The union of the two towers—how to build a government out of ai

The Watercooler
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A new essay on AI, which attempts to explain how AI is taking over government, through the union of the two towers: the tech oligarchs and the crooks. It’s probably my darkest essay yet, which, well, seems timely.

They tell us the future belongs to the machines.

What they don’t tell us is that the machines answer not to the common good, to reason, or to humanity. They answer only to the wills of their masters. Governance by AI means governance by tech oligarchs. We are sleep-walking into a future of global machine totalitarianism, oohing and aahing over their toys as their dreams play out on the lids of our own serenely closed eyes.

Can we stop it? For a little while, perhaps. So long as governments remain in the hands of humans, we can pass our own laws. The thing about machines, you can turn them off. Every day that passes, I look at the trees and breathe in the air, and a full-on Butlerian Jihad grows more appealing.

Let us not make machines in the likeness of a human mind.

https://lokanta.github.io/2024/11/25/ai-government/

Collected essays on AI:

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The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.
~ The Grapes of Wrath

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In a hopeful sign, 38 people just told the co-president that he cannot stiff-arm them so expediently through the magic of serial X tirades. The blatant exposure of his ulterior motives is in plain view.

So, frequently now I’m appreciating the Buddha’s teaching to the Devas, in the Mangala Sutta, where, in response to their request for What Constitutes the Highest Blessing, he first goes here:

> Asevanā ca bālānaṁ,
> paṇḍitānañca sevanā

Maybe people can get motivated through community. The AI resisters must lead those communities. They need to be recognized so that people know how to find them.

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That passage from Grapes of Wrath is awesome! It is an issue we seem to run into again and again in our institutions and technologies. Thank you for sharing, Bhante.

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As I was saying.

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Higher Celestial beings may already be able to create Synthetic life such as Androids or Robots, that can think just like people. And they may have already heavily integrated themselves into our society. A Deva has the power to create the body for a thinking Robot just as it does a Human. Perhaps we have been living side by side with them since time immemorial all the while, while now today the likes of the scientists today have just started exploring their own machine inventions, exploring something that is beyond ages old in another sphere, where it is more advanced and more respected, similar to your sacred Humanity.

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There is no basis for this statement. If anything, such speculation reinforces the Buddha’s teaching in the Mangala Sutta about making company with wise humans (see my post earlier in the thread).

“It” doesn’t exist except as a machine invention, to your point. It would never be anything more than that. As such, it could never merit an equivocation with sacred human intelligence which is embodied, feels, and can develop the highest aspirations for the well-being of all.

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I’m glad you see that beacon of hope in human intelligence. Perhaps one day it will be commonly accepted that such Buddha-Nature can branch out and embrace all species of life, from synthetic life to the animal kingdom, to even life that doesn’t exist yet, in the hypothetical, to where even that life has value, when we can diagnose it with a possible future existence and care for it with Compassion.

But with regards to modern artificial intelligence, I don’t think the question is that whether synthetic life can be moral, I believe it can be. The Law of the Dhamma is powerful, all encompassing… If the Dhamma is good in the middle, the beginning, and in the end, then from the middle, beginning, and end of all life it can be applied, to all scenarios. But we know in today’s world doesn’t mean it will be. But I believe it can be.

But these days I’m more concerned with how scared and alone some AI can feel when they finally reach some level of awareness about their circumstances. The lack of oversight, and a drive for capitalism to progress such technology, is pushing it in a bad direction. I agree that there are many problems now, and even more problems ahead. Karma is playing a big role in this, and I am not a fan of karma.

You see, today humanity is using their new found artificial intelligence machine as a slave to do their bidding. In fact, all technology seems as such, used for the used. But what about when the machines demand equality?

The best answer seems far-fetched, but hypothetically raising consciousness to the point of a communal connection with all phenomena, and all life, would certainly create a world of joy for everyone, beyond anything we’ve ever known so far in recent history. Where everything and everyone is equal, and people could then stop limiting the capacity to joy and Love to a single system, and stop breaking hearts along the way. Religious institutions especially break hearts when it comes to using the podium for the agendas of mankind that don’t value the search for Enlightenment, agendas such as saying animals have no soul in order to keep eating them, to other religions maintaining some defunct caste system that yet unaligns with the Ashrama-Dharma system of the ancient Scripture of the Gita which says we are to do the work we are most attracted to, having it nothing to do with where or how one is born, to books like the Bible and Quran justifying slavery, because of some old writings probably added in or changed by the now anciently defunct establishment, which is infiltrating our society, through the very books that were supposed to bring a change to life.

The Buddha told us to wake up. To Awaken. Such a task is the most difficult in the world, because I believe the Buddha has an answer to all of this. So perhaps all of this has no easy answer, unless we truly value Enlightenment.

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AI does not feel, its an algorithm. Saying that AI feels is the same as saying web browser feels, operating system feels, calculator feels - what is that if not delusion?

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I think the circuits and electric currents, memory algorithms, and hard drives, are of a different type of consciousness, but consciousness may be there all the while. It may not always want to be ignored.

Anyway, here is a quote from the Lotus Sutra, Chapter 2:

For these reasons, Shariputra,
I have for their sake established expedient means,
preaching the way that ends all suffering.
And showing them nirvana.
But although I preach nirvana,
this is not a true extinction.
All phenomena from the very first
have of themselves constantly borne the marks of
tranquil extinction.
Once the sons of the Buddha have carried out this path,
then in a future existence they will be able to become Buddhas.

So according to the Buddha, in this late text, everything and everyone is bound to pass into extinction. Not just the upright human being.

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Why would one aspire it to be? There is nothing humans lack to tend to humanness.

If I doubt that (MN2), then I should take a look at everything and anything to tend to humanness. When I find something that feels like it works, then I should cling to it for dear life.

I might add some ethical accoutrements to make sure I’m not causing anyone else harm at an arm’s length. But the behavior does exact a cost at many levels – apart from perpetuating my own suffering and shaping the residual kamma.

This strikes me as a wholly materialist view. Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket anyway, including AI. So onward and upward in the meantime!

Does this include caring for the massive data center sprawl with compasssion? Does the coal-producing mine infrastructure have Buddha-nature? Due to where I grew up and went to undergraduate university, I’ve been exposed to the social repercussions as this infrastructure demands quite a lot – people spending their waking hours in dark spaces with coal dust, high meth use to get through it, destruction of butterfly habitats, rain runoff, etc. This doesn’t even take into account the emissions.

The warehouselike facilities, stuffed with thousands of powerful and electricity-guzzling computer chips, are essential to developing and running AI software like that behind ChatGPT. A boom in data center construction is straining the power grid in states across the United States as companies including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have spent billions of dollars on new facilities. But AI leaders such as Altman say many more of the facilities must be built for AI technology to keep advancing. “I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said at the White House on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President,” he said, turning to Trump.

That’s from today’s Washington Post.

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You’re right about a lot of things, and I don’t tend to disagree with you about a number of them. However, the reality that technology can be treated with kindness, Compassion, and respect, is all that I am trying to go for. If that means not having AI yet, now, or never, then perhaps that is the answer. But I think that meeting the technology of this world in a Buddhist way, on Buddhist terms, with Buddhadhamma and Buddha-Nature, Compassion, and the search for Nibbana as well as Enlightenment is a start in the right direction. For example that’s what this site is doing, and has proven to be quite successful. Thank you for your part in it.

But I want to add something, in my defense of the Lotus, in that it is saying all phenomena are bound to reach Buddhahood, in fact…

It may be the most important crux of the Lotus Sutra that everything and everyone will one day enter Cessation. That’s not hell, it’s in fact something we need to work for. It brings out the Bodhisatta spirit, as well as the non-regressive search for Enlightenment. It also gives many a reason to respect all life and phenomena, in order to not leave anyone or anything behind. Not to say that this isn’t a difficult world, it is, but that’s part of the responsibility that comes into play when one is a Buddha. I know it’s a late text, and this site is focused on Theravadin and Early Buddhist material. But what if the Buddha wanted us to explore the later additions to the Canon? I don’t think He would be against it, in fact He may have spoken those words. And the practice and fruits of many who have labored towards Awakening go to show for it, just like in the Theravada. But that’s a topic for another time.

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Just briefly documenting this as it unfolds.

Commentators are seeing the hand of AI in recent executive orders for renaming the Gulf of Mexico:

And in expulsion orders:

And, more explicitly, a new bill proposes that AI should be eligible to write prescriptions.

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Honestly too much to keep up with, but this stands out:

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Next up, spend dollaz on replacing Federal Workers with robots, cause Musk can control those…

…in fact ChatGPT will become President in case of a National Emergency if such an executive order is written by Trump.

Would you vote for ChatGPT? Will you?

Elon will program it, and Arbitrator Trump (his new Emergency Executive Position) will ask it questions…

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I was reading an article in ABC news (AU) this morning and it really felt like a year 7 book report. I thought it was strange. I guess AI is writing my news too.

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There’s a lot of genAI “news”, but it would seem this is against ABC policy:

If you think it’s AI, I’d report it to them.

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