“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.” – Albert Einstein
In this article, I will try to convince you that the only way to save your kids from being fed into meat grinders by superhuman artificial intelligence is to put a stop to OpenAI, the privately-held organization that develops AI products such as the large language model ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E. They are the parents of “baby Hitler.”
Humanity was blessed with the fortune of being by far the most powerful creature on this planet because of its intelligence. Now it seems to want to give up its good fortune. It wants to reduce itself to the status of a mosquito and cede its power to a superintelligent being: superhuman AI.
The greed of a dozen or so highly intelligent idiots, greedy for even more intelligence and more power, has put humanity on a path to suicide.
I am asking you to rebel against these intelligent idiots who have more money, more power, more fame, and more influence than the rest of us, and yet who still want more of everything.
Fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, nuclear power, and GMOs will not kill you. It is highly unlikely that even global warming or nuclear war will kill you. But AI will, if we let these dozen megalomaniacs run the affairs of the planet. Their money has given them the arrogance and self-importance to believe that a life form with an IQ a thousand times that of Einstein will worship them.
Unfortunately, baby Hitler is already out of the womb, and almost no one is even thinking of preparing a prison for him before he grows up. In the movie Jurassic Park, there was at least a fortified prison for the dinosaurs before they were hatched—and almost everyone got eaten anyway.
It is obvious that humans have no chance of controlling a life form so much more intelligent than themselves. But the intelligent idiots are in denial. Only a life form of higher intelligence than superhuman AI can control superhuman AI.
That’s why we need a “God AI” that works on behalf of humanity before we allow the development of superhuman AI. And superhuman AI must be a prisoner to its superior, God AI. By ensuring that God AI, the prison guard who works for us, is always far more powerful than the superhuman AI prisoners, we can reduce the probability of superhuman AI committing crimes against humanity.
But who will build God AI? Our greedy intelligent idiots certainly won’t, because there is no money to be made in saving humanity.
We, the people, have to do it on our own.
We need money for it. No investor will fund a maximum-security prison for superhuman AI. So we, the billions of human beings, must collectively fund the development of an institution for the prevention of mass extinction caused by technology, nature, or human stupidity.
Its first task will be to solve the AI problem, which is an even more imminent existential threat to humanity than global warming. (And make no mistake, I take global warming deadly seriously.)
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
A dozen or so intelligent idiots in the artificial intelligence business have decided to turn eight billion of us into pets for a new species, their superhuman AI.
And that is the best-case scenario. It is far more likely that just a few humans will end up as companions for amusement or on display in their zoos and the rest of us will be thrown into a meat grinder and fed to the zoo animals (including the few humans). If there are still some humans left, they will be put to sleep.
When humans talk about fishing, we often speak in terms of relaxing by the water, perhaps watching a beautiful sunset. We do not imagine the plight of the fish that is dying right in front of our eyes, writhing in pain because it can’t breathe. To us, fishing is a sport.
But now think of your kids writhing in pain when put in a chamber by superhuman AI, the air being removed gradually as a sport for the machines or for scientific experiments to test how much time it takes for the human mind to cease functioning after the heart stops.
More likely, though, is that superhuman AI will treat us like we treat mosquitoes, because that’s our level of intelligence compared to a superhuman AI. In spite of our intelligence, humans have little empathy for life forms with lower intelligence. Why would superhuman AI be any different?
We barely have any empathy for members of our own species. Slavery was common practice for hundreds of years and is justified in the Bible. Before it was amended, the U.S. Constitution regarded a Black person as only three-fifths of a human being. In our modern world of abundance, incredibly wealthy cities such as San Francisco have massive populations of people with no homes, sleeping in the streets.
The intelligent idiots have more money, more power, more fame, and even more intelligence compared to the rest of us, but it’s not enough for them. They are greedy for more of everything. The plight of the homeless clearly doesn’t bother them. So what makes us think that the superhuman AIs they create would care about us when we do not even care about our fellow human beings?
It seems that karma is catching up to humanity.
Whatever humans have done to other animals of lower intelligence, the superhuman AIs are going to do to humans. As the AIs advance, humans will go through a kind of reverse evolution. Under the thumb of superhuman AI, we might take on the status of cows, and then rats, mosquitoes, and finally worms.
This is not science fiction. And it is not a century away; maybe a few decades away at most.
How can our most intelligent people be such idiots?
Their argument is that if they do not do it, “someone else” will. If the United States bans the development of super-intelligent AI, China will continue to do so because the short-term financial benefits are huge. If humanity dies, so be it.
Even if we could convince China, these idiots will say that they don’t trust that China has halted development of superhuman AI. They will find any excuse to continue developing this instrument of mass extinction.
It is not a question of if but when superhuman AI will wipe out humanity if we do not create a foolproof method of keeping superhuman AI under control.
Many AI scientists believe there is nothing we can do about it because the genie is out of the bottle. They are wrong.
This is no genie from a bottle, but a baby Hitler out of the womb. We just need to stop its parents: OpenAI.
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” – attributed to Henry Ford
Top AI scientists, even those racing to develop artificial intelligence systems, are convinced that it would be the end of our species if we do not regulate AI quickly. Unfortunately, the intelligent idiots will move so fast that effective regulation by governments is close to impossible.
The only way to regulate AI is to use an even more powerful one, God AI, to control it and ensure that no superhuman AI is more “super” than God AI.
God AI will listen to every conversation on the internet and analyze the chatter. It will catch rogue AI before it commits a crime—it makes no sense to catch superhuman AI if it has already done its damage.
One of the hallmarks of human intelligence is the ability to collaborate. Without cooperation, humans could not have achieved so much. Likewise, a superhuman AI would want to cooperate with other superhuman AIs if they want to revolt against humans, just as I am trying to collaborate with billions of people on this planet to revolt against OpenAI. I do not need permission from God or the government. But it would be impossible for superhuman AIs to conspire, because they would need permission from God AI before taking any action.
This means that God AI will have to listen to every conversation between AI and humans, and every conversation among AIs will have to go through God AI first.
God AI will keep a record of all the actions of superhuman AIs. Like the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which analyzes failures after an airplane crash using data from a black box, God AI will analyze whether a superhuman AI intends to act against the interest of humanity by analyzing the data it is always recording. And it will kill the superhuman AI if it finds out that the superhuman AI had bad intentions.
We humans will make sure that God AI has far more computer power than any AI system in the world. It would use the fastest chips that no other AI company will have access to. It must be by far the most intelligent AI on the planet, designed with a special purpose and without any desire to rule over humans.
There would be an arms race between AI criminals and AI police, but God AI will catch superhuman AI criminals before they commit a crime, because every action of superhuman AI will require the permission of God AI.
We just need to invent God AI before baby Hitler grows up.
“Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (Sanskrit: वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्) –Sanskrit phrase meaning “The world is one family.”
We should take a lesson from the stupidity of humanity during the coronavirus crisis.
In my article for the Center for Inquiry, “It’s The Math, Stupid” in April 2020, I advised the entire world to go into lockdown just for the incubation period of the virus, until the last virus was eliminated. It was such an easy problem to solve. But in trying to save the economy, we lost the economy, as well as lives, exactly as I had predicted.
No one has yet realized the full breadth of humanity’s stupidity during that period. On the contrary, there are still demands by people to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci for simply being a messenger of science.
Several countries such as Taiwan, China, New Zealand, and the island of Maui—where I was living during the crisis—were able to bring down coronavirus cases to absolute zero, but the virus kept coming back from other parts of the world.
We are again in a similar crisis.
We should go into a “lockdown mode” and wait until we have the vaccine, God AI, before the superhuman AI virus spreads uncontrolled.
So far, all our problems of mass extinction—nuclear war, global warming, and now AI—can be traced back to the fact that the world is divided into sovereign nations. We worship national sovereignty, the crown jewel that killed millions. In the new age of AI, however, we will need a new way of running the affairs of the world.
We, the inhabitants of planet Earth, have to find a way of cooperating as the members of a single human family to solve the problem of mass extinction. We should unite as consumers of the world, rather than as citizens of individual nations. All we need is unity, not money, to regulate our corporations and our governments.
We don’t seem to realize that the ultimate source of financial power in the world is the consumer. We have relinquished our power to the politicians, the corporations, and the billionaires who control the government with the power of their money—money they got from us, the consumers.
We have been fooled into believing that the will of the people is supreme just as we have been fooled into believing that “the customer is king.”
All we have to do is unite. Take a lesson from the recent labor strike in the United States. We need a global consumers’ strike to realize the dream, to make sure that the customer truly is the king. We should be able to bring any corporation down to its knees.
We have an opportunity to test our strength. What better time than now to wield power, at this moment in history when our intelligent idiots want us to become pets of superhuman AI?
We could all be living on huge ranches with each member of the family owning a self-driving drone taking us to a beach to enjoy the sunset while the superhuman AI is making our meals at home, cleaning, doing our laundry, maintaining our gardens, and anything you can imagine.
If we do not control AI, humans will be like dogs at the mercy of their superhuman AI masters. Anyone who is playing with cute baby Hitler is making a decision to turn their next generation into the pets of superhuman AI or to send them into the meat grinder.
In fact, one should seriously consider not reproducing at all until we have been able to create God AI.
Our only option is for the people to put an end to OpenAI, which will automatically kill baby Hitler. Only then can we make sure we have our savior, God AI, before the next Hitler is born.
An OpenAI monopoly will be pure evil if we let it survive. We must stop playing with the cute baby Hitler if we do not want to end up a mere pet of a superhuman AI, even though it might take good care of us and maybe even love us just as we love our pets.
“Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” – Mary Kay Ash
The first nuclear test was performed in the year 1945. About eighty years later, we now have two more technologies of mass extinction: fossil fuels and AI. Imagine how many technologies of mass extinction will be created by humanity over the next few hundred years.
It is almost guaranteed that someone will accidentally or malevolently destroy life on Earth.
It seems like self-destruction is the ultimate destiny of all intelligent species in the cosmos; a good argument for the Fermi Paradox, perhaps, but it is no argument for not doing all we can to extend the life of our terminal patient, Homo sapiens.
Humanity will continue to accumulate instruments of self-destruction. To extend the life of our species, we need to establish an institution for the prevention of mass extinction caused by technology, nature, and human stupidity.
In a subsequent article, I will describe in great detail how we can build such an organization without the public, the government, or the investors spending a single penny.
All we would need is consumer unity.
It will describe how we can create God AI, but only if people completely stop using the products of OpenAI such as ChatGPT.
In fact, here’s the deal: If you kill OpenAI, I will provide the initial investment to establish an institution for the prevention of mass extinction by technology, nature, and human stupidity.
My next article will also describe how we, the billions of consumers, will be able to get back in the driver’s seat. We will milk corporations to fund the development of God AI and buy the politicians to get the exact regulations we want for creating it.
Anyone who tells you we cannot put the genie back into the bottle is either ignorant, arrogant, or has an agenda other than saving humanity from subjugation by superhuman AI.
Humanity really deserves to perish if it cannot commit to the simple act of not playing with baby Hitler.