For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Mark 8:36
On July 23, 2023 Donald Trump addressed the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Summit in Washington, D.C., delivering his AI action plan including these words (here starting about 21:35):
We also have to have a single federal standard not 50 different states regulating this industry of the future. And some people would say, gee, that’s an unpopular thing to say. I was told before I got up here, this is an unpopular thing because some people, they don’t want that. But I want you to be successful. And you can’t have one state holding you up. You can’t have three or four states holding you up. You can’t have a state with standards that are so high that it’s going to hold you up. You have to have a federal rule and regulation. And hopefully you’ll have the right guy in this position that’s going to supplant the states. If you are operating under 50 different sets of state laws, the most restrictive state of all will be the one that rules … we need one common sense federal standard that supersedes everybody so you don’t end up in litigation with 43 states at one time. You got to go litigation free.
Just after this segment Trump extends his demand for the prohibition on regulation of AI to “all foreign countries”. Incredible! Does this not smack a little of hubris?
Back in the day I recall George Wallace saying something to this effect, “If you let all those bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. run things, you won’t know who to cuss!” Well, in this case, Mr. President, we do know who to cuss but, out of decorum, I will leave it up to the reader as to what he will do with the Governor’s injunction.
Trump says, “I want you to be successful.” Who is “you” in that remark? The company owner of course. So what will this technology be doing for (or to) the public? How will it be affecting their success? The question is not addressed.
Then Trump says “hopefully” you’ll have the right guy as the regulator. For something as potentially disastrous as AI do you want to take a chance on getting the “wrong” guy?
Trump says that the field cannot be operating under 50 different sets of state laws. Why not? This is software after all. It is not an auto plant, for example, with heavy investment costs for every new plant. In his address Trump used California’s excessive automobile mandates as a rationale for national standards. It is not the same thing. The requirement of large markets to justify the large investment for automobile manufacturing does not apply to software. For software companies, once the initial investment is made, modifying the software is relatively costless. Suppose a state puts certain restrictions on a software app already existing elsewhere that is to be made available in its domain. Just code it differently. As someone who has written a lot of software code in his life I can tell you this is not problematic. Consider tax software: every state has a different tax code. The software doesn’t have a problem with that![1] AI is going to be writing the software (or learning it) anyway so it can just modify the software for that state’s requirement.
Finally, Trump says we have to be litigation free. Like the pharmaceutical companies and the covid vaccine perhaps? Nothing should get in the way of profits, should it? What happens when a chatbot convinces a young person to take her own life? We certainly wouldn’t want to have to deal with that litigation, would we?
We know all too well what happens when things are regulated from Washington, D.C. Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Censorship Complex, and others have captured the process there, using the billions in profits that they have garnered from selling products that have damaged the health and well-being of American citizens and from selling weapons to sustain endless wars to no benefit for those citizens, by bribing the so-called “elected leaders” of the people to continue that same regime for their own benefit. So the President urges us to use the same process to regulate AI so that Big Tech can use the billions that they garner from surveilling and manipulating their users to establish a regime that works mostly to their benefit. But in this case it will be with the most powerful and intrusive technology that has ever been available to mankind. Thanks but no thanks!
Let me provide a little personal background. I became interested in AI back in the 1980s, before it was the latest thing (well, it sort of was then before it cooled off for awhile), and decided to engage in a little “mind design”, as they call it, of my own. For my master’s degree in computer science, I wrote a program that “learned” (programs that are able to modify themselves toward a directed end). At one time I had small NASA research grants to apply machine learning to battery maintenance for the space station and, with an X-ray crystallographer friend of mine, to apply machine learning to the problem of protein-folding (here). Perhaps if I had stayed with that line of work I would be a Nobel Prize winning billionaire today instead of enjoying rice and beans in Costa Rica. I’m not complaining though. Since they stole Dixie from me it hasn’t been a bad alternative (here – this isn’t me but it could be – how serendipitous). But I digress.
The protein-folding problem demonstrates that there are useful and important tasks for AI but also shows that a problem as seemingly constrained as protein-folding can be incredibly complex to solve. However, technical applications were not my real interest. I wanted to find out how the human mind works by modeling it on computers. At the time the main effort was focused on “knowledge representation”, how to represent in the computer the knowledge that is supposedly “contained” in the human mind. One outcome of this approach was the system Watson, built by IBM. You may recall the heyday of Watson in 2011 when it defeated all comers on the quiz show Jeopardy. Although they have tried to enhance Watson, the AI field as a whole has moved on to the machine learning model which dominates the field now. ChatGPT, Gemini, and all the other current AI systems use machine learning. My last activity in the field was in 1989 when I wrote a paper (unpublished) arguing that knowledge representation was untenable as an approach to “mind design” and that machine learning was the future. So it has turned out. My reason for leaving the field completely, however, was my intuition that machine “intelligence” was fundamentally different from human intelligence. I have spent the three plus decades since then trying to understand what this difference is (among other things of course). Along the way I encountered the Southern tradition which has aided immensely my efforts to understand what it is to be human. But that is another story!
In a nutshell the difference is this: computers (machines) process bits (or qubits for quantum computers) while minds interpret symbols (or signs). I do not qualify “minds” with “human” because that is the only kind of mind – apart from God – there is. The other thing is a machine. It doesn’t think; it doesn’t have consciousness; it doesn’t have a soul; it doesn’t have “rights”. And it never will! Those attributes belong to people because they are created by God. Humans are not God. So their creations do not have those attributes. QED. But the machines also work differently. We need to get clear about this. Minds will never be reduced to machines.[2]
So what does this all have to do with the problem at hand? AI systems (think ChatGPT) do an incredible job of imitating certain aspects of human behavior. And they will certainly improve in this regard. Alan Turing long ago proposed his famous “test” for determining whether a machine was “intelligent”. Basically, it boils down to this: if the machine can fool you into thinking it is intelligent then it is intelligent. This is fundamentally wrong.[3] The point is that while the machines give the appearance of interacting with a person in a “human” way they are doing no such thing. You have no idea what they are doing in fact – nor do they. Yet these programs will be embedded into the very structural heart of the internet (to some extent they already are) so that you will have no idea of the “reality” that you are interacting with. Will there be any “human” reality behind the appearance? We will not know nor will we know if anyone knows. Yet there are people constructing these systems at a rapidly increasing rate that want to take a chance on this outcome.
Then consider that these AI systems will be integrated into the financial systems that are already highly digitized at this point, especially in the so-called “developed world”. Also rapidly moving forward are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). When CBDCs are fully implemented any individual’s access to the payment system can be controlled to operate only within certain constraints or terminated entirely. If anyone thinks they can escape this by withdrawing from the system completely, both digitally and by their physical presence (e.g., preppers), how long do you think you can evade satellite surveillance or the outlawing of alternative payment methods other than CBDCs? How long do you think you will enjoy trying to evade being hunted down?
Consider then other aspects. It is already clear that implementing AI systems at the scale projected is going to require numerous massive data centers and massive amounts of power generation and consumption, the latter projected to be multiples of current usage. The data centers already create opposition because of their deleterious environmental effects. What impact is the fossil fuel extraction and nuclear plant construction going to have on the environment? It is telling that the climate change frenzy of recent years, which was at bottom nothing more than a vastly fraudulent scheme perpetrated as a means for a global takeover by the elites, has suddenly receded in the face of an even more sinister plot of global control using AI.
Then the massive use of robots to replace human labor needs to be considered. The claim is that this “creative destruction” of jobs will result in new employment opportunities and a golden age of riches.
More likely is that the riches will be completely under the purview of the owners and operators of the systems while the rest of us are consigned to useless superfluity. Does anyone consider the human cost of what this dislocation of millions of human beings will be? There could be benefits to replacing some human labor with machine labor but the benefits and costs need to be weighed and measured before the project is undertaken.
Speaking of costs and benefits consider this. Standard cost benefit analysis consists of multiplying the benefits or costs by the probabilities of their occurrence to get an expected value. Some AI developers put the probability of annihilation of the human race by AI at 20% or some such estimate. I would assign such an occurrence a weight of negative infinity. At any probability this is prohibitive. AI needs to be restricted to applications where the annihilation outcome is impossible.
And finally there is the question of the massive amounts of data that are needed to train these systems. There is no limit to what they want. The AI systems are voracious. They want everything. Trump specifies that it should just be taken. Who is any single individual, each of whom our heritage tells us has infinite worth, to stand in the way of what the system needs? Apparently Trump, who attributes the saving of his life at Butler, Pennsylvania to the intervention of the divine,[4] does not think the rest of us deserve the same consideration in respect of our personal sanctity. And what is the purpose of life anyway? To be the possessor of unlimited worldly goods at the expense of community, useful work, and spiritual fulfillment? Perhaps these things will be possible in the envisaged brave new world. But I don’t see many people being consulted by the decision-makers for their views on these matters or even being willing to educate them about it. It is only the developers that get the green light. The rest of us are consigned to pick up the scraps if we can find any.
The argument is that we cannot put the brakes on the tech companies developing their technology because we are in an “arms race” with China and if we don’t win the race we will be slaves under their dominion or worse. Meanwhile, the tech companies are apparently sharing their own technology with China, the U.S. educates large numbers of Chinese students in the technology, and U.S. financial interests are funding the Chinese efforts for their own profit. If the U.S. were to prohibit the tech companies from sharing the technology as a national security interest, did similarly with the U.S. entities financing Chinese AI development, and removed all the Chinese students, this would have a massive slow-down effect on the “race” and give us more time to figure out how to best use this technology for human benefit. The situation here is pretty clear: to claim we must win a race against an opponent while actively helping them is a fraud of the highest order that is being visited on us.
The reality that is coming if the tech companies are allowed to implement it has already partially arrived. The United States is the leader in the field so whatever happens in the U.S. is determinative of what happens in the world. The key to dealing with both the potential upsides and the potential downsides in the American context, in my view, is again state sovereignty. The states must have and do have the authority to regulate this technology. As the example of the protein-folding problem I gave above shows, there are legitimate scientific and other uses for this technology. The key in my view is that AI applications should be specifically targeted so that the effects of any misfiring are very limited. Any general AI application must be made subject to public scrutiny and control. Thus the need for some kind of regulatory action at the state level. Different approaches to regulation by different states would provide a laboratory to see what works and what doesn’t. Trump stated that one state could stop the whole thing. That is not true. One state could prohibit an application that another might permit and the outcome could be observed before going ahead with general adoption. Exactly how the states implement regulatory regimes is not clear to me. But they need to start working on it to the extent they haven’t and they need to be adamant that they will not relinquish their sovereignty with respect to regulating AI technology in the interest of their citizens.
There is no going back from this, folks. It is now or never that we have to deal with this technological threat. Many people see the signs of the end times in what the world is going through now. Without taking a particular stand on a complex theological issue, it is fair to say that the advent of AI technology and the use that certain people want to make of it could well be the antichrist. It should be treated as such. I would not say that the darkness that would descend on the world with the full scale implementation of this technology would never be surmounted because the light can never be quenched by the darkness. But unless you are in a hurry to get to the apocalypse why not give it a pause and think it over? Again, state action should be used to control it. As in many other areas, in this one the states should assert their authority. The tech companies, like the multinationals and the big banks, should do OUR bidding if they want OUR money, not assume that we should do their bidding. When all the powers legitimately due the states have been recovered from the swill in the swamp we will see how anxious they are to keep pouring their billions into the sewer. When that dries up we will also see how eager the swine that go there now to “represent” us will be to get to an empty trough.
Oh, what about MAHAHAHA? Don’t you think MAGA is a little grandiose? Seems like it might be a yankee idea. Where did “greatness” get us before? World military and financial domination! World Empire! It’s too Sauron! How has that worked out? Been there, done that. Let’s give it a rest. To play off the RFK, Jr. MAHA movement, instead of Make America Great Again, I propose Make America Humble Again, Healthy Again, Happy Again: MAHAHAHA. Why don’t we give that one a try? A little laughter and fun for a change with our fellow hobbits. All this talk of striving for world domination again is giving me another headache.
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[1] On this note, speaking of shifting government activity to the states, this could be accomplished quite easily by repealing the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution. The head of the beast is severed with one quick blow and the states could pick up the slack.
[2] If you want to get deeper into what I mean by all of this I am writing a book on it and its relevance to the Southern tradition (stay tuned!).
[3] Which the book will endeavor to show.
[4] I hope that Trump, with his successes, is not falling prey to his own self-glorification. American political life is a rough business and Trump deserves every credit, even awe, for persevering and overcoming all the obstacles thrown at him. His saga truly is probably the most astonishing story in American political history after the Founding itself. But there were ultimately two sources for Trump’s victories. The will of God and the will of the People. Those wills are what he serves and what they demand is the top-down take-down of the elites that have thwarted the will of the People for so long. If Trump will do that, I hope the people themselves and the states will then finish the job and return selfgovernment to where the Founders put it, the people and the states.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Mark 8:36 is a great important verse.
“…it is fair to say that the advent of AI technology and the use that certain people want to make of it could well be the antichrist. It should be treated as such.”
The antichrist will be a person, not a thing people can make use of.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 “…that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;”
“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.”
The antichrist doesn’t need to be “treated” with, he can be completely avoided. In the scriptures when the “man of sin be revealed,” that is the time of wrath. The saint in the body of Christ will not be here then.
1 Thessalonians 5:9 “…God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,”
Why won’t the body of Christ be here? Because when that time comes, God will have resumed His program with Israel. The drama to take place will center in that region. The antichrist in the Bible is called the “Assyrian,” (Isaiah 10:5).
DJT is the consummate yankee…but even he had enough of the oppressive fedgov forced on the States by the South’s loss. You would think he’d be able to keep this foremost in his mind, but he can’t…there’s too much money involved.
Lincolon did the same with his railroad barons. He gave them the land equivalent of the State of Texas and a guaranteed profit per mile of track laid. Follow the money. Railroad barons didn’t fight and die in the war. Neither did their sons. Three hundred bucks bought a slave to go fight and die for the monied.
No. State knows the railroad barons destruction more than Florida.. Henry Flagler and Plant ( dont recall his first name) on rhe west coast started the overdevelopment and destruction of Florida. And their railroads brought many more yankees to buy land dirt cheap to make into wintertime tropical paradises for people from up north.. none really had any concern for the future of Florida nor an appreciation for our history . And it continues. When my mom was born in Gainesville in 1943 there was less than 2 million people in the state now there is 23 million + . In 1990 there was 15 million . North Florida ( ans even island area before Disney ) was solidly Deep South, florida natives had a lovely unmistakable Southern accent , like my Granny and Grandaddy. I hardly hear it any more
Andrew Jackson’s title as military governor of Florida was “Keeper of the Trees”.
Yes, Florida is being ruined. My neighbors cut their grass during a drought, because they don’t know any better…they spray poison on their yards and go to oncologist doctor appointments.
I’ve been trying to understand AI for some time now. I keep running across what seems to me are contradictions. It still amounts to garbage in, garbage out from what I’ve read. If AI accesses garbage info then you get garbage output. Also, it seems to be taking us backward in some ways. In VA for example, electricity costs are predicted to go up significantly because AI requires more, … lots more electricity, in an age where hand held computers [smart phones] run on tiny batteries. Yet, AI data centers require rooms the size of warehouses for banks of computers a la the 1950’s?! Also, AI data centers require lots and lots of water for mega AC units, reportedly, to keep things cool. Again, shades of the 1950’s. Some communities in VA are protesting the building of these centers because the water needs are going to affect their water supplies. If someone can explain how all this works and makes sense please inform me.
William is correct about Trump, IMO. He is for sure a Yankee, in spite of his positive traits. The Lincoln and the RR’s analogy seems apt. Let the free market ‘inefficiency’ do its thing. The free market is always more efficient in the long run, and history has shown Americans always do it better than anyone else, and that includes we Southerners. Yes, brainwashed Yanks it is true. Slavery was a more efficient method for producing tobacco and cotton and rice and that is what drove huge production. Take a valium before you pass out. The world was very different back then. Also, the typical ‘poor’ white Crackers produced prodigious numbers of livestock [cattle and hogs] to feed America via free range grazing which was vastly more efficient than the Yankee method of being enslaved to the animals. We Crackers adapted traditional methods freely to the climate of the South and fed vast numbers of people via yearly drives to Cincinnati for example. Look it up.
“They” will never let ai read primary source documents. “They’ve” already lost control of their narrative monopoly. This is a great age we are entering…all of the information of the ages is at your fingertips. You can find information on the first black military officers of the New World when you research the Louisiana Confederate Native Guard…you can discover the Corwin Amendment…you can peruse thousands of Slave Narratives…you can read the Ironclad Oath of 1862 and if you’re very perceptive, you will also realize a change in a Republic’s military officers’ oath of office indicates a LOSS of a war.
I think you are correct William. ‘They’ definitely don’t want AI looking at primary source docs, etc. If they did that they will get overthrown – peacefully – faster than a “NY minute”. Hmm, NY is good for something after all./sarc
Trump and MAGA are incredibly dangerous. the Constitution is violated each day. The Congress and the judiciary are superfluous. Bomb countries, bomb boats, betray democratic allies, impose unconsitutional tariffs, send fed troops into cities, belittle everyone, talk of your own genius while betraying a felicity of language that most 5-year-olds have outgrown.
where have government of and for the people and states’ rights gone????
We live in a dictatorship! Thomas Jefferson has turned in his grave!
I would have been bombing drug smugglers long before DJT got up the nerve.
“where have government of and for the people and states’ rights gone????”
And where has the Bible believer gone? Specifically, the Southern Bible believer, since the South had the reputation for the being “the Bible Belt of the country.” Again, where has the Bible believer gone?
Does the professing Christian/Bible believer realize that the Creator’s plan prior to what happened in Genesis ch. 3, was to tabernacle, make His abode here on Earth beginning on that 2nd seventh day?
Is it realized that that is still going to happen? Think about that. Right now, God is accomplishing His purpose with the Church. When that is complete, then His program with Israel resumes and He delivers them and brings in their kingdom (Romans 11). (God has two purposes.)
Perhaps one doesn’t think any of that can be true because one doesn’t “see” or “hear” or “sense” any evidence. Well then, besides giving the Bible (KJB) a chance or re-read, also read “The Silence of God,” by Sir Robert Anderson. That book will help immensely; it’s not very long either.
“He gave them the land equivalent of the State of Texas…”
“…the west coast started the overdevelopment and destruction of Florida. And their railroads brought many more yankees to buy land dirt cheap…”
“…the future of Florida…”
“Land.” Land the size of “Texas.” “Florida.” Ok, there are legitimate “beefs” and concerns about all these things. I understand. Where I live all they seem to be doing is clearing and building (cookie cutter homes).
But, some perspective is needed: Psalm 89:11 “The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them.”
God hasn’t walked away from anything. Texas belongs to Him. Florida is His. One day He’s returning and He’s taking it all back and putting everything under His authority and control, though stupid man is going to try and prevent it:
Psalm 2:1-4 “Why do the heathen rage…?”
“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,”
“Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”
Southern men. Yankees. Really, they’re all just heathen; they all “come short of the glory of God.” Everyone, including the Southerner, needs to believe on the Saviour. “Kiss the Son” as Psalm 2 says. As a pastor in Grand Rapids, MI said Sunday, the only hope this “evil world” has, is the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The “course of this world” cannot be stopped. Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart, saved men I believe, would tell us the same thing, I think. According to Shelby Foote’s book, before he died, Stuart wanted the hymn, “Rock of Ages” sung. “Let me hide myself in thee.”
The difference between Southerners and yankees is Southerners know we aren’t God.
Thank you all for your comments. It seems that AI is a development on a lot of folks’ minds. That’s good! We need to see if there is some way we can get a grip on this before it is out of control.