of data to find inconsistencies, patterns, and connections that would escape a human mind.

If such a tool were to be asked questions like:

  • “What is the likely cause of this disease according to all the data we have,”
  • “How likely it is that we have a misdiagnosis in the case,”
  • “What industry is causing the most pollution on the planet.”

We might get very surprising and insightful answers in a matter of seconds. And with references to original studies as well.

Instead, AI is used to answer questions like “how do we capture the attention of children and young adults for profit,” “where to apply pressure to steer public opinion and perception towards a given agenda,” “what mechanisms of control are most effective with a population group or even individual?”

This AI tool gets even better and more powerful and an exponential rate. I hope that we start asking it better questions.

And finally, we have Consciousness, the thing that glues all these together.

For now, the most helpful way to think about Consciousness is to ask questions like “What is most important both individually and collectively?” and then look into “Why do I believe that?”

There are two common answers to the “What” question depending on where you look. One is to have power. And the other is to be safe. And the exploration of the “why” is revealing.

Power can help you get a sense of safety. But power can also be satisfying in itself, whether it is power over others or power over oneself.

Looking at why do we want to feel safe, what comes up to me is the fear of death. And behind that is the belief that death is the final end, the ultimate demise, and it will be painful too.

But is that true?

And here, expanding your Consciousness or awareness comes into play. If you can get, within yourself, at a place that cannot be hurt, destroyed, or killed, you can be at peace. You can look at reality as an exciting exploration instead of a continuous unfolding drama. And this shift in perspective can change everything both individually and collectively.

We are at a crossroads. The stars we guide ourselves by matter more than ever. Choose wisely.

Size does matter! (for AI)

There was a contest where a man used a scythe to cut the grass from a parcel faster than a person using a lawnmower. Here is the video.

I was watching that, and something felt wrong about the whole setup. And then it hit me! No, it was not the fact that there is nothing scientific about the video :). 

The problem is that the parcel had a carefully selected size so that the man with the scythe does not get tired. What if the test parcel was ten times larger? 

Even if a machine is one hundred times slower than you, it will beat your performance on a long enough time horizon.

Why? Because it does not get bored, it does not get tired, and it does not sleep. In three words:

It doesn’t stop!

This idea applies best to Artificial Intelligence. You can argue that AI is still not smart enough or fast enough to make connections, but the progress never stops!

There was a time when you could say:

“I have read all the books on this planet!” or

“I have watched all the movies ever produced!”

Not anymore.

No human mind can ever go through all the data we have produced (and continue to produce). But for a computer algorithm, it is not a problem! 

Imagine the connections you could make or the insights you would have if you could read all the books that exist today.

An AI can already consume way more that than we can imagine. And the ability to also comprehend the data is increasing with time at an accelerated pace. 

In a few short years, I believe that AI will be objectively “smarter” than us in measurable ways. 

Will it also be sentient? That’s is a story for another time.

Doing Business in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

I don’t see many people speaking about this, but artificial intelligence will fundamentally change how we do business.

It is already happening behind the scenes, but it is only visible to those who work in this field. 

Here are some examples.

Infinite Personalization.

Any decent newsletter service allows you to personalize the message to include the customer’s name and other personal data. But with AI, this can go so much further. For example, a color theme can be automatically selected for each user based on the time of day the email goes out and even the reader’s mood. The message will be sent in their mother tongue using a perfect translation. 

The presentation of your site will be uniquely tailored to each of your visitors or customers. 

This fine-grained personalization is impossible for a team of humans to handle, but it is trivial for an AI, especially when you aggregate data from multiple sources. It may not be possible for you, but you can bet the big guys are working on it. 

Each of us will begin to see and interact with their unique and custom version of the Internet. 

Next is the “No Code” “No Design” options. 

You will be able to describe to an AI system, in natural language, what you want to offer and to whom, and you will instantly get an app and a website built for it. AI will render most developers and designers obsolete and lower the barrier-to-entry for many inspired entrepreneurs and creators. 

Can a computer do it?

Your offer should be something that cannot be easily explained or described.

If you can explain it easily, then a computer can do it much faster than you and at a near-infinite scale. 

I believe most businesses will be surprised to wake up being obsolete overnight, but some pay attention and position themselves to take advantage of the upcoming tide.

Critique

There are some examples on the web where the AI is really dumb or comes up with solutions that make no sense to us humans. It is also said that AI will never be creative. 

We can add this to the long list of things that we previously thought a computer could not do. 

The development of AI (as with most things related to computers) has an exponential development curve. This means that the distance between a “dumb AI” and a superintelligence is not as long as we might imagine. 

We can choose to leverage this new powerful tool or resing to watching others do it. 

Building ZAPs!

Since I recommended you build an API into your service that integrates with Zapier, I figured I might as well give it a try myself, and not just talk theory! 

I was shocked to finish the integration without having to write one single line of code! 

But I am getting ahead of myself. 

Part of my skill up plan is to take a deep dive into automation. What a better way to study than looking at what the masters are doing? Or, in this case: Zapier. 

I’ve fired up their tutorial and was getting ready to crank some code! 

I have integrated APIs before, and if the documentation was clear and with relevant examples, I could get the hang of it pretty quickly and then extend it easily. 

As I am progressing through the tutorial, it dawns on me that this integration will be created entirely online, in the Zapier UI, by answering some questions and filling forms! 

My mind was going: “it cannot be that simple! Each API provider has its own interface or authentication mechanism… you would have to write some adapter for that!” 

No, sir! Not so! 

If the APIs follow the standards when it comes to authentication and passing data around using JSON, then Zapier has you covered! 

You answer the questions, you fill out the forms as instructed… and you’re done! No code required! And since there is no code required, there is nearly zero chance of having a bug in your integration. How cool is that? 

Needless to say, I am impressed. And I got another confirmation of why following standards is a good idea. 

Not quite like building with Legos

Even though I did not write any code, it did not feel like building with Lego blocks. But more like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Because the APIs are very diverse, you need to spend some time to connect the right pieces in the correct order. But since everything is built via filling forms, you have validation available and tests. There is immediate feedback if what you are making is not working as you’d expect.

I did spend two hours getting the final step to work. I almost contacted Zapier’s support to inform them that their builder is broken, but in fact, the problem was with me :). 

I had a typo in one of the data fields, and the error message I was getting from the API I was using at the time was very misleading (apparently on purpose). So it took me two hours to find that typo in my configuration and get the Zap to work. Take away here: please make your error messages clear; it will save you time in the future!

Just as with finishing a complex puzzle, seeing the success message was so satisfying. 

Why all the fuss?

Building a Zapier integration is so simple and straight forward that I can easily see AI building integrations and ZAPs in the (very) near future. This means that if you decide to provide an API that can integrate with platforms like Zapier, your service may be used in ways you cannot even imagine. The pieces can be interconnected in infinite ways to create something new, exciting, and why not: disruptive!

Keep on creating the new paradigm.