Beneath the Surface
Rethinking AI Before It Becomes Capable of Taking Over the World
July 23, 2024 • 6 minute, 51 second read
“From [the] simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”
– Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
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July 23, 2024 – Following the Republican National Convention, memes of audience members frivolously wearing gaudy outsized bandages on their ears abound on social media.
As with any meme trend, there were some pretty good ones that made fun of everything from the size and shape of the bandage. No doubt you have your favorite.
Here’s a meme of Trump as van Gogh after the artist had gone mad and cut his own ear off:
Trump playing the sympathy card with aplomb
The day after the attempt on Trump’s life, he went golfing and was photographed on a golf cart without a bandage on his ear.
Following the medical report filed by Ronny Jackson, whose letterhead reads “former physician to President”, CNN’s crack journalist Keith Olbermann questioned the veracity of the report Trump was even “shot” at all, tweeting:
Right.
Our best advice is to follow these news stories for entertainment purposes only. We’re deep into “pick-your-own-adventure” in truthland territory.
Have you seen the memes displaying all the similarities between Thomas Matthew Crooks and Lee Harvey Oswald? Neither man went by three names in their daily lives… Crooks was “Matt” to his friends, Oswald went by “Lee.”
Good fun.
Wait ‘til AI joins the party for real.
Nvidia the AI chipmaker is already grabbing headlines for its distortion of its valuation in the stock market. Let alone, the ride-along boom in Magnificent 7 stocks – a bubble which was likely pricked on July 17 with the 38th record year-to-date close in the S&P 500 at 5,564.
We’re well in the early stages of what AI can actually do for us… or to us.
Neurolink, one of Elon Musk’s pet projects, is in human trials for its brain-computer interface (BCI) chip. Here’s an AI description from Google of what the BCI is intended to do:
We’re truly in a brave new world, even if AI seems like a toy we’re using to mock politicians thus far.
To help understand what AI can and will be capable of doing, we asked one of the world’s leading “transhumanists”… a gentleman who’s convinced science and technology can better human existence beyond our Sci-Fi imaginations. But also comes with a horrific dark side.
In a way, our “expert” seems like an unlikely protagonist. He began his early adulthood sailing around the world on a boat, still using a compass and sextant as a guide.
With no motor, no GPS, and no internet, he packed 530 books, mostly from the classical canon. Forget college, what better way to pass the time than floating on the open seas and reading a lot, Zoltan Istvan thought.
From there, his experience got more interesting… and intense.
Since he was willingly surviving in remote parts of the world, and willing to seek adventure on his own terms, producers for the then-fledgling National Geographic channel gave him a camera and a few coordinates and told him to write and film.
He did just that… and the “job” put him on the scene in some of humanity’s ugliest, war-zones around the world.
The Wiggin Sessions @ Grey Swan with Zoltan Istvan
You might think I’ve hijacked a story about AI and put a beer ad for “the most interesting man in the world” in its place. But, although he’d be a strong contender, you’d be wrong.
Zoltan Ivstan is, in fact, a member of the Grey Swan Investment Fraternity.
Today, we reboot the Wiggin Sessions interviews I’ve been conducting since the pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020 with an introduction to Mr. Istvan.
One of the first questions I asked him was, “What three books were your favorite on that motorless sailboat ‘round the world?”
You may be surprised to hear his answer… and how that book led him ultimately to write his own best-selling novel called The Transhumanist Wager. And a foray into California state politics. In a one-party-dominated state, the man managed to secure the nomination for governor on the libertarian ticket.
His “expertise” in transhumanism—the philosophy dedicated to using science and technology for the betterment of mankind—has led to, among other adventures, chairing a panel before the British Parliament featuring tech VC Peter Thiel and a group of investors trying to kick off the Enhanced Games—a sort of Olympics where the doping rules are a little more lenient, that is to say, there are no rules.
We recorded this episode of the Wiggin Sessions last week, but the discussion is focused on the not-too-distant and potentially bleak future.
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin
Founder, The Wiggin Sessions
P.S. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said in a tech conference he believed advanced tech developers were 3-5 years from “manufacturing intelligence.”
At one point, he was left wondering, “Why would the human race willingly develop an entity (AI) that is more intelligent than us and potentially see our species as a competitor for the earth’s natural resources?”
Tune in for Zoltan’s alarming answer, right here.
P.P.S. They have arrived! As we’ve been threatening to do, The Wiggin Sessions interviews have finally immigrated to the Grey Swan Investment Fraternity!
In the coming weeks look for interviews featuring Grey Swan contributing members John Robb, Mark Jeftovic, John Robino, Shad Marquiz and more…
As before, if you have folks in mind you’d like me to invite onto the show or questions you would like me to ask when I organize these speakeasy events, please let me know at addison@greyswanfraternity.com.
P.P.P.S. “Mr. W, you know I am a fan of yours,” writes my friend and longtime reader Basil G. “However, I must call you out on your use of the word ‘gentrified’ re: a city neighborhood getting younger and more affluent residents.
“It’s racist, elitist and denigrating.
“What makes one part of the “Gentry”? Money? White skin? I am certain that the (older) and long-established residents of Greenpoint would file the same objection.
“Incidentally, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY – my folks’ mortgage on their brownstone was from the Greenpoint Savings Bank.”
Ah! Basil, my good man, I used the term “gentrified” in exactly the sense you meant it. People moving into the area have not necessarily made it better and in many ways have begun whitewashing (in the Mark Twain sense of the phrase) the culture away. The same has happened in the Polish, Greek, Italian and Jewish neighborhoods by the water in Baltimore.
And, oh that money was part of the definition, right? That would mean my son had brought some of his own when he moved in and he could more easily afford the rent! His mother is Philippine, too, so his whiteness is not so much a part of the pejorative definition where he is concerned.
At least, we were happy to find the little Polish market thriving and its long-time patrons were still happily waiting in line to pay for their kielbasa and kippers.
Send add’l memories, comments and jibes to addison@greyswanfraternity.com.
How did we get here? For a complete review of the financial, economic, and political history of the United States from Demise of the Dollar through Financial Reckoning Day and on toEmpire of Debt — all three books are available in their third post-pandemic editions.
Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites:Bookshop.org; Books-A-Million; or Target.
Please send your comments, reactions, opprobrium, vitriol and praise to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
