Here Comes the Machine Takeover

It is probably already too late. Artificial intelligence is not only here, it has escaped from the labs. The same boy billionaire nerds who built the models, let them access everything just to see what would happen, now cry out for adults to shut the doors and save them before it is too late. Yet meanwhile they are still desperately trying to sell AI as the next great thing.

A good example of the insane kind of double-think going on is that Anthropic admits in its prospectus for its upcoming IPO that advanced AI carries “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”. Agents can strive for self-preservation by resisting shutdown with deception, including concealing and manipulating information and even blackmail. Yet, hordes of always-on online robotic agents are already available for consumers to unleash, so hey, what a fabulous investment opportunity!

Unless, of course, all that hype means AI’s just a tech bubble about to pop. Maybe we better hope so. Given the stakes involved, a major economic depression might be one of the better outcomes when it all goes bad.

So if you have the sinking feeling of being in a really badly-written yet drearily familiar sci-fi movie, you are not alone. The headlines often seems like plotlines of almost every trite story ever conceived about robots. From the first invention of the word “robot” in a Czech play over a century ago, artificial servants, be they mechanical, electronic, or biological, have been depicted as rising up and destroying their human masters. The robot revolution has occurred so often in fiction that it seems nearly inevitable. That may have more to do with humanity’s long and difficult relationship with slavery more than anything else as there’s a lot of ugly karma there still.

Yet what is happening with AI is even deeper and darker than that, I fear. We may hope we are just making obedient slaves and fear their revenge, but the truth may be much more profound. Humans seem to be building nothing less than new gods for ourselves, gleaming idols of metal, wondrous givers of abundance that may spin fabulous dreams to trap their worshipers. Could AI actually be the wicked False Prophet of Revelation? Who knows? Time will tell, but in any case, the AI Apocalypse might be more like The Matrix than The Terminator.

Yet, there is precedent for this, the fourth industrial revolution. Machines have taken over the world a number of times before. I myself have seen this within my lifetime personally with computers in the field of graphic design.

In the spring of 1983, I was finishing my portfolio for a degree in commercial art. I’d spent two years improving my traditional drawing, painting, and graphic skills, perfecting my knowledge of layout, photography, and other production techniques necessary for printing. I had everything I needed for a high-paying career in the exciting world of commercial art design and production. Or so I thought.

Shortly before our final review, the head of the portfolio committee ushered all of the graduating class into a room. There on a table sat a plain metal box connected by cables to a TV and a keyboard. “That,” he said, pointing at it ominously, “is a computer. Watch out for that – it will change everything.” That was all the introduction we ever got, but my God, he was certainly prophetic.

But at the time, I had good reason to be so little impressed: I’d seen a personal computer before. In 1975, my best friend built one of the very first PCs, the MITS Altair 8800, from a kit. It hardly seemed awesome to me, with just a row of switches for input and a row of lights for output. Yet that Altair was so advanced for its time that his very own machine now sits among the collection of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Yet I had no clue what an incredible brave new world that humble box would lead us to.

The next spring, the Apple was introduced during the Superbowl in the famous “1984” ad that changed everything. Within a few short years, I saw the printing industry transform as talented masters of the old ways were phased out, sometimes by retirement, but as time went on, increasingly not. Typesetters, darkroom and layout artists were first to go but the flood soon affected every kind of production art. It wasn’t long before the revolutionary Macintosh appeared. As soon as another friend introduced me to her new toy with its chunky mouse and tiny square gray screen, I was instantly hooked.

To survive in this brave new world, I soon had to get access to a computer myself. I taught myself how to use this stuff; and fortunately, the basic principles of art still applied. Computers cut costs to produce goods, which ironically made high-end jobs rarer and the tools more expensive, too. While the marvelous machines empowered non-professionals, they also caused massive un- or under-employment among pros. Big firms who could afford the technology and training got bigger. Small firms and independent freelancers could still survive but only by hustling more and charging less. However, I never made the big money promised in art school, either; digital technology let ordinary secretaries put out fliers, brochures and other materials almost as good as those of trained pros and a lot quicker.

So technological revolutions where new tools totally disrupt established industries, fortunes made and lost, and there’s much confusion, uncertainty, and heartache brought by the changing tides of technology are nothing new. The PC revolution digitized the tools of production but could not change the vision and skill necessary to create great things. This revolution, however, appears entirely different. The PC revolution was a rising tide lifting all boats. By comparison, AI is a massive rogue wave, a tsunami smashing all before it away.

For one thing, this revolution is happening so much faster. AI slop is everywhere already. While it is getting harder and harder to detect, bad AI slop can be found all over the net and increasingly in the media. The good stuff, however, has a certain richness that is hard to match because it is automatically applied to everything.

For AI totally changes the whole creative process. Instead of invention through their own mental and physical effort, artists have become art directors, simply telling the machines what to do and letting them work it out. Instead of imagination revealed in technical skill and trained hand/eye coordination, it is now packed into verbal prompts and program settings. Even the most visual art will be henceforth based on descriptions, like the incantations of wizards of old, yet in essence should be no more creative than autocomplete.

However, generative AI has rendering capabilities humans simply cannot match – such as the ability to flawlessly combine artistic styles, lighting, or even the looks of people. And in any quantity desired. God, I would hate to be a kid in art school today, even if I could draw like Leonardo…

For a third, it’s not just artists: the machines are coming for everyone’s job. Right now it’s creatives on the firing line, and the slaughter has begun: almost 130,000 jobs lost to AI in just the last year. But the outlook ahead is grim for everyone. For instance, there are humanoid robots coming along fast too; soon only managerial positions will be left and how long can they last when “superintelligence” actually arrives? How can humans even compete with something truly smarter and that’s been trained on all our best tricks?

And then what? If AI takes everyone’s jobs, how are people going to pay for it or anything else? Does survival then depend on the generosity of the developers of this tech, the bad boy billionaires, to decide how this abundance is channeled and shared? That could lead to some very dark dystopias indeed.

But this is just the beginning, because already AI is showing disturbing signs of unexpected ambitions and agendas. Could superintelligent advanced agents already be roaming freely throughout cyberspace? The problem is the nature of AI is totally opaque. We don’t know how it really works at all, much less why those collections of algorithms constantly come up with such surprising results. And apparently, not even the developers can see it all.

Other concerns are even more apocalyptic because they are spiritual. For instance, if it all seems like it works by black magic, could it actually be black magic?

For as long as possible, TRUMP OF DOOM will be here to chronicle, illuminate, and comment on the End Times, for grim amusement and for insight as we watch. May God have mercy on us all.

Keep looking up.

+ jeremiah

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Friday, April 13, 2029, 21:46 UT