While the world is rushing towards AI in mass formation, we artists must continue to point to transcendence.
The Astonishing Rush Towards Progress
There is a rushing towards AI that is like a hysteria that has swept over much of the world–the first shall be first and the last shall be last …
A rush towards ‘progress’ at all costs.
But does anyone care about the costs? …
What we’re marching towards is a new civilization and a new man, a trans-human, the singularity when man and machine merge.
It’s all the rage among the Silicon Valley gurus like Ray Kurzweil (link)–who’s been pointing us to this for over 20 years–and Peter Diamandis. AI will develop so greatly that we will need to merge with them not to catch up in intelligence, but simply to come closer to even understanding their superior intelligence.
I get why the elites want AI: easier access to controlling the masses–the peasantry, as one elite mentioned in one of the meetings I was in. For the average person to them is of no value beyond slave labour. But humans are expensive–so there!
Artificial Intelligence can perform greater and faster than humans, cost less money, don’t complain, don’t get tired, and don’t demand raises. The rest of us will simply have to upskill or reskill–all part of living in the modern ‘brave new world’.
But I don’t understand why the masses are all over AI … other than some kind of advantage, or a result of laziness. It seems that people don’t understand or are looking at the ramifications.
They don’t seem to understand that we are entering a new civilization. They don’t realize that this technology will obsolesce the majority of what humans can do.
It seems like the masses that are rushing towards AI are the same ones who rally together towards any sort of end, provided it gives them a sense of collectivism, camaraderie, and safety.
Mass Formation Psychosis
There’s a term for it: mass formation psychosis … And it rises when people no longer think for themselves but embrace an ideology for the sake of some kind of end beyond any rational thought or clear judgement of their own.
Mass formation is the psychological state of a crowd that has given over the thinking, the rights, the judgement of the individual to the collective …
Gustav Le Bon … argued that the “individual soul” in the masses is completely taken over by the “group soul.” This uniformization is accompanied by an almost absolute loss of rational thinking and the ability for critical reflection, even among people who, under “normal circumstances” are extremely intelligent and capable of well-founded criticism (Psychology of Totalitarianism, 92).
The group soul is rushing towards AI: in business, in education, in every day use. And it is not willing to look at the impacts on our minds, our bodies, our financial future, our creative work …
When AI can do everything a human can at an order of magnitude greater, what is there left to do?
And it won’t stop there–we are talking about exponential growth. In one recent article, Elon Musk (link) claimed that AI will “match human capabilities” in a few years. Just a few years! But it won’t end there …
The Three Pillars of Mass Formation: Social Isolation, Loneliness, Free Floating Anxiety
Typically mass formation arises out of a sense of loneliness and social isolation. Out of this isolation comes the existential conflict that there is no meaning in life–for since we are created for community, when we are drawn away from it through, e.g., technology, we reach a meaning crisis.
This meaning crisis is exacerbated by a free-floating anxiety fed by 24/7 shock and awe news and social media that heightens fear and panic.
What will save them from the horror of modern life? One fear is of losing one’s own mind, or not being smart enough to keep up with the modern world, and, instead, being cast out. AI thus presents itself as a quick immediate solution–the ability to do anything at the tap of a screen. That’s the narrative created by big media elites.
If under [certain] circumstances a suggestive story is spread throughout mass media that indicates an object of anxiety … and at the same time offers a strategy to deal with that object of anxiety, there is a real chance that all the free-floating anxiety will attach itself to that object and there will be broad social support for the implementation of the strategy to control that object of anxiety (Psychology of Totalitarianism, 96).
We have the story: technology is growing exponentially to the point that it will exceed human intelligence. To combat this reality, humans must join its own intelligence with artificial intelligence. As well, the world is moving too fast–a result of rampant technology–and there’s no time to get done everything one would like to; therefore one turns to AI to complete tasks for them, including creative tasks. The narrative is heightened when high profile figures promote the given narrative …
Ultimately the reasons individuals participate in mass formation are rarely, if ever, rational in nature. The justification of the strategy is promoted by experts with fancy titles, often on national television, making it seem like a given measure is generally accepted. For many people this suffices as proof of correctness of the measures: “Surely the experts know what they are doing.” “Surely they can’t all be wrong.” “They obviously wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true?” And so on (98).
So what’s my point?
The Artist Mandate
My point is we are rushing towards something out of a perception of necessity that is really just being fed to us–perhaps even by AI itself!
Why are we doing it?
Why are we doing it when we know the risks?
What’s the pressure?
Another space race? …
And what should we be doing to recover humanity in this race to the brave new world? What are we to be doing for ourselves and how are we to be teaching our children–how are we to prepare them for this new civilization, for the new man?
The thing is, the Singularity is happening as I’m typing away at this post. It’s been happening for ages. Jacques Ellul foresaw it in the ’60s, but many saw it prior to him.
What are we rushing to?
What are we willing to sacrifice for this brave new world?
What are we willing to give up? And what are we not willing to give up?
What ought to be the human line in the sand?
What are the boundaries of human knowledge?
What are we to learn now or to do now that AI will excel at everything we have been good at?
I have some answers, such as go to liturgy–my answer for everything. There will need to be a reclaiming of what makes us human. …
But all I’d like to see is more people asking the big questions, and not blindly believing en masse in the god of AI–the lie that AI is the panacea for human obsolescence–whatever that means!
And this I believe is the role, the mandate, of the artist—it always has been: to point humanity from slavery to freedom, from despair to hope, from the complacent to the Courageous, from cheap ‘progress’ to transcendence, and, in the Christian context, as those who wish to shape culture, from idolatry to worship, which means participation in, the One True God in the ever-present moment.
By returning to what makes us human: Beauty, Truth, Goodness. To reclaim what we are created for and to live it full out and point others to it, that is Art in the 21st Century. As I’ve said before: let AI be what it is. We’ll continue to do real Art.
