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Monday 5 February 2018

Will Humanity Be Obsolete in Elite's Future World of Cyborgs and A.I.?



This article was first published in New Dawn Magazine issue 163, July - August 2017. © Brett Lothian. All pictures used are free use.



Will Humanity Be Obsolete in Elite's Future World of Cyborgs and A.I.?

With the advent of artificial intelligence, cybernetics and the ever growing problem of humans being replaced by machines, we must ask the question, are the lower ranks of the human caste system being made obsolete? Are we creating a world where the average Joe is no longer needed? I think the answer is a resounding yes. The fact is that machines are constantly being created to take over the work of the working class, from factories to the local supermarket checkout, we are slowly but surely being replaced by machines, so the super-rich elite can make even more money. Unfortunately we are even taking an active role in this, by using technology for the sake of ease and convenience. Worse still, is the advancement of cybernetics or transhumanism, for the elite. Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla fame has been working on a Neuralink, a human-computer brain interface company. Neuralink’s ultimate aim may actually be the most ambitious of all three of his companies, surprisingly, the foundational ideas behind Neuralink goes deep within what Musk hopes to achieve by creating better, higher-bandwidth connections between our brains and computers.

Basically, Musk’s vision would enable direct “uncompressed” communication of concepts between people and machines, Neuralink’s tech aims will also be able to help humans keep pace with the rapid advances in A.I., and would achieve this by basically integrating A.I. with human consciousness. Neuralink’s tech would enable human use of A.I. as just an additional faculty, like our sense of selves or other higher in-brain thought faculties or perhaps vice versa. Making it possible to connect with such a high bandwidth directly into the brain would allow us to integrate cloud-based A.I. computing within ourselves in a way that’s indistinguishable from our core selves. Getting worried yet? Musk says that it’s probably going to be at least “eight to 10 years” before technology the company produces can be used by someone without a disability. Neuralink is aiming to create therapeutic applications of its tech first, which will likely help as it seeks the necessary regulatory approvals for human trials. In other words, the disabled will be the altruistic guise and Guinea pigs for the inception of these technologies, which later on only the elite will be able to afford.


Musk has previously criticized humans at a conference in Dubai. He expressed that artificial intelligence would surpass human beings and that we would be irrelevant if we didn’t merge with machines. “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk said. “Your output level is so low, particularly on a phone, your two thumbs just tapping away,” he added. “This is ridiculously slow. Our input is much better because we have a high bandwidth visual interface into the brain. Our eyes take in a lot of data. It’s not the first time that Musk warned about the dangers of A.I., previously describing it as potentially the greatest threat to the existence of human life and comparing intelligent machines to summoning a demon. “You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out,” Musk said at a symposium in October 2014. But us merging with this “demon” as he calls it is somehow the answer? Strange logic indeed. But he is not alone.

The science may seem a bit science-fiction, but Stanford University has already successfully created a brain-computer interface (BCI), BrainGate, and early BCI tech allows people with paralysis to type messages on a computer by picking out letters on a screen. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investing $60 million over four years to develop implantable neural interface technology. “The program, Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology,” DARPA’s website reads. “Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.” To me, the Borg from Star Trek comes to mind. To the great detriment of the majority of us, who actually like being human, the technology isn’t that far away from becoming a reality, in comments published by Vanity Fair, Musk said “for a meaningful partial-brain interface, I think we’re roughly four or five years away.” When the assimilation starts thereafter is anyone’s guess.

As reported in New Dawn Issue 151, within the next 200 years, humans will become so merged with technology that we would evolve into “God-like cyborgs”, says Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Harari researches the history of the human species, and after writing a new book on our past, he now believes that we’re just a few centuries away from being able to use technology to avoid death altogether – if we can afford it, that is. “I think it is likely in the next 200 years or so Homo sapiens will upgrade themselves into some idea of a divine being, either through biological manipulation or genetic engineering by the creation of cyborgs: part organic, part non-organic,” however, as Harari said only the wealthiest would benefit from ‘cyborg’ technology, making the gap between rich and poor in society even wider, perhaps to the point of becoming entirely different species. He said that in the future the super-rich elite may be immortal while the poor would die out. In regards to the poor, perhaps he should more correctly say, killed off for being “useless eaters” as Prince Phillip likes to call us who are not in the elite.


The scary truth seems to be that the dystopian future (for the majority) that Harari envisions may come about far quicker than he imagined. Technology is racing ahead at such a breakneck pace that society is struggling to come to terms with it. Already we utilize far too much technology than we really need. We are outsourcing our abilities to technology and it is only getting worse as time goes on. Today, young people are struggling more than ever with simple tasks like spelling and arithmetic, because we now have machines that do it all for us. As a species we are devolving at an alarming rate, losing our intellectual and physical abilities, our muscle mass, brain size and bone density are on the rampant downslide. Whilst some may see technology and interfacing with it as the answer, literally becoming immortal Gods over the less fortunate mere mortals, but in reality all we are doing is rushing headlong into our own doom, for all of us. Once we have merged with a superior artificial intelligence, what is to stop the A.I. from taking control of us? How will we even be able to distinguish the A.I. programming, from our own thoughts? Will it be us (well, the elite anyway) running the technology, or the technology running us? Scary thoughts indeed.

If we continue on this path that has been set out for us by the elite, we will all too soon end up with a world where the super-rich elite get to live in their transhumanist utopia mega-cities, striving for immortality and Godhood, run by machines, with the rest of us being surplus to requirements. According to the super-rich elite there is already a vast surplus of human resources (otherwise known as people) and that will only continue to grow with the ever increasing use of machines and A.I., even as the population shrinks due to the elite depopulation agenda. Perhaps some indigenous tribes will be kept as a curiosity, considered mere fauna in parks to be either gawked at or hunted for sport, perhaps not. Perhaps some of us will be kept around in a dumbed down state or completely over ridden by A.I., to press the buttons of the machines or more likely to be used as organ farms and subjects for experimentation. Whatever the future holds, if we continue down the path we are currently on, life will not be worth living for the vast majority of us. If we are even still cognizant of being alive or worse yet, even allowed to live at all.



References:

Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to turn cloud-based AI into an extension of our brains. By Darrell Etherington
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/20/elon-musks-neuralink-wants-to-turn-cloud-based-ai-into-an-extension-of-our-brains/

Elon Musk’s Transhumanist Agenda With Neuralink To Create Cyborgs. By Aaron Kesel
https://wearechange.org/elon-musks-transhumanist-agenda-neuralink-create-cyborgs/