Reimagining A.I. | John Wild

What does artificial intelligence have in common with eugenics?
The first person to float the idea of a "general intelligence" was a eugenicist who was determined to rank intelligence according to race. This is just one of the legacies of A.I., a technology which Silicon Valley vehemently promises will transform the world, but which for now only consumes enormous quantities of energy. Despite the warnings from technologists around the world, for-profit companies are racing to develop A.G.I. no matter the costs.
Artist John Wild has traced the deep history of A.I., finding its roots in disturbing schools of thought which seek to raise the dead. He's also found where these histories are alive and kicking in C-Suite boardrooms. He joins me to reveal the disturbing imaginaries associated with A.I., and how we can begin to reimagine it as an entangled, decentralised, collaborative tool to create new ways of being.
🔴 John's work: johnwild.net/
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[@emceegreen8864]

Beautiful at 51:00. Rethinking intelligence. Cooperative and symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence to help solve sustainability problems. Reimagined reality 😊

[@TennesseeJed]

Thanks Rachel, always interesting stuff!

[@hunterking2910]

best episode yet! makes total sense that AI development, concentrated in the hands of psychopathic billionaires and the military would create AI that are hierarchical and destructive, versus transitioning the development to people that represent the diversity of society and democratically guide it's development to co-exist in a symbiotic relationship with humanity and nature.

[@sustainablemum2871]

Such a thought provoking conversation, thank you for this

[@RedmotionGames]

The book Bolo'bolo, imo, depicts global capitalist markets as a singular "entity" of control rather than something in service to humans it is something more akin to a prison, and calls it the "Planetary Work Machine".

[@AlexGoodall]

I think it would help to distinguish between phenomenal consciousness and meta consciousness. Riding a bike always requires consciousness - but once you've learned how, you don't need meta consciousness.

[@Slick-666]

I thought today was Tuesday. So glad I was wrong. Thanks Rachel!

[@liberty-matrix]

"Over the next 15 to 20 years humanoid robots will disrupt human labor throughout hundreds of Industries across every major sector of the global economy. The disruption of labor will be among the most profound transformations in human history." ~Tony Seba, 2024

[@SeventhCircleID]

...just to throw this out there again, Smith's 'Invisible Hand' as he uses it (only once in Wealth of Nations), does not mean what is described here, and is very different to modern (Hayekian) ideas which were disseminated in the 50's and 60's for political reasons. Smith's argument was that there is a bias within people to do good, i.e. to not cause damage to the nation or it's people, and that bias would influence the market (of small businesses and tradesmen composed of ordinary people, not monopolies) like an invisible hand to steer us away from damaging things. For the interpretation of the market given here, you need to go back further than Smith by a hundred years or so, to a guy named Thomas Mun, one of the founders of the East India Trading Company. He argued that monetary systems were a natural force should be allowed to establish correct social hierarchies. Smith would call this interpretation of the market mercantile given that it focused only on the maximisation of profit and the supporting of a upper class, where Smith by contrast is very firmly against high profits because of the social deformation it causes.

[@MediaFolkus]

55:36 So, instead of using energy-intensive machine AI to regulate and manage a *hybrid grid/photovoltaic/passive solar hot water system for your house - the water, itself could be doing the AI computing? I LIKE that idea! Not sure how it would work, but what an idea!

[@MediaFolkus]

16:34 I would disagree that what happens when you ride a bike is non-conscious and doesn’t require language. You learn to ride a bicycle and then you do t have to concentrate on it after you learn, but your body is responding to what the bicycle is needing of you to stay upright and in motion. This is completely and necessarily conscious, your brain is involved - and it is directly linked to your body (the two don’t work a part). Say, you are on a trail and there’s a dip or turn that you feel with your body - your mind registers this and your body does what you need it to do. This is a more advanced level of riding that you must consciously learn and be thinking about as you ride - even as you look around, sing a song or think about stuff. Another example of why I disagree on this one point is the act of playing a musical instrument. You can play an instrument without looking at what you are doing, your hands know where to go - you could either be reading sheet music, playing by rote or improvising - while looking around and thinking different thoughts - or meditating. This requires different levels of consciousness. But, you never do any of that without consciousness necessarily involved.

[@roseproctor3177]

omg I'm so glad your channel was recommended to me! this is so so important

[@emceegreen8864]

The “market “ as a form of non conscience intelligence? It certainly has a signal /response system. And has internal drive to continuously grow and consume resources without practical restraint. In engineering theory it lacks a control system and a restorative element. A successful and needed element would restore balance. The combination of physics and economics

[@MediaFolkus]

35:36 this seems galactic manifest destiny with missionaries.

[@daveferger9947]

The more I learn about the zeitgeist of the technotopia class the more I believe L. Ron Hubbard was quite a prodigy. His major sin appears to be exposing the actual motives behind these technologists. But his obsession with yachts and cosmic overlords seems originated in the science fiction of the 19th century as you've described. The techno-industrialists of our era seem to have scientology as the template. Their disregard for humanity or our natural environs very much rooted in the notion of superiority and somehow escaping earth. These 1% need to be felled before they're able to retreat to their nuclear bunkers. Boston Dynamics robots make me think its too late to usurp these ideas. Robot armies are very intimidating. Finite resources and the energy needed to extract them will hopefully be the undoing of these mad cap notions of men creating machine gods.

[@buriedintime]

Kurzweil's "The singularity is near" is an interesting read if only for all the tech on the horizon and things actually happening. however, his plans to secure away all the documents of his life and have all this information incorporated into his memories/consciousness which he hopes to upload one day.. is just kinda bonkers. he has storage units with his life's docs in there.. and his fathers as well. he envisions a time when humans will just eat pills to live.. food will be for pleasure only and will be "flavors" and no one will have to poop because the human organ systems will be bypassed somehow. it's all very weird. but he is an amazing engineer/inventor and made/makes amazing synthesizers for music.

[@cuauhtlihernandez682]

Animals, plants, and beings possess consciousness. We live, breath air, water, etc. Computers compute, or in other words make mathematical calculations. Those calculations are being refered to as intelligence. Intelligence in a breathing being and data computations in a machine should not be confused. It will serve the machine to refer to its computations as intelligence. It will serve the human in no way referring to the machines calculations as equal to intelligence. Whom does it actually serve?

[@jessieadore]

Who they sought to prove inferior turned out to be divine. That’s the trauma that triggered a denial and all of this “god-making” is an outward expression of their inability to cope.

[@ntjohn9551]

Dinosauria, We

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

We rarly ever can predict technological effects on society or even products snd services. They are trying to avoid some of the cheap & easy to replace feilds & sectors for now but it's only because they've had perks & benefits long enough to lobby deflection away from innovation buy its just a matter of time. It's an avalanche of tech ready to replace so many existing systems I'd even argue al gore marks the moment the public sector library knew the computational plow was coming after antiquated control mechanisms & centers that was used in 1900s structuralism

[@bgiv2010]

Biomimicry is the height of technology

[@OurPredicament]

Tragic that he doesn't see conciousness as pervasive and "intellegence" as stemming from it

[@OurPredicament]

and you nailed him down immediately. Good work.

[@ciriusp]

My feeling from what i have read and seen is that most actions are rooted in mechanistic physics and chemistry including our neurochemistry. We seem to have free will but expermients have shown that our physical actions are determined before our conscious minds are aware of what that action will be - (talking about the button + light experiment where the subject attempts to puch a button before a light turns on, the trick being that the light is controlled by a circuit/algorithm trained on the subjects brainwaves) Consciousness seems to be a surface layer over the top of or generated by the aggregate of all that activity, allowing awareness of the inputs and outputs to varying degrees, but maybe not influence over its course. So not to say that the universe does not have the ability to be aware or conscious, but intelligence does not have to be the chicken that comes from the egg of consciousness, maybe its the other way round. The seeming chaos of a bunch of random interactions leading to an "intelligent" outcome that may or may not be able to experience awareness, depending on the organisation of the end result.

[@vincentkosik403]

that's a lot of emissions... China ain't going to cut back on it's coal burning.. permacomputing...I like that maybe have some capture from the skies

[@StashmoCharlie]

This is a very 'armchair philosophy' take on what is actually a well studied and written about things. Philip Balls book 'The book of minds', gives a much more comprehensive perspective on what makes minds, and how to compare them to AI. Jaron Laniers book 'You are not a gadget' speaks better to the nature of technological development too.

[@georgewaters6424]

crikey

[@sjoerd1239]

Too speculative. Too vague, too loosely connected, and too shallow to be meaningful. Bordering on conspiracy theory.

[@scenFor109]

The Market is an abusive feature of the global cult ideology of sovereignty. Sovereign states can't exist without militarily enforced Exclusive Economic Zones, monopoly currency and Apartheid concentration camps for 'illegal aliens'. Sovereignty is rooted in the ideology of colonial imperialism and the theft of people. How many people say that they they come from and belong to a so-called sovereign state? How many people say that they are the title of a so-called sovereign bank? Monopoly is Slavery End Global Apartheid

[@drrbrt]

The pyramids were the first attempt to build technology to raise the dead and extend life for the Pharaoh's, on the back of slave labor of course. It's remarkable how long this memetic trajectory has lasted.