AI: The Uncertainty of the Future

The Serie: "AI, Friend or Foe?"

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When in October 2024 Elon Musk revealed that the Tesla would manufacture 5000 Bot Gen 3 Optimus by 2025; and again, just last week, that 1000 of them will be added to Tesla’s factory operations; confirming the estimated price for the public at US$10.000 per unit; our world did not catch up to the fact that the future is here.

Just a few days ago I shared via WhatsApp this news with a friend, and she responded with:

“OMG … what lifestyle will be left for human beings?
Will we ever be certain these robots are going to remain kind and helpful? Terminator is not a fiction movie anymore! – So many uncertainties!
If robots take people’s jobs, as is evident with this technology, how will humans be able to earn money?
Really my head it’s exploding!! 😜“

There is such a creative force in us

In my last article, “Attention is Everything” I called attention to a hard truth: if we set at the top of our ladder of values an intermediate objective such as money, prosperity, recognition, safety, whatever we choose will tyrannize us. It’s as true for individuals as well as collectives.

Across all cultures, and for a very long time, we have revered money and prosperity as our main objective. Each one can rationalize all they want, it doesn’t matter where you are at in that spectrum, or if money is truly your main conscious aim. It really doesn`t matter what each one of us thinks or feels, it is our actions that speak louder than words.

"Actions are the visible fingerprints of transparent beliefs."

Today, all societies demand – sometimes desperately – that governments provide laws and policies to generate abundance and fix economic dysfunction. In fact, if a political candidate merely seems capable of restoring or improving the economy, that “hope” alone can hand them a landslide victory. We all are oriented towards acquiring beautiful and expensive “toys”, or taking a marvelous vacation, and so on. Since the beginning of the XIX Century, our demand for wealth to be better distributed and all people to be given their “fair share” of the economic pie has been at the very top of our value ladder.

I am not saying that’s not reasonable or just, what I am attempting to reveal is that most of society is orienting and orbiting around the value of money and affluence, and ultimately around what it can acquire: status, recognition, power, supposed freedom, as well as security, control, pleasure.

What is interesting is that none of these safeguards the individual from what inevitably life will send our way: pain, sickness, loss and, death.

In the last 100 years our values have been oriented towards making money as our main objective, and the applications of science and technology have been to amplify and consolidate control and power – and we didn’t think it will catch up with us?

We developed something that will optimize our resources and be hyper effective at targeting what we aim at – we are aiming at money and power – so we got our wish. The small detail we did not foresee is that the resources that make wealth in our civilization are the labor force – or people. That is how an intermediate value can tyrannize a society. Maybe half of the work force of the world (above 2.5 billion jobs in the next 3 years) will be negatively impacted by AI in the next decade.

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle!

Let me give it to you straight: control and safety are an illusion. We must work with what we have. When you assume this fact, then you’ll realize that your best bet is to build yourself up: develop character, discipline, discern what you want to aim at, and develop a plan and strategy to reach it – and get your butt out of complacency and start working on yourself.

Forget about pressuring governments to set guardrails for AI not to affect society negatively. It will not be useful. Please think about it: most people want to be rich; most people would take a chance to earn millions without the sacrifice and work to attain it.

That is why most of Western societies are corrupt, there is a substrate of organizations and people that work diligently to earn money without investing the work factor to earn it – which by the way is the reason we elect corrupt politicians and most honest working people would not consider entering politics.

We better set ourselves straight, our best strategy is to build our innate abilities to make ourselves strong and useful.
Second, and just as important, learn what AI is and how to use it.
AI is our Frankenstein!

A shift in our column: EL PUNTO a la iA (THE DOT on the i of AI)

If you have been following our column, you know that in the last couple of months we have been providing exactly that; history, deepening our knowledge and providing perspective on AI.

Our main objective is to provide our readers with an ETHIC to AI, the intelligence we lack.

Ethics is the discipline that helps us orient ourselves toward what is Good—so we don’t lose our way or fall into the traps that life’s path inevitably encounters.

If you fear what AI can do to your income, and/or fear that if you don’t board that ship your competition will crush you, don’t attempt to constrain it. You will lose time instead of focusing on what you must… you will be focusing on acquiring control and safety – and that is a lousy strategy with regards to AI, or any other objective.

For a final point of order, something I have underlined many times: AI uses one ability of human’s vast innate talents: it is hyper effective in recognizing patterns.

That is all it is, everything else is an illusion.

It will not be able to decide what to aim at, only you can provide the prompts the system needs so you can be effective and productive towards your goal.

One fruit that I have derived in my training as a language analyst to train LLM for programmers to make chatbot more effective, is recognizing how amazing and astonishing is our mind. Notice I don’t say brain: our brain is our hardware; our conscience is our software. We operate the brain as a software operates a computer. And just as a computer can give much more to someone that has a clear aim and has knowledge of the machine’s functions, so AI will enable you to successfully reach your aim if you are a powerful agent with a laser-focused objective.

There is a huge HOWEVER, if you have an aim that is devoid of meaning and purpose, for others and for society as a whole, then your actions and work will inevitably lead to destruction and devastation. That is precisely why, in nature, across all forms and levels (with the sole exception of humanity), life overcomes obstacles and adapts to any circumstance. In us, that same resilience requires something more: will, intent, determination, and – most importantly – orientation.

Our options against a formidable opponent

“When the enemy is vast and formidable, do not meet him where he is strongest. Draw him instead into terrain he does not understand, into conditions you command. Victory belongs not to the one with greater force, but to the one who shapes the battlefield.”
— ChatGPT reformulation on strategies of war by Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, and Clausewitz.

We humans have something AI will never be able to achieve, no matter how much it develops its skills:

· Creativity: AI only fakes creativity from the patterns it has learned from what it has been feed, only we can be truly inspired and creative.

· Imagination: imagination draws from inspiration or embodied intuition (comes from the depths of our psyche and emerges from millions of years of subconscious-archetypes and our genetic line), also from our identity and – most of all – it draws from memory, desires, and knowledge.

· Identity: if you chose to deepen your understanding of yourself and work towards building your character, your true independence from acceptance and compliance with society, if you aim to become your best version, nothing will be able to hold you down (except you).

· Moral ethics: we are endowed with a moral guidance that provides foresight of consequences before they happen. However, we have grown morally calloused in our guidance to achieve what’s is truly meaningful and good, which is mostly the reason we have arrived at the present dilemma of AI invading and disrupting our way of life.

· Will: we have the capacity to follow an aim. We don’t follow a goal; we are impelled by what we lack in the hope that we resolve the existential longing in our lives. This drive is our most powerful weapon.

· Mythmaking: we see and interpret the world through a story, we make stories inside our minds to map our way towards developing ourselves and reaching what we lack. When we see a lion, we see multiple symbols that can empower us, a machine sees a predator.

· Care and compassion: the etymological source of compassion is from Latin – Com (with) + Pati (to suffer or endure) and it’s an attribute or fruit of Care. You may think that care is too much of a stretch to think it can equip us to use AI. Our ability to care is the fundamental building block of any edifice that will stand any inclemency of natural ravages that life will bring unto our shores: care or love is not a feeling is an action of the will.

We will be able to wield true power when we will the good of the other and when our longing for the eternal Good remains ever present in our lives.

The civilization is at the brink of disaster, and we are at the center of it

We are meant to have it all, but the “how” must be devoid of self-aggrandizement, oriented towards the greater good and must recognize our fragility. The ALL we are called to share into, is not our selfish good, but for all to enjoy and benefit from.

Our actions have harvested AI and will change everything about our way of life and most people are not ready for it. That is why our heads are exploding with apprehension and fear. Don’t yield to fear, it “is only the believe that you cannot handle a situation” (Harry Palmer).

Change that belief, take up all your given abilities and make them strong and resilient, and prepare yourself for the battle of your life!

Esta es la nueva entrega de la serie "IA, ¿amigo o enemigo?” que investiga el tema de la inteligencia artificial; mostramos qué es, cómo va a cambiar nuestras vidas y cómo podemos prepararnos para vivir en un mundo donde todo parece moverse a la velocidad del rayo.