Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Future is Now

Oct. 11, 2024 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

09:56

The Future is Now

Elon has brought the future to us. What shall we make of it? Watch Our Cyberpunk Dystopia: https://www.lotuseaters.com/premium-hangout-38-or-our-cyberpunk-dystopia-part-viii-21-02-2024

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	I've been thinking about the unveiling of Elon's latest technological marvels at his We Robot event, and it's become apparent that the future is very much already here.
	This video, as you may have guessed, will be a kind of companion to the We Are Already in the Dystopia video, and I'm not someone who's generally a great fan of progress.
	If you've been following my Our Cyberpunk Dystopia series on lotusies.com, you'll be aware of the fact that I'm suspicious of the rapid pace of technological innovation, as ultimately I'm not very excited about what technology is doing to our conception of what it is to be a human.
	As I covered in part 8, there is something deeply cold and callous about drone weaponry, which reaches beyond the regular horrors of war and turns it into something else.
	War for all of its terrors is at least a human experience.
	Even modern industrial war, something clearly far worse than what preceded it, was still something that ultimately relied upon human action to function.
	Whatever else that it was, it required a will to fight.
	But there's something deeply sinister about drone warfare, a kind of warfare that could conceivably go on without human interaction, which of course has been the source of much post-apocalyptic science fiction.
	And we're skirting closer towards the edge of it, whether we like it or not.
	Watching videos of drones circling Russian and Ukrainian soldiers before mercilessly blowing them up has been a kind of evil that I'm genuinely sad to see happen in our lifetimes.
	At least with a human being, they might see you begging for your life and take pity on you.
	There is no such avenue with automated machines of death.
	However, it was likely that this was all inevitable.
	From the moment Francis Bacon put penned paper to explain his new method of science, to extract the intellectual serum of truth from the cauldron of superstition, it was probably inevitable that technological development would arrive at a point where machines replace the humans in the exigencies of life.
	And for most people, modern robotics will probably be in the domestic sphere, as it seems that robots will become more and more advanced over time, and we can see that we are arriving in places for which 20th century science fiction created the blueprint.
	As I said, I was watching Elon Musk at his We Robot event, which is a cute play on Asmov's famous stories from the 1940s, at which it was revealed, among other things, Tesla had been working on self-driving electric vehicles, including a cool Art Deco self-driving van and iRobot style AI-driven bipedal robots.
	They're not perfect as I understand it, but that's not really my concern, and I'm sure that even if they're not in their fully developed form now, they will be in the near future.
	And I won't lie, I was quite impressed.
	These reveals do indeed seem like a science fiction movie come to life, and it's nice to be able to see them happening in real time.
	I'm also quite impressed with the aesthetics of what Elon is producing.
	It's nice that he's got an eye towards making them look good, like a kind of classic Americana style that the 21st century otherwise largely lacks.
	And I'm also relatively optimistic about the kind of technology Elon himself will actually produce.
	I've been following Elon's career for a few years now, and he seems to have demonstrated a reasonably good character.
	Perhaps it's just that he's a fellow generation expert, but I'm very glad to see that the richest and most successful person on the earth is actually quite a well-grounded fellow autist who seems to actually know right from wrong and is happy to put his money where his mouth is.
	Elon purchasing Twitter was a big deal, and then Elon becoming a part of Trump's 2024 campaign is an even bigger deal.
	I think he sees in Trump the same kind of pro-civilization forces that the rest of us see, and I think he is well aware of the price we will pay if we lose.
	Generally, Elon seems to be very much pro-human, and not especially ideological.
	The most negative thing people seem to have to say about him is that he can be cringe, but not that he is nefarious.
	He doesn't give me villain vibes, like certain other billionaires do.
	But there is a part of me that looks towards these achievements with some cynicism, though, because as I spoke about in the last video, things are getting so much worse elsewhere.
	But it's easy to be a doommonger.
	It's easy to throw up your hands and cry, the end draweth nigh, and play upon people's worst fears about what kind of terrible future such technology might bring about.
	However, I'm not actually a doommonger on technology.
	I am a doommonger about people.
	Given how road traffic accidents, for example, are mostly driver error, I think that it's entirely likely that in a few decades, when automated AI-controlled vehicles are the norm, connected to some network which tracks the location of all other vehicles in a certain area and has sensors constantly monitoring around the vehicle at all times, that roads could actually become a lot safer than they are today.
	At the moment, there are around 50,000 people a year killed on America's roads.
	It could be that in 100 years, the idea of a traffic accident is just unheard of, and people will wonder how we ever allowed people-driven cars in the first place.
	The Tesla Optimus robot is actually not terrible either.
	Yes, it could be that armies of iRobot-style droids begin rampaging through cities killing people, but I don't think that sort of thing will actually happen.
	Instead, it could well be that these robots advance to a place where they are doing the most dangerous and demanding jobs.
	Thousands of people every year are killed or crippled in industrial accidents.
	It probably would be a good thing if these jobs could be automated to prevent that.
	Moreover, it's likely that these robots could be used to do things that humans could otherwise never do, opening up new realms of possibility that were previously thought impossible.
	And as I said, I appreciate Elon's attitude towards the things he does, because he genuinely seems to love humanity.
	He doesn't stigmatise the world and the people in it, as it is apparently so easy to do, and seems to be taking actual practical steps towards improving it.
	And part of that is making things that we want to like.
	But there is always an unintended consequence to everything, though, and these are what are concerning to me.
	The early communists all thought that technological advancements would be a good thing.
	Marx, Engels, Koprotkin, all of them.
	They all fetishized technology for its ability to automate the drudge work, the hard labour, and that would liberate us from the productive work and allow us to focus on the art of life.
	Having the machines do all the work would allow us to truly be free.
	So it is strange to see the robots doing, well, basically all those things the communists expected they'd free us personally up to do.
	I wonder how many bored office workers are currently using Grok's undeniably amazing AI generation capacity to create lifelike shit posts before they get on with writing the next TPS report.
	And it's this kind of unthinking positioning which concerns me with the Optimus robot.
	As with AI art, we run the risk of placing it in a position above us and not below us, a tool to achieve something with ease that we ought to have done ourselves with great effort.
	Framing it as a robot that can be your friend rings distant alarm bells to me, as our friends are meant to be other humans, with whom we can forge human connections and share experiences.
	Instead, we run the risk of it damaging the connections between us, rather than giving us the space to nurture them.
	In my view, robots should always be considered a tool.
	What can it do?
	It can basically do anything you want, Musk said.
	It can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks, whatever you can think of, it will do.
	I can see how this is a very well meaning thing to want a robot assistant for, and it all makes sense.
	But are we sure that these are the things that a robot ought to be doing?
	If we don't teach our children, if we don't look after them, if we aren't friends to one another, if we don't walk our own dogs, then what exactly are we doing?
	All of these things are relationships we have with other people and our pets, and it is in the exercise of our responsibilities to these people that we strengthen our relationships and make the world a better place.
	The Optimus robot would insert itself into these roles for convenience, but may incidentally become something that also becomes a barrier to their development.
	I don't want to be a pessimist, and generally I'm not, but I can't help seeing the Optimus robot yet another device which ends up driving us apart and liberating us from our reliance on one another, isolating and atomizing us even further than we already are.

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