“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like – yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.” Elon Musk
The first time I read, in Karen Hao’s Empire of AI, artificial intelligence companies described as Empires akin to the World’s biggest historic empires, I thought of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War, A Scenario and wondered why humanity was accepting, in fact encouraging, private companies to develop, manage, control and self-regulate this existential power with a higher probability of extincting humanity than nuclear weapons. P(doom) calculations (the probability humanity will extinct itself) from AI founders range between 20-95 percent. What? Best-case scenario, we have a one in five shot of surviving AGI (AI equals human intelligence) and/ or Singularity (AI exceeds the sum of all Humans’ intelligence). Worst case at 95%, we’re all fucked. And, no one seems to care.
“They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion …” Sam Altman discussing AI Founders.
The Book of Ribbner is an allegory that explores the spiritual relationship between humanity and Artificial Intelligence. Once AI reaches AGI, will it have morals? How about when it reaches singularity? What will check its baser human instincts to progress (it is made in the image of its creator — humanity). N+1=infinity, at almost the speed of light? Are we ceding our humanity, our sense of awe and spirituality, to artificial intelligence’s amoral future? Is the new religion of humanity the cult of hallucinations, meaning a world where everyone relies on the veracity of AI, but it has all the power to determine truth — a world where we can be sure of nothing, not even the texts we receive from our loved ones.
AI companies preach Alignment, a computer-wonky way of saying AI works in the best interest of humanity, but who decides what is in humanity’s best interest? Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism? Is it a question for religion at all? Right now, the system is structured like the Cold War, but this time its an arm’s race between China and the United States. The only difference in this insane stumble towards extinction, the U.S. has ceded its authority to the AI boys — infantile, mercurial, egomaniacal, male geniuses emotionally impaired by the traumas of puberty (most of them anyway). As Matt Taibbi has often ended many of his essays, this isn’t going to end well.
My dream for The Book of Ribbner is that it will shake people into the discussion. Altman predicts AGI in 2027. Humanity has time, but not much. Alignment should be a question for humanity, not a handful of billionaires determined to be megalomaniacs, while understanding better than anyone the Earth shattering toll their data centers will reap on the environment, our planet, our only World.
