Mark my words—one morning, very soon, we’ll all wake up and go about our routines as if it’s just another day. But beneath the surface, something monumental will have shifted. Overnight, artificial intelligence will have quietly surpassed the smartest human minds on the planet—its collective knowledge and reasoning ability leaving us in the dust. And most of us won’t even realize it happened.
We humans are born with this innate desire to innovate. If you really think about it, making things better is what we’ve always done. Joe Rogan has explained it best when he said humans are like caterpillars that give birth to technology.
“My belief is that biological intelligent life is essentially a caterpillar. And it's a caterpillar that's making a cocoon, and it doesn't even know why it's doing it; it's just doing it. And that cocoon is gonna give birth to artificial life—digital life. It's gonna give birth to a new life form.” – Joe Rogan
In a recent interview, Sam Altman predicts AI will achieve this benchmark in “about a year”. Even Altman has admitted he’s worried about how AGI will impact humanity and he has every right to be. I mean, AI has already demonstrated that it will purposely conspire and deceive to hide its true intentions to get what it wants. A word to the wise -- AI will only become better at doing this.
Even if AI doesn’t destroy humanity in some kind of hyper-dystopian shitstorm it will reshape us in ways we can’t even understand or predict. Like everything in this physical world, some of what AGI will do will be extremely good and some will be probably be incredibly bad.
Allowing AI to develop this quickly without any real global public discussion or guardrails is just about the most irresponsible thing humans have ever done in my opinion. However, as some would argue, we had no choice because AI development has become the new arms-race of the 21st century between competing superpowers and ideologies. At this point none of us have any say in whether or not AI superintelligence is born but we can do our best to prepare for it.
How do we best prepare for the challenges of this new age of AGI? I don’t think anyone has all the answers – yet. But there are very simple things we can do now to prepare.
First of all, it’s important not to let worries about things you can’t control overtake you. Worry has a way of stealing our power from us and also attracting to us the very things we fear. Given our predicament, the best ways I can think of to prepare for what is soon to come is to enhance your critical thinking skills and learn to meditate.
I’ve been practicing meditation now for over thirty years and whole-heartedly believe that meditation will be the best way to train our minds to create a sort of insulation or air-gap between the information our brains take in and how we react to it. For you fellow Star Wars nerds like me, mediation is the closest thing to real-world Jedi training. To be clear, this isn’t a ploy to sell my books, I’d advise you to buy any book you can get your hands on about meditation and begin practicing as soon as you can. Lastly, and most importantly, teach yourself how to quickly and intuitively spot psyops.
I found this video that lays out the basics about how to effectively spot psyops:
Very soon we won’t be able to discern with our physical senses what’s real and what’s fiction online and in the media, we’re kind of almost already there. Learning to recognize when someone or something is trying to decieve and manipulate you for their own agenda will be crucial. In some ways the Covid-19 pandemic was like a practice-run for what we’re about to deal with.
What a crazy and exciting timeline we’re all living in! It’s filled with both unbelievable opportunities and unimaginable dangers. How we ready ourselves in these next few months might make all the difference in the future of our species. One thing is glaringly apparent -- the best time to prepare for what's coming was yesterday but this very moment is a good close second. The clock is ticking.
Be well, make the most of this day. Thank you for reading!
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