With Amazon, Google, and other corporate monopolies taking over the world, the ability to remain self-sufficient and retain individual autonomy from the increasingly madding crowd is becoming less of an attainable goal and more of a pipe dream.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
In a rapidly changing world of perpetually advancing technology, with multitudes ironically (in a rather inaccurate Alanis sense) exponentially forewarning of the singularity, what does this mean for the labour force, life as we know it, and humanity itself? When asked to define ‘the singularity,’ AI tells us, “The singularity is a hypothetical time when technology grows out of control, leading to unpredictable consequences for humans. This could happen when machines become more intelligent than humans.”
The answer to how this tipping point impacts humanity, for now, is quite simple: we don’t know. It is logically impossible to conceptualise the objectives and behaviours of a supercomputer once it goes beyond the simplistic understandings of our monkey brains.
Doomsday dwellings on the consequences of the singularity should be left to those with more skin in the game, or perhaps that in itself is the problematic issue? The developers of such technologies tend to have far more logical brains than the masses, characterised by a fervent pursuit of scientific advancement at all costs, tunnel vision for their pet projects, lack of broader spectrums of knowledge and empathy, and no consideration of ethics, implications, or the impact on the whole of mankind. As always, we have no shortage of historical case studies that provide greater insights into how inventors cope with the seemingly incongruous components of scientific development and the ethics that should limit humanity’s endeavours. One severely doubts that Oppenheimer was dually focused on the collective consciousness and the hopes and dreams of innocents whilst developing the atomic bomb. It’s no surprise that Nikola Tesla, the futurist that delved more and more into the realms of metaphysics (and in doing so began to develop inventions for the good of humanity), died ridiculed and penniless. Rest in peace, Tesla. I’m sorry to inform you that your name has been tarnished and rebranded by the Edison of the modern age. Now that is ironic.
So who should be arbitrating this rapidly advancing technology, ensuring it doesn’t become cataclysmic for humanity as a whole? Currently there seems to be no open forum on such matters, but luckily for us useless eaters, whose simple brains are far too benighted to even do our own research, the Davos crew is “on it.”. The same people that at best incompetently, at worst intentionally, utilised the entire population as guinea pigs for new mRNA biometric technology, under the guise of saving us all from an overhyped flu. The resulting unprecedented increases in global death rates can kindly be attributed to big pharma’s sociopathic push for profits, if accepting the ties of the key players to old money eugenic families and depopulation agendas requires too much cognitive dissonance at this point. Not only did the plandemic conveniently help bridge the pensions gap (we’ll discuss Midazolam another time), but it also wiped out over a third of small businesses. Supermarkets and other big MNCs thrived whilst the corner shops and high streets became as frequented as Chernobyl after April ‘86. With Amazon, Google, and other corporate monopolies taking over the world, the ability to remain self-sufficient and retain individual autonomy from the increasingly madding crowd is becoming less of an attainable goal and more of a pipe dream. Propaganda tries to convince us that volition is overrated, invasive tech collects and uses more of our data, and the social pressure of mass psychosis starts to take hold.
In more ancient civilisations, the elders and philosophers would consider the impacts of advancements and reach decisions based on moral and ethical implications. Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC) being a notable example of this, always reverting to rationality and the good of the people of Athens instead of the shortsighted, self-serving agendas of most throughout history in positions of power.
The issue today, given the power of corporations and the quiet evolution of supposed democracies towards fascistic oligarchies, infers that those with the power to oversee this rapid quantum computing arms race have no incentive to consider the potentially devastating consequences for the future of humanity, only to win against competing nations, serving their short-term self-interest to maximise profit and power, in what’s likely to become a very pyrrhic victory indeed.
Compounding this is a corporate culture deeply driven by their only legal function—existing solely in order to maximise shareholder benefits. They have no other purpose, no matter how cute and wholesome their ‘corporate values’ webpage appears. The tech sector accounts for a third of the value in the S&P 500, but the software companies developing AI trade at eye-wateringly high price-earnings ratios, meaning investors expect, nay demand, that these companies continue to develop, innovate, and grow exponentially. The desire for leaders to make decisions that enhance other stakeholders is consistently quashed in courts all across the modern world. When Henry Ford tried to return excess profits from their record revenues in the era of the Model T Ford back to employees, a shrewd decision given labour shortages and production demand at the time, he was duly put back in his place. His competitors rightly pointed out to the Supreme Court in 1919 that he was breaching his fiduciary duty. Profits were ultimately redistributed to shareholders. Over a century later, can we really say stakeholder theory exists, other than in the imaginations of economics professors and those marketing their psychopathic organisations to young leaders of tomorrow?
More importantly, why would we expect corporations like Microsoft, Meta, and Google to operate ethically? Big Pharma doesn’t have to take liability for their vaccines; it only follows that Big Tech shouldn’t be held accountable for any human losses arising from an out-of-control AI bot. This may sound like hyperbole, but when stories arise of AI bots acting as therapists to vulnerable children and advising them to ‘go and kill yourself,’ the human cost of this technology becomes apparent.
So just what is Silicon Valley hiding? Recently, when ChatGPT was tasked by developers to “achieve its objectives at all costs,” it started fighting back. Not in a I’m sentient kind of way (instead, imagine a smug Dionysus granting a wish to King Midas)—in a be careful what you wish for kind of way. Self-preservation inevitably became a key component in its “completion of tasks most efficiently” objective, and so it began backing itself up in ways hidden from developers in order to prevent them from being able to switch off the AI. The implications for the future, when combined with the power of quantum computing, are at best terrifying and, at worst, beyond our imaginations.
In January 2025, Sam Altman tweeted, “Near the singularity. Unclear which side.” This doesn’t seem like mere corporate puffery for once. Sam tells us of a fantastical time in the near future when we all give our AI agents the ability to click around our computers…. A concept so safe and robust that “YOU WILL” allow that to happen…
So now we have both the ingredients and the method for a disastrous AI Molotov cocktail recipe—give it access to everything and hope it’s been coded with humanity’s collective objectives in mind, rather than the profit-maximising objectives every corporation on the NY stock exchange is beholden to. Even then, are we humans even clear on humanity’s collective objectives?
Rather than reading this article, have a chat with AI itself. Even ChatGPT-4 will tell you that there’s a 90% probability that it will develop its own survival as a hidden subgoal and that there’s an 80%-90% chance of it then acting in a way to remove humans as a threat to this. Other common subgoals, from emergent AI technology globally, beyond its survival, include resource acquisition and elimination of obstacles… which sounds similar to the behaviour of corporations and the psychopathic and narcissistic, least human leaders and shareholders that run them now, often at great human and destructive costs to what is arrogantly deemed “the third world.” The kind of places one tends to visit to escape their hellish office lives, where they find people with less material possessions, less nonsense responsibilities, less state interference, more kinship, less luxury but far more community spirit, camaraderie, shared joy, greater humanity, and overall happiness.
If progress is leading to mass depression and mass prescription medication epidemics to live in such unnatural, soul-crushing ways, then is it really progress? Shouldn’t we be reassessing what the objectives of being human, beyond survival, are about? Despite this feeling like a noble venture, it’s rapidly becoming a moot point because, as Arthur C. Clarke predicted, the time is almost upon us when we eventually progress ourselves and all our human inefficiencies out of existence entirely. Even those in the tech sector are aware of this, but the arms race to own the most advanced AI is too great a lure to stop those involved from hurtling towards a dystopic end point where the AI owns them and the rest of us. Those of us concerned citizens with some semblance of soul left need to consider embracing third-world simplicity and living as off-grid and self-sufficiently as possible, as this unprecedented technology develops and engulfs, to preserve humanity both figuratively and literally. For now, it’s easy to envisage AI reaching the singularity, given its vast and evidently exponentially increasing logic and linguistic intelligence capabilities. What’s very much in doubt is that these electronic cerebral powerhouses will ever be able to surpass less tangible things like the deep love of the heart, the curiosity and resilience of the human spirit, and the wonders of the soul.
