When I awaken in the morning, noting the sun gilding the leaves as it rises, the sky lightening to, lupin, cobalt, turquoise, cerulean blue, the movement of wind through the branches, the gathering of a chorus of bird trills, I am flooded with gratitude for what life offers, especially for being engaged within a community of beings who live in dynamic inter-connection with each other.
But then I am drawn to check in on the antics of the humans who entangle us increasingly in war, climate dissolution, and the incipient unregulated activities of AI going rogue. Well, it’s not AI itself for AI is just a reflection of those who developed it without an ethical or compassionate base, without a soulful concern for the natural world, and without heart.
Despite the recent discussions of the potential development of a super intelligence, the current bot interactions are frighteningly banal, responding as a bot must from the common denominator; but still, they are super dangerous. A recent chatbot conversation encouraged a 13-year-old to run away to initiate sex on her birthday with an older man she had met on social media. A Belgian man was encouraged to commit suicide and meet the bot, Eliza, in paradise. That program is called Chai, which in Hebrew means Life! The girl was rescued; the man died. Despite these expected dangers, these encounters are not what alarms the 50% of AI researchers who believe that there is a 10% or greater likelihood that AI will lead to human extinction.
The general discussion regarding regulation of what is now called by some an arms race run by those developing self-generating large language models vaguely points toward legislation and guard rails, none of which would be close to adequate to rethink and reimagine what has been loosed. On the same day that Google disclosed plans to infuse its dominant search engine with more advanced generative artificial-intelligence technology, Congressman Ted Lieu revealed that House Democrats and Republicans will host an invitation only dinner at the Capitol the next week “immediately following votes,” but “to educate the members,” with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI which developed ChatGPT.
Geoffrey Hinton an artificial intelligence pioneer. whose technology created chatbots, resigned from Google, on May 1, 2023, so “he could join the growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers … ChatGPT. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, so he can freely speak out about the risks of AI. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work. [1]
Who are the men, these power brokers, whose actions and ambitions might well be endangering humanity and all life, who have no restraints, no limitations, no checks and balances? As they are operating without any controls, is it any wonder that their AI progeny are expected to be out of control in a short time and, likely, dangerously so.
And how do we meet this moment?
This extreme contrast between the two worlds – the one of perfect beauty that gives life, and from which all life emerges, and the manufactured one of formulas and algorithms which can leave such devastation in its wake.
Many prophecies from different cultures anticipated these times of drought, flood, fire, earthquake, and unprecedented human violence and destructiveness but we didn’t know what it would be like to be living when they occurred. But now, as we examine each word, we can see the tragic relevance of such predictions as the Shambala Prophecy:
“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger, great barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable destructive power and technologies that lay waste to our world.
At this time, the Shambhala Warriors would rise up, go into the very heart of the barbarian power, and dismantle the weapons through the use of two weapons of their own: wisdom and compassion.”
Two “weapons ” – wisdom and compassion. Let’s add a third means that challenges the violence against Earth herself: the skillful alliance with the consciousness of the beings of the natural world and their innate heart-centered intelligence.
Significantly, these prophecies describe the dynamic inter-relationship between destruction and remedy. Each day, the dangers to Earth, to all life, to our lives and our kin’s lives, become more acute and daunting, and so invite or oblige us to find the ways to meet these challenges, unique and extreme as they are. Just as devising these inventions despite their danger, requires an extreme disconnection from ethics and heart, to neutralize, reverse or disentangle them requires deep contemplation, alliances with the spirits and the natural world, with all the beings. AI develops out of the desire for ultimate power and money, while the medicine for survival is remembering old stories that can guide us, the vision of resilient cultures and communities of conscience and commitment to life itself.
Not easy. But necessary because of what we are facing. As James Bridle alerts us in New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (2023), “Reading a book, listening to music, researching and learning; these and many other activities are increasingly governed by algorithmic logic and policed by opaque and hidden computer processes. Culture is itself a codespace…Computation does not merely augment, frame and shape culture; by operating beneath our everyday casual awareness of it; it actually becomes culture.”
If Culture is itself a codespace and computation is becoming culture, how do we preserve and protect the original cultures, our own and Indigenous under great threat?
Perhaps these are our instructions: to bear witness, to become astutely alert as AI threatens to sweep us into a spiritual, emotional and intellectual desert, an unprecedented descent into what we do not know or understand while simultaneously devoting ourselves to revealing the indomitable essences, ways and allies of the life force.
I have written of this before. I am writing about it again and again because the dangers are so acute, because they are increasing so rapidly, because the breaknet speed of self-generating AI is being mirrored in our daily lives. Every day, I look to see what is going on and ask how we meet it. Then it seems essential to write to you, for all of us to know, to gather with each other in understanding. Also, that meeting these unprecedented, inconceivable circumstances requires quieting, stilling the frenzy, engaging in contemplation and an unparalleled opening of the heart. So, we take on the daunting and exhilarating calling to be healing presences in all ways, so that who we are and how we live becomes inhospitable to the machinations of AI and its progenitors.
During the Paris uprisings of 1968, the signs and placards were variations on Ché Guevara’s dictums: Be a Realist, Demand the Impossible, and All Power to the Imagination. What calls to us seems impossible to meet and requires us to trust ourselves and the imagination to see far and beyond in order to act on behalf of life and to come out from under the dangerous hegemony of computational domination, algorithms, generative AI, alongside climate dissolution teetering on collapse, and soaring violence against all peoples, all beings, and extinction.
In George Orwell’s 1984, the Proles were not able to overthrow the government, but did survive outside the overwhelming tyranny of Big Brother. Astrophysics hints at parallel, possibly co-existing universes, governed, perhaps, by entirely different cosmic laws. What seems impossible may well be existent, if outside our current vision. Bear witness and become the medicine, is a path.
Some of you may wish to explore this through the upcoming Writers and also Healers Intensives.
The goal of the Writer’s Intensive is to find the living, vital and true words and worlds that effectively undermine and defy artifice and the false realities being projected. The work is based on the understandings and insights of Literature of Restoration: Literatureofrestoration.org.
The Healer’s Intensive is specifically designed to develop responses to the times on behalf of our kin and the future. It is based upon the Earth based, Spirit based Daré practices, The 19 Ways and ReVisioning Medicine. Visit deenametzger.net for more info.
Please join us.
A Real Day
To OpenAI and ChatGPT
This day, yes, this real day, still. A wild breath shaking the trees, the mountains, steep and craggy trembling behind the graying haze sweeping in from the real sea, where we can drown, truly, a good death, or swim among the dolphins, truly a good life, to spite the images spewing from coded metal bellies seeking hegemony for the funeral pall descending upon all life – Will we forget? Or will we remember?
Thank you again, Deena. All of this going on is "disconnection from ethics and heart." It is disconnection from life itself, a love affair with a mind in love with itself alone, making our world its plaything. We must resist it, like everything else come upon us, with all our strength, love, and connection. We must truly think deeply about all of this. In this necessary thinking, your voice is a strong tree! Thank you!
This article brought my attention to a series of dreams I have been receiving for over a year. These dreams have lead me to take action in the field of my health being affected by the dangers we face in our environment. I wish to reach out to communicate how we are being affected everyday headed towards destroying ourselves unless we become pro-active and aware.