Let's not kid ourselves—we might be the dominant species on this planet (so far), but that doesn't make us any more advanced than incredibly complex monkeys who have been able to do great things, from exploring the cosmos to harnessing the power of the atom I say it’s pretty outstanding what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. 

Despite these (and numerous other) significant advancements, our biology remains the primary factor influencing our behavior. As we deepen our understanding of ourselves, we learn more about our mechanisms, what motivates us, and crucially, how to direct our behavior in specific ways. Our predictable human instincts are being subtly manipulated by companies, governments, and other entities to shape our actions, often without our conscious awareness.

Drawing inspiration from my man B.F. Skinner’s theories of behaviorism, we see how today's digital landscapes are engineered much like Skinner's boxes, where rewards and reinforcements are meticulously planned to shape and modify behavior. Social media platforms, the pinnacle of the engagement economy, are not merely tools for connection but are designed as intricate mazes of psychological triggers. These platforms utilize likes, notifications, and endless scrolls to exploit our inherent vulnerabilities—turning these Skinnerian principles on its head by conditioning us not in a controlled lab, but in the unbounded, wild laboratories of our daily lives. This strategic manipulation aims not just to influence our momentary actions, but to shape our very perceptions, beliefs, and interactions with the world around us.

Behavioral Psychology 101& ½

One of the key figures in figuring out the integral behavior of mammals (us included) was B.F Skinner, this guy was able to crack the basic intricacies of animal behavior under specific stimuli and reward systems and he figured out 3 key findings through his experimentation on animals which latter on were replicated on humans and practically built the foundations of so much of today’s economic landscape. 

Operant Conditioning: Skinner's concept of operant conditioning is perhaps his most significant contribution to understanding human behavior. He demonstrated that behaviors can be strengthened or weakened through reinforcement and punishment. In the context of gamification, this principle underscores the effectiveness of rewards (positive reinforcement) in encouraging desired behaviors. By strategically implementing rewards such as points, badges, or levels, gamified systems can motivate users to engage more actively and persistently.

Variable Reinforcement Schedules: Skinner's research highlighted the potency of variable reinforcement schedules in shaping behavior. Unlike fixed reinforcement schedules where rewards are provided consistently after a certain number of responses, variable schedules deliver rewards unpredictably. This unpredictability creates a sense of anticipation and excitement, leading to sustained engagement. In gamification, incorporating elements of randomness or variability in reward delivery can enhance user motivation and prolong engagement levels.

To get a better idea of this please check this nice video:

Shaping Complex Behaviors: Skinner demonstrated that complex behaviors can be broken down into smaller, manageable steps and reinforced incrementally. This process, known as shaping, allows individuals to learn new skills or behaviors gradually. In the context of gamification, this finding suggests that designers can use progressive challenges and rewards to guide users toward mastery. By structuring tasks in a hierarchical manner and providing rewards for each milestone achieved, gamified systems can facilitate skill development and goal attainment.

In summary, Skinner's findings emphasize the power of rewards and reinforcement in shaping human behavior, the importance of variability in maintaining engagement, and the efficacy of shaping complex behaviors through incremental reinforcement. These insights serve as foundational principles for the design and implementation of gamified experiences aimed at motivating and influencing user behavior. Which can be seen everywhere in this era of the Attention Economy.

You get Operant conditioning through social validation when you quantify likes and other “social media points” You upload something you share a piece of news and then that behavior gets rewarded socially by the gratification of external validation. Then we proceed with the Variable reinforcement schedule, since you don’t know how well or poorly your posts and interactions will perform once posted it can be that the algorithm is showcasing your content to your friends in a randomized pattern because it knows that by being slightly inconsistent it will draw you in deeper and deeper.  And finally, your behavior is shaped, slowly but surely you increase your usage of said app, you share more with your friends and contacts you doom-scroll 10 minutes more every 6 months, the progress is slow but surely enough by engaging and learning from your behavior the engagement as the one goal becomes the main focus of all apps in the digital economy.  

Also, this is not something new, researchers have been talking about this for years to the media about it all…  I mean heck there's even an entire Netflix documentary about all of this:

And for those that think that this is a phenomenon exclusive to social media companies let me tell you the field of behavioral economics is one of the most fascinating and interesting fields of study (in my opinion) in the landscape of economics. Behavior-modifying design is a key feature in most of today’s consumer economy. 

Companies in all industries are using these principles to try to get you to buy from them. From the architecture to the colors to the positioning and type of typeface every small minute detail of a human interaction in a business can be quantified studied, and distilled to valuable insights. Why do you think the digital economy has devoured everything else on planet Earth practically?

Just as an example From the type of lines that drive-throughs have in fast food restaurants to the type of glass they put their menus on all of these details have been optimized to incentivize impulsive behavior and increase the average order size for each consumer. Also to reduce friction and make everything as seamless as possible. This can all be seen in the following video that analyses drive-throughs and fast food companies and there is some fun/scary stuff like cross-checking weather pattern data, so they might offer you a free donut with coffee on a cold day or recommend a slushie with a discount when it's hot. 

Modifying the design or showcasing different products on apps to incentivize consumption with what are called "dark patterns" are all ways that companies "nudge" you towards a specific behavior. And we live in a world that is filled with this, and it has been for years.

AI: The Wildcard

So, what happens when we introduce Large Language Models and other advanced AI systems into the equation? Well, it doesn’t look good if you're even slightly wary of these things because, more likely than not, an increasing number of companies, governments, and organizations will be incorporating these gamified and behavioral tools to guide and incentivize your behavior toward their desired goals.

And don't get me wrong, I think this technology could be used for good. With well-designed incentives, we could build fairer, healthier, and more environmentally friendly societies that guide people toward more satisfying and rewarding lives. But that is not the prevailing force behind these principles today. We have fallen into the trap of the attention economy, where engagement is the ultimate metric for our online interactions, regardless of anything else. This is because keeping eyeballs on screens longer increases the likelihood of tapping into the ads that fund these systems.

So, what happens when some of the most powerful organizations in human history work alongside the most significant invention our species will develop to try and maximize app engagement? We can already see the effects. What we need to be careful about is looking a bit further ahead at what happens when the AI systems embedded in these platforms are just too good for us to say no, or for us to realize our behavior is being modified.

What if we aren't even noticing this change because it is subtle or slow, but very much intended according to someone else's plan? Now, I'm not going to fall into a conspiracy and claim there are lizard people running the AI and they want to dominate us... no, most likely, it's just an overwhelming number of small decisions that have piled up through systematic blind spots and economic incentives to keep companies running and finding the path of least resistance. Also, I'm not claiming that some of these companies are guiltless white doves with pure intentions in their hearts. The reality is a complex gray middle ground where a mixture of ignorance (the main ingredient), apathy, lack of awareness, and let's add a sprinkle of malice to spice things up, have led to the situation we face ourselves.

So far we see how these systems continue to increase in complexity and continue to be used by hundreds of millions worldwide. We are seeing people worshipping AI as religious figures, seeing them as possible partners and lovers, or having an impact on their morals.

While we can attempt to recognize and understand these phenomena, I mean we have seen them happen already, the truly scary aspect emerges when AI tools surpass our capabilities in areas we excel. Imagine AI assistants capable of crafting messages with a charisma unparalleled by humans, indistinguishable from human-created content. What if AI could design the ultimate marketing campaign? In the context of selling hamburgers at a drive-through, this may seem relatively harmless — ignoring health concerns. However, consider the implications of an AI that can create the perfect political campaign, the perfect extremist recruitment video, or the perfect disinformation campaign.

This level of perfection doesn't require universal acceptance or a resounding agreement with its messages. It merely needs to be convincing and covert enough to fulfill its objectives without triggering widespread alarm, prompting legislative actions, or inspiring investigative documentaries. It's so proficient that its influence goes unnoticed, and then the world changes imperceptibly around you and no one says anything.

The Perils of Predictability

A powerful line from a monologue states, "From the Moment I Understood the Weakness of My Flesh, it Disgusted Me." This sentiment resonates deeply with me as I consider the impact of AI influences while reading and researching for this article—arrogantly  I thought, "Pff, I could never be manipulated by these systems I’m so aware of it all" but if you saw my usage of Instagram weekly,  you’d know being aware of these trends is no protection against its allure. Indeed, we remain complex beings, highly prone to the biological limitations of our brains, despite our denial. But mostly to realize our vulnerability to these small things, the glow of your screen, the color of the notifications It has all been designed after years and years of the brightest minds of the field working for these companies.

 The real challenge is: How can we build and design systems to protect us, to warn us, and to reverse or reduce the negative impact of decisions and behaviors like these? It’s an incredibly complex task, and I believe we might never "solve" this issue by just putting in an “Anti-Behavioral Economics Law” or something similar. But maybe, just maybe, we could see a future where we can develop ways to enhance our awareness and our senses to distinguish these manipulations and disengage from dark patterns, reflecting on whether our actions are guided by our desires or someone else's. – Also I highly recommend this book I never took any of its recommendations but it was a great read nonetheless. 

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It’s not an easy or even feasible task, but I believe talking about these things can make us more aware and provide us with tools to fight back when needed and protect those who might be more susceptible to these influences.

As we stand on the brink of the next century, questions about our existence and prosperity as a species loom large. Do we evolve beyond our current paradigms, which have fallen short of our aspirations, or do we maintain our existential inertia, adhering to business as usual? Amidst our fervent chase for progress, we find ourselves racing towards an undefined future, overwhelmed by the relentless barrage of information that demands our unwavering focus. Our societies and the very essence of our humanity seem to navigate through a maelstrom of complexity, entwined in an ever-thickening web of information, yet our fundamental nature appears unaltered.

In this whirlwind of constant change, our biological essence and the conceptual frameworks that underpin our social constructs seem to resist swift adaptation, marking a dangerous reluctance to keep pace with our times. It is within this challenging backdrop that Dr. Francesca Ferrando's new book "The Art of Being Posthuman" emerges as a breath of fresh air, and though I will not make the generic pretentious claim that it is “cutting through the intellectual malaise with a provocative call to self-reflection”, but it does feel new and at least bold which is something we much need in these changing times. The book is infused with a touch of spiritual vitality and I’d wager even a sprinkle of psychedelic flair at least in my mind. 

More than just a piece of literature, Or a self-help, it serves as a guide for introspection, urging us to contemplate our role and purpose at the onset of the 21st century. Through its compelling existential discourse, it encourages a reevaluation of humanity's core and its path forward amidst the intricacies of modern life. 

Trans & Post Humanism

I think is valid to explain the differences between posthumanism and its closest ally transhumanism Transhumanism and Posthumanism are two philosophical concepts that speculate on the future of humanity, but from different perspectives. Transhumanism focuses on the enhancement of human capabilities through technology and science, advocating for the use of these advancements to improve human physical and intellectual capacities. It's all about transcending our biological limitations (hence the name, clever ah?) through deliberate modifications. Posthumanism, on the other hand, goes a step further to question the very essence of being human in the wake of these technological advancements. It explores what comes after humanity's current state, considering the implications of merging with technology to the point where the distinction between human and machine blurs. While Transhumanism emphasizes improvement within the framework of human capabilities, Posthumanism contemplates a future where the definition of "human" may fundamentally change

.My relationship with Posthumanism was very much tangential I would say, mainly because I had always considered myself to be more of a Transhumanist than a Posthumanist, so much so at one point I thought more of one is just the “lighter” version of the other one and that might be true, but my only approach to posthumanism before was reading some pages of the book How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles and a whole bunch of transhumanist literature, and youtube videos, and TED talks and discussion in Facebook Groups back in the 2010s  which is where Ironically I came upon the work of Dr. Ferrando.

Despite never having personally encountered the author or delving deeply into her work, my interest was piqued through an engaging Facebook poll I saw a couple of months ago which led me to receive a copy of her book from the publishing company. This serendipitous discovery turned out to be an enlightening experience, unveiling one of the most captivating reads I've enjoyed in recent times –So thank you Facebook for this exchange – 

The allure of the book wasn't solely its futuristic theme—a domain I passionately explore, especially beyond the mere anticipation of the coming technological advancements and their exponentially accelerating pace. What truly resonated with me was the author's profound exploration of how these evolving dynamics are poised to redefine our essence as a species.

This scrutiny extends beyond the surface, going into the ramifications these shifts entail for our individual and collective identities. It prompts a reevaluation of our philosophical bearings and how we engage with reality and our surroundings, advocating for a nuanced understanding and adaptability to the forthcoming changes.

This is for me the greatest value this book has to offer because throughout its meditations it doesn’t offer moralistic language on how we all should blindly follow an ideology or a mindset but more on how to approach the changing state of our world and aim towards the benefit and growth of us as a species beyond the current limitations embedded in how we view ourselves and how that perspective affects the way that we relate with ourselves with each other and with the world and the cosmos around us. Though I have to say the fact that all chapters ended with the same paragraph that you can read this book in any order as it unfolds, it got a bit tiresome after the third meditation honestly. 

Exploration of the Three Axis of Posthumanism

Honestly, this book is a very interesting read, at least for me I have identified myself – in a philosophical manner–  as a transhumanist advocating for the advancement and application of science and technology to go beyond our current biological limitations (heck I’ve written almost 7 articles about these sort of things already, just go to the search bar on the newsletter’s website and write “Transhumanism” and you’ll see them all ) So this book seemed like a philosophical next step in that same direction which for me is great but I was not expecting such questioning in the way that we approach the future of our species breaking down the three core axis of Posthuman thought as they are described in the book. 

• 1st Axis Post-Humanism: The realization that the Human is Plural. This primarily addresses the view of humans as predominantly individual entities, rather than acknowledging our nature as social animals in need of community. It also involves leveraging the information we currently possess to move beyond arbitrary tribalism and notions of distinction and superiority between different groups. Regrettably, this perspective has not been prevalent throughout much of human history, with historically drawn lines still impacting us today

• 2nd Axis:  Post-Anthropocentrism: The comprehension of the human in coexistial relationship. As a Transhumanist, I've always been firmly on Team Human, perceiving the rest of reality as existing primarily for our sake. I now realize that this perspective inadvertently stripped agency from other intelligences in the world, including those in the Animalia kingdom, Plantae, Fungi, and beyond. This was an interesting blind spot for me on how to view the world because yeah of course I see the complexities and relationships between us and our world our environment and every other living being in it. But even my environmental concerns for the future of the planet have always been from a perspective of “how can this affect us and our lives” more than anything else. Reflecting on this has led me to consider how our interactions and the development of new technologies and ideas can benefit not only us but also the diverse intelligences around us in a more holistic manner.

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• 3rd Axis Post-Dualism: The awareness that existence does not unfold in dualisms. This axis for me is a fun one and one of the deepest with regards to its philosophical implications because oh my god, since the dawn of philosophy, people have been debating the duality of life of body and soul of mind and body and all of that. And, the more and more we learn about ourselves and the functioning of the machinery that makes us, us, we understand the deep complementary relationship between our brains our minds, and our bodies not separating them but acknowledging that we are multitudes within ourselves, within the parts of our brain to the organs we perceive reality to the microbiome that lives inside of us and this is such a nice point to read and reflect which also reminds me a bit of this meme about separating the physical and the internal worlds: 

​Personal Reflection & Random Notes

This section is to all the sidenotes that I think were noteworthy or interesting from my perspective that I found in the book, so if you don’t want to read a whole bunch of random knickknacks skip this part:  One of the footnotes in a chapter referred to a paper proposing that the influence of close supernovae could have increased the rate of lightning, potentially affecting the number of forest fires. This change may have transformed the forests in Northern Africa into savannahs, impacting the evolution of bipedal hominids. This hypothesis significantly supports the book's claim of intra-action and the constant flux of factors that influence everything around us, which I find very interesting and beautiful. 

I cannot leave this unnoticed but I just love the richness of language used in this book which I think could be attributed to the multiculturalism of the author. The subtle hints I noticed here and there as someone who speaks a couple of romance languages you can feel in between the lines almost, or when someone uses an adverb version of an adjective and is just a bit more creative with the use of language is great, so kudos to the Author for that and the editor who left them there. Also, this book is the first time I see someone using Poietic in a book that wasn’t from Humberto Maturana. 

Though yeah it is not a perfect book and I’ve had some qualms with it (like any normal person I guess you never fully agree with everyone you encounter/read/listen/see. I found some things funny and noteworthy at one point the author proposes that focusing too much on the importance of written language is classist and Western-centric. Don’t get me wrong I do agree the world is coated with Eurocentrism and the dominance of some narratives, but yeah maybe this was a step too far for my perspective. 

The Book's Insights and Contributions

Overall I would say that this was a good way to start this year even though I am just now publishing this review this book has accompanied me through the beginning of a very exciting year so I take with me the lessons learned from here on to the future and also I could say that personally I’m taking a step closer and closer towards posthumanism from my transhumanist ways I’d say but I require some more meditations and time to take the full leap I’d say. 

Of course, I think I’ve left out a lot of what the book talks about and goes even deeper but I think it is up to you to go and see what resonates more with you, because at least for me the book left a deeper imprint into how I view things rather than giving me rapture-like feelings while reading it, it was a fun time that kinda validated a lot of what I already believed and though I mean I was pretty much on board with what the book was saying without me being aware of it. As I said previously jumping from Transhumanism to Posthumanism is a hop and a skip away from each other, so If anyone decides to read this book please let me know from where you came from philosophically speaking before and after this book.

Now, Do I recommend you get this book? If you read this newsletter and enjoy my way of writing/thinking? Absolutely! It’s a fun wild ride through the Author’s meditations a poietic journey across ideas and insights that fill you up with this deep sense of wonder and introspection that translated in me putting the book down and just looking forward to contemplating for a moment what was in front of me – which usually meant me in a train in through east Germany looking to a field or some trees–  while thinking of the (p)art that we all play in this interactive game we all live in called reality. 

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If anyone else is interested in sharing their books about this and other Topics please contact me or write me a comment I’m always happy to read something fun and give my two cents about it.

As we advance into increasingly sophisticated AI image generators, video creators, and potentially even video games, a question arises: are we witnessing the very fabric of reality begin to unravel? The rise of Generative AI (Gen AI) makes it challenging to distinguish between real and simulated images, videos, and sounds. This begs the question: how will we discern reality in the future, and will we be drawn more and more to virtual experiences over the physical world, or this meatspace that we currently inhabit? 

The Power of Generative AI 

Currently, I think we can still identify a deepfake video if we look carefully, or have been on the internet long enough to see these things to develop a keen eye. These are the examples of Argil AI generating deep fake videos of certain celebrities talking explicitly about how they’re AIs (So meta) 

But still, this is something somewhat easy to identify, then we have face masking and voice modifying AIs that can remake the way your lips move and rework your voice from your base language to any other language as in the following test video (from the ancient times of 6 months ago) 

We are also seeing AI being used in other venues (like how AI is being used in all areas of life today) in the procedural generation of video game worlds, items, and character personalities and dialogues. We already have demos of Virtual Humans being created for video games that could soon enough populate our virtual worlds where we can have in-depth nuanced conversations while at the same time bringing a unique playing experience for each person engaging with these characters. This technology can be used and extrapolated for AI-generated landscapes objects storylines dialogue and so much more. 

Now, this seems really cool and the last paragraph almost seemed like I copied it off a press release now that I re-read it (but I am not changing it) but that is also because the prospect of this technology is crazy interesting while also being incredibly scary in some way. Just look at the latest developments of the Unreal Engine and how this scene seems like it was recorded from a phone but then a giant Pink object interacts with the smoke. 

And that’s the thing I believe since 2023 to today we have seen advances in Generative AI that are incredible, and the thing is this rate of innovation and improvement seems to be only acceleration (remember Moore’s Law and the exponential acceleration of computing power, which was theorized decades before this incredible HYPE for AI came unto the global scene) 

Escaping the Mundane 

Now the CEO of Nvidia announced a couple of days ago during an unveiling of an endless barrage of news of the company launching new processors made for AI and other wonderful news said one piece of forecasting that in 5 to 10 years from now we might have fully AI generated Videogames. Now, as a gamer myself, I believe this brings incredible things where small developers will be able to leverage skills and production capacity without the need to hire many employees reducing the costs and democratizing the capacity for more and more people to create fascinating interactive virtual worlds. 

The true potential of Generative AI, however, transcends video games. It lies in the transformative realm of Virtual Reality (VR). Imagine inhabiting an AI-generated world, not a static landscape, but a dynamic ecosystem that responds to your actions and evolves with your presence.  These worlds wouldn't simply exist, they would co-create with us in a poietic manner, (a term derived from the Greek word for "to make.")  Our interactions would become the brushstrokes with which these virtual realities paint themselves, blurring the line between creator and creation.

If we consider that we are already living in a world where Brains are connecting directly to digital interfaces that allow us to play Mario Kart it is not a far leap into the unknown for us to extrapolate and see how we could have a more symbiotic relationship between our brains and digital worlds where we could transmit directly these virtual worlds unto our brain and have more and more immersive VR experiences in the coming years. 

The Allure of Virtuality

The allure of entertainment, compared to the baseline of everyday life, can be attributed to its curated nature. Films, video games, and other media meticulously craft experiences, eliminating tedious moments and focusing on excitement, drama, and tension.  Even in seemingly "slower" narratives, the pacing is designed to propel us towards the next milestone. This is in stark contrast to real life, where progress often feels glacial. Building skills or achieving goals in the physical world takes time and effort, unlike video games where dedicated grinding can yield dramatic results in just a couple of hours. Essentially, entertainment thrives by filtering out the tedium that permeates our daily lives.

The prospect of fully immersive VR directly interfacing with the human brain raises a chilling question: will we ever be able to tear ourselves away from these virtual worlds?  Consider the current struggle with attention spans in the face of the relentless algorithms and recommendation engines driving our smartphone use. Now imagine companies crafting VR experiences meticulously designed to capture not just our fleeting attention, but our very existence. These virtual worlds wouldn't simply compete for our time; they'd become all-encompassing realities, blurring the lines between the simulated and the real.

Imagine AI-designed VR worlds where limitations are a thing of the past.  No longer tethered to the physical constraints of our bodies, we could soar through the cosmos at unimaginable speeds, exploring galaxies light-years away. Gone are the restrictions of light speed; these virtual universes can be tailored to quench our thirst for cosmic exploration.  Or perhaps you yearn for fantastical realms brimming with alien life.  Generative AI can craft worlds teeming with unique flora and fauna, populated by civilizations unlike anything we've ever encountered.  The key lies in personalization – these VR experiences would be yours to command, letting you fly with mythical creatures or delve into the mysteries of alien cultures.

And when that happens What will happen to the “real” world what attractive feature will there be to log off and exist in this physical realm anymore? 

Are we ready for it?

The specter of unpreparedness hangs heavy upon our heads. Our social media deluge, rife with misinformation, and our ongoing struggle to grasp the true potential of Generative AI paint a cautionary tale. We should heed the warning of these trends and see how to extract the greatest value from our technological advances while keeping human dignity and flourishing as our goals.  

As this technology matures, birthing custom-built, fully AI-generated virtual worlds, humanity will face a monumental choice: venture outward, as a species reaching for the boundless expanse of the cosmos, or inward, seeking ever-deeper and more intricate virtual realities. 

Will we become architects of a majestic cosmic civilization, stretching our tendrils across the vast canvas of space, or will we retreat into self-built labyrinths of simulated experience, a civilization growing ever taller within the confines of the virtual, at the risk of neglecting the boundless potential of the real? The answer, it seems, lies at the crux of this "wide versus tall" conundrum. Will we choose the expansive grandeur of the universe or the intricate, self-contained grandeur of a million simulated worlds?

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This isn't to say we should indulge in blind optimism.  But it's crucial to maintain a balanced perspective on the past. We shouldn't romanticize a bygone era through rose-tinted glasses, nor should we judge past generations by our present standards. Examining the past objectively allows us to learn from its mistakes and celebrate our advancements.

This is why I think we need to be careful when we analyze and see what we are doing in today’s scientific advancements and consider ourselves to be the pinnacle of human progress, ethics andm orality when probably in a couple of years (not, decades) from now some of the practices we still incur today will be perceived as barbaric or downright cruel in some parts of our scientific endeavors. Because how will we be judged with the eyes of the future?

The Shadow of the Past - Lessons from Historical Practices:

In the not-so-distant past, medicine relied on practices that seemed barbaric by today's standards calling it a field of science as we do today is a bit of a stretch because it was mostly superstitions, trial and error, and pure luck for some of the old treatments. 

For instance, Bloodletting, the practice of making cuts and letting blood flow to "release" ailments in the body,  was a common treatment for a variety of ailments, fueled by a flawed understanding of the human body. Similarly, vivisection, the dissection of live animals, was once a cornerstone of medical research While driven by a genuine desire to heal, these practices caused immense suffering due to a lack of scientific knowledge and the desperate hope for cures.  Analyze the reasons behind these practices: a lack of scientific understanding led to misconceptions about how the body functioned, while the prevailing desperation for cures fueled a willingness to experiment, even on living beings.

Highlighting the ethical concerns, these practices inflicted unnecessary suffering on both animals and humans. Bloodletting could weaken patients and even lead to death, while vivisection subjected animals to pain and distress without always yielding valuable results. This raises a critical question: are we, in our current enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence (AI), making similar mistakes? Could our haste to develop AI be leading us down a path riddled with unforeseen ethical concerns, much like the bloodletting and vivisection of the past?

Potential Pitfalls of Current Practices

I think it is interesting to be thinking about these technologies and tools that we are developing to further develop and refine our AI systems for example there is a quantum computing company that recently raised a not-so-small round of capital to fund their development and expansion of different products in regards to optimizing the size of Large Language Models for ease of use. But in its press release there was one interesting point that this company presented what they are calling the Lobotomizer LLM, this presents a novel approach to managing vast amounts of data within LLMs, especially dealing with erroneous neural pathways after providing training data for LLMs. 

Unlike traditional methods that filter information before training, the Lobotomizer works on a post-training basis. It essentially identifies and removes unwanted connections within the LLM's network, effectively "forgetting" specific data. This seems like a convenient way to address concerns about bias or sensitive information residing within the AI.

While seemingly efficient, the Lobotomizer LLM's approach presents several potential pitfalls. One major concern is oversimplification. LLMs learn by identifying complex relationships between data points. Deleting information disrupts these connections, potentially leading to a loss of nuance and a decline in the AI's ability to understand subtle contexts. It is like teaching a human about history by only providing factual dates and events, without the rich tapestry of social, cultural, and political influences that determine the pathway of actions and the impact it has had. The resulting understanding would be shallow and potentially misleading.

Furthermore, the Lobotomizer hinges on the subjective judgment of what constitutes "bad" data. Who gets to decide which information needs to be removed? Human biases can easily creep into this curation process. And so much so that initial research shows that AI actually exacerbates the inherent human Biases.  If, for instance, data is deleted because it challenges societal norms or reflects viewpoints deemed undesirable, the resulting AI could perpetuate existing prejudices. This creates a biased AI that reinforces pre-existing societal inequalities.

The opacity surrounding the deletion process adds another layer of concern. If the Lobotomizer functions as a "black box," it becomes difficult to understand how the LLM reasons and learns after the data is removed.  This lack of transparency makes it challenging to debug issues, refine the model, and ensure its overall safety.  The analogy of an AI lobotomy becomes quite appropriate for the potential damage that it could cause to the AI model in the future. 

 Just as the historical lobotomy procedure had devastating consequences for human cognition, removing data from an LLM might limit its potential for growth and learning. An AI that has been lobotomized by data deletion might be hindered in its ability to develop critical thinking skills and potentially even limit the possibility of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or artificial consciousness.  

Perhaps the true path to responsible AI development lies not in data removal, but in creating robust algorithms that can critically evaluate information and identify biases within the data itself considering how modern LLMs are developing and the value of emergent properties that arise from large swaths of data it can be complicated to fine-tune this sort of processes. 

Towards a More Ethical Future - Responsible AI Development:

As we delve deeper into the complexities of AI, the Lobotomizer LLM presents a cautionary tale. While the desire to streamline AI development is understandable, we must resist the urge for quick fixes that could cripple future progress. The human mind thrives on a vast and nuanced understanding of the world, and the same is likely true for AI. Just as a skilled sculptor wouldn't chip away at a masterpiece to remove imperfections, we shouldn't lobotomize AI by deleting swathes of data.

The path forward lies in developing a more sophisticated toolbox. Data flagging allows us to identify problematic information while preserving its value as a training poin

t but with appropriate weighting or contextualization. Explainable AI techniques can illuminate the reasoning behind an AI's conclusions, enabling us to make targeted adjustments and course corrections Human oversight, guided by robust ethical frameworks, remains paramount in data selection and training processes.

Transparency is the cornerstone of responsible AI development (even with the inherent risks that we must always address)  By fostering open dialogue and collaboration between researchers, ethicists, and the public, we can ensure that AI is a force for good. The philosophical questions surrounding consciousness in AI are profound. If we are on the cusp of creating a being with subjective experience, then the notion of lobotomizing it becomes not just ethically dubious, but potentially barbaric.

The true potential of AI lies not in mimicking the human mind, but in surpassing it. By embracing the richness of data, fostering responsible development, and remaining open to the unknown, we can usher in a new era of collaboration between humans and intelligent machines. Let us not succumb to the temptation of a quick fix, but rather strive to build a future where AI flourishes alongside humanity, reaching its full potential as a tool for understanding, progress, and perhaps even the unraveling of the universe's greatest mysteries.

This was a shorter version of our weekly articles I might start reducing the length of some of these articles if you’d like that (or not) let me know in the comments.

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I love the Internet, as someone who was born in one country (Brazil) but lived most of my life in another is what a lot of people would call me a “Third culture kid” and while yeah I think I fit into that criteria, but one key factor I cannot underestimate its deep influence in my life has been the Internet. I think probably even heavier than the culture that I lived in for most of my life (Chile) because the internet was and is such a deep part of my life, of the day-to-day life of my sense of humor and the references I make and also because of this “common” culture it is a very interesting way that I connect and bond with people through life. 

So thank you oh, internet, my boundless well of connection! Through your pipes and threads, I've woven a tapestry of friendships, mentors, and even lovers.  The internet brought the world to my doorstep, letting me learn from brilliant minds across oceans and continents. From passionate organizations to inspiring individuals, you've opened doors I never dreamed possible. Heck, I was able to meet the people I built a company in my 20s thanks to internet forums about transhumanism. So yeah Thank you Internet for being the bridge that connects hearts and ignites a thirst for knowledge. 

But besides this small ode of mine to the internet, we are currently witnessing the possible end of this optimistic and “golden” era of open internet seen as a place of public discourse or as a way to engage and connect with strangers online who might become great people and allies in your life. And one of these potential threats might be the current trends we’ve seen in online discourse accelerated by Generative AI. This is what researchers have dubbed the “Dark Forest Theory of the Internet” which I love as a name (and I'll tell you why) 

For the Forest is Dark and Full of Terrors

The Dark Forest is a term that comes as an Answer to the Fermi Paradox which questions given the vastness and incredible age of our universe how come we don’t see signs of intelligent civilizations in the cosmos that might have expanded beyond their home system towards the stars? 

One possible answer to this was proposed by author Liu Cixin in his book Series “The Three-Body Problem” (which a lot of friends have recommended me to read hopefully soon I will.) So, The Dark Forest theory proposes that the reason we haven't found signs of advanced civilizations despite searching with satellites and telescopes is that the universe is a dark forest. In this theory, most civilizations actively avoid detection by others. 

They fear revealing themselves will make them targets for more powerful civilizations or “predators”. This suggests the vast emptiness of space might be teeming with civilizations too afraid to reach out, knowing it could be their downfall. (welp humanity has done a very crappy job at not announcing itself, so if that were to be the case let’s just hope our electromagnetic radiation doesn't reach any other civilizations for a very long time or that they come in peace. 

OK, Now How will This affect The Internet?

Now, The former CEO of Kickstarter Yancey Strickler wrote a fascinating article about how the internet is slowly becoming akin to a Dark Forest for a couple of factors that are flourishing more and more online: 

• Predatory behavior  This includes advertisers, tracking bots, clickbait creators, trolls, and anyone who exploits users for personal gain.

• Information warfare: The constant barrage of manipulated content, fake news, and deepfakes creates a climate of suspicion and distrust.

These factors are pushing users away from large social media platforms and towards more localized, closed-off networks like Discord servers, Telegram groups, or WhatsApp groups. This trend reflects a retreat from the open internet, driven by a sense of threat among users. They fear the online violence that erupts when a tweet or opinion goes viral, attracting a deluge of unprovoked vitriol and hatred. 

So much so that the latest article of The Economist (If you want to skip the paywall use this) talks a lot about how after 20 years since Facebook's Launch the landscape has been changing significantly on one hand we have the controversy and success of Facebook’s rise and dominance in the online space, highlighted by Mark Zuckerberg's recent confrontations with American senators and Meta's thriving financial outcomes. This narrative unfolds against a backdrop of significant transformations within the social media sphere, where personal interactions are shifting away from status updates by the people in our close networks and now it is getting filled with algorithm-driven content from strangers, trolls, or optimized ads tracking us and getting to sell us some product or service. This is moving discussions from public posts to more secluded groups.

 These changes while offering some benefits like toned-down political messaging and potentially improved mental health in private groups, also introduce challenges including the spread of unregulated misinformation, diminished public discourse, and a reduced focus on news content in favor of entertainment. Just see the issues we’ve been having with echo chambers on social media and its effects on democracy and imagine a future of a dark forest Internet where this phenomenon only gets more and more intense. 

Overall, we're witnessing an erosion in our ability to trust and feel safe online. This stems from harassment, overstimulation, and the difficulty of expressing opinions and being heard. This trend directly contradicts the initial promise of the Internet as an open space for free speech, association, connection, learning, and trust-building.

This reflects on the broader implications of these dynamics. As Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff's concept of "Surveillance Capitalism" suggests we are currently living in economies built upon the commodification of attention and the constant surveillance of users and people’s online behavior to tailor to their ads that can be sold to companies and brands which showcases the inherent trade-offs of human communication that are at the core of these issues. Privacy, content extremism, and information quality are key concerns as the social media landscape continues to evolve.

The Rise of the Machines:

Talking about evolution we haven’t even mentioned probably the largest culprit in the acceleration of the Darkening of the internet, Generative AI. As we have seen in the past year the explosive rise of generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, Sora, and many others we can see how the automation of content creation is becoming more and more effortless. In the times of long ago – which in AI-time means more than two years ago– the automation and indiscriminate use of AI came mostly from social media platforms and tech giants that ran incredibly complex and powerful systems to sell us ads and track our every move so they could better recommend us content that would keep us engaged with their content. 

The Landscape has shifted radically in recent times,  and these automated systems are more and more capable while also being mostly open and democratically available for the world to abuse. Now we have generative AI that can create realistic images, text, voice clips, and soon enough videos, that are indistinguishable from reality unless you have a keen eye or we develop safer software for identifying AI-generated content. This has deep implications for the creation of fake news and spread through social media at an alarming rate.

We’ve already discussed how misinformation threatens the democratic process, through the generation of fake news articles images, and videos a carefully constructed misinformation campaign can be just enough to send undecided voters one way or to have the most staunch believers in their candidates to stay home on election day because they KNOW their candidate is going to win so why even bother.

We can already see examples of this like the case of a viral clip of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi where she was speaking at a conference and then a group of political opponents edited a video to make her seem like she was slurring her speech which made her seem either like she was drunk or had probably senility-related issues and that made her unfit for her position. As you can see in the video below the editing was very basic just slowing down her voice a bit and it already had an effect. Not even complex deepfakes, so what will happen in this election cycle of then ext or 5 years from now when these models become even better and better? How will we deal with the weaponization of Deepfakes? 

Automated Agents Rise

We truly are entering an era where trust in what we see online will be eroding faster and faster, so much so that recently published research by Europol says that by 2026 90% of online content will be done by Generative AI if we stop to think about it not only is this incredibly daunting and scary but also… It might be too optimistic to think we have this much time before most of the internet is AI-generated instead of human content. 

This near-future scenario would represent an internet shrouded in perpetual twilight, where trust is a crumbling relic. This chilling vision, aptly described by Maggie Appleton's lecture about the Dark Forest of the internet (guess what inspired me to write this article) takes shape with the rise of Language-Model Agents (LMAs).

These aren't benign bots. LMAs are autonomous AI predators, unleashed on the internet with a singular purpose: manipulation. They weave intricate webs of deception, effortlessly spawning a multitude of social media accounts. Their arsenal? Fabricated content: newsletters, articles, even entire books. Meticulously crafted to push a specific agenda. Think of it as a symphony of propaganda, conducted by a shadowy hand.

While individual pieces may appear amateurish, even AI-generated, their true power lies in orchestration. LMAs orchestrate a network of seemingly independent "news sources" and websites, all singing the same deceitful tune. Social media becomes their echo chamber, their automated accounts relentlessly amplifying the message. The sheer volume of content creates the effect that this might be a true trend with a relentless barrage of content and noise eliminating our capacity for discerning what is human or not. 

The result? A weaponized narrative, its influence peddled to the highest bidder. These tools are becoming more and more available shortly anyone will be able to try to twist the public perception on any topic imaginable with a strength we had never seen before.  The chilling truth is, that trust online is no longer threatened, it's being dismantled.

Seeking Solutions: A Balancing Act

We are in a difficult time and the capacity of finding potential solutions for this conundrum is well beyond the capacity of just one individual to try and solve all of this. We need industry-wide regulation, technological solutions, and societal changes all wrapped up and somewhat aligned if we plan to keep the internet an open place for humans and AI systems to collaborate and work for the betterment of ourselves instead of falling into the echo chambers of our safety networks.  

Possible technical solutions could involve, Blockchain-based verification systems for content to certify its authenticity as fully human, also the development of AI-detection tools to flag potential AI-generated content and even censor it from certain browsers like an AD-block but an AI-block from our internet. Of course, most technical solutions can be circumvented by malicious tools or by tech companies trying to protect their income from our attention and engagement in their platforms. 

Non-technical solutions are also crucial. One approach involves a "humanity confirmation" system: a physical verification process for online activity. However, this concept faces significant logistical hurdles, including implementation costs, the potential for discrimination, and a direct conflict with the decades-long fight for online privacy and security. While technically possible, such a solution seems ultimately infeasible.

It seems that the old New Yorker joke  “on the internet nobody knows you're a dog” has evolved from a fun gimmick to a dark omen of things to come:

Can we Illuminate the Forest or Should we Burrow and Nest?

Honestly, I don’t know, I think there are still many variables and unknowns out there that make the dark forest outcome the most likely so far, and I remember the quote by one of the founders of the Center for Humane Technology that said “If you know the rules of the race, you know the outcome” and seeing the current business models of the largest tech companies, the influence they have in molding and shaping online discourse we kinda see where things are heading. 

The rise of AI-powered social media presents a stark choice.  Will we become passive consumers in a curated echo chamber, or will we reclaim the internet as a platform for connection and diverse perspectives?  The current retreat to "cozy webs" and closed groups highlights a yearning for a more human online experience.

We, the users, voters, and consumers, hold the power to shape the future.  Demand better regulation, push for ethical product development, and advocate for a more open and human-centered internet. Remember, a healthy democracy thrives on informed citizens. Let's work together to ensure the internet remains a tool for connection, not control

As an example for my Thesis –and because I’m an insatiable nerd–, I was working with the BERT which is a large AI model acquired by Google and it has spin-off into its very own bases for other models. So in a certain way, BERT’s core is being used and mixed with other and future AI models not only because of its structure but also using it as training data for future models. That is also the case for Chat GPT and its recursive use of user data as training for the next generation. This is why it is free to use, you are providing Open AI with real-world data on how to better train the next iteration of ChatGPT.  

Also, it seems like Bard/Gemini– Google's Latest and greatest AI open for the public–  is based on the PaLM model architecture: This architecture is known to utilize pre-trained transformer models like T5. Which we might get an article in the future about the revolution of the Transformers and how they are the unsung heroes of the age of AI. 

So in a certain way, we can argue that some of these Large language models and their training data make up the “personality” and the experiences an AI model has had in its life. And so if that “personality” is used for training the next generations of AI models and so forth it is a certain way LLMs are being kept alive in the “memories” of their descendants,  this means that in a certain way, an AI developed today will have some sort of digital immortality where one training model feeds to the next and survives living inside the training data for the next. 

That means that we could “retrieve” the memories and experiences of one Model that is within the vast collection of training data. So in a way by prompting it, we could be bringing back to life specific AI models that were discontinued since it is still there lurking in the shadows of the endless forest of files that make the training data for most LLMs. 

Towards a Transformed Future:

Now, at the moment AI models are an incredibly complex phenomenon as it is which is great, but in the near future they are only gonna be getting more and more complex incorporating more and more data to depths that we might not even know about. In these levels of complexity, these systems might have emergent characteristics that might resemble or even be a full-fledged personality or character very similar to the way we developed personalities and characteristics from somewhat basic systems that with an increased complexity had the emergent characteristic of consciousness. According to the great Polymath Douglas Hofstadter, human consciousness arises from our organic brains mainly as a property of the looping capacity of self-perception accompanied by the layers upon layers of our neural structure. 

And beyond the earthshattering repercussions of when AI’s emerge with personality and agency of their own and go beyond being tools to potentially their very own autonomous individuals, or maybe it emerges as a different kind of entity different from what we as humans have encountered in ourselves, it remains to be seen but it will have a deep philosophical impact in our societies and in the way we perceive ourselves since we could be reaching a point where we will not be the only conscious intelligence on this planet soon enough. 

Also If an AI can develop consciousness and a personality from the vast depth of data and interactions they had previously to construct their selves, will it be possible for us to create replicas of ourselves?  In a similar way, we have “blank slates” of LLMs( or another architecture) where we feed it with our training data (AKA Memories) and they can develop an emergent property of being a synthetic version of ourselves or something very close to ourselves.

 Some people have proposed the concept of mind uploading where through some method we can scan every single neuron in a person's brain and replicate an identical copy of that neural structure and complexity in a digital or synthetic medium and have a digital “clone” of ourselves, of our memories, and of our essence, in a digital realm for it to exist and interact? This is aligned with what Author and Entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt says about Digital Immortality in her book Virtual Human 

So, maybe soon enough we will be able also to download that “backup” of ourselves towards mechanical humanoid bodies, in other locations and exist and live many lives as multiple entities the possibilities are endless and we might be far away from those possibilities though not as far away as one might think.

As we mentioned before if an AI can live almost indefinitely inside the training data of other future models maybe we could do the same uploading copies or “backups” of human consciousness into LLMs so that we could retrieve past versions of ourselves or bring back replicas of people we’ve lost but that thanks to a large enough dataset and a comprehensive AI could offer something close to the person we’ve lost. But then again where will we draw the line between a replica, of a fully biological consciousness, or what happens with things in between? When a human uploads their memories and consciousness and then downloads that unto a synthetic body and that version experiences a different life and is faced with their “original” self they are effectively two different versions of the same person that split off at a point in their lives. 

Beyond Human Limitations: Exploring the Potential of Digital Minds

Even though our understanding of the complexity of the human mind isn’t to its fullest imagine a world not so far away from today,  where your consciousness, your essence, could exist beyond the limitations of the physical body. This is the promise of mind clones and digital avatars. These potential manifestations of digital consciousness wouldn't be bound by biological constraints. They could travel freely through the vastness of the internet, exploring the universe in ways unimaginable to us now thanks to how we can transmit information across large distances almost at the speed of light it could be a great way for us to traverse and explore the cosmos once we leave the confines of our home on earth. Imagine also people who by accidents or other unfortunate happenings are trapped inside their bodies or if their biological bodies are akin to a prison than the vessel that makes us who we are this opens up the freedom for those people to transcend and move to better things without feeling trapped in their original biological bodies. 

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Now, I am an optimist by heart but we should be very much aware of the intricacies and difficulties this technology represents and poses for the wellbeing of humanity and society. This could mean a huge impact if we can massively “copy + paste” a consciousness on an industrial scale to have an entire army of brilliant dictators destabilizing the world, or also someone grabbing and copying other people’s consciousness into synthetic bodies for some malevolent intent and create unnecessary suffering or torture on replicated consciousness because if a consciousness becomes just like data it can be copied and pastes effortlessly which could reduce the perceived value of a human (or synthetic) consciousness. 

This is why we must be having these conversations at this point when it is still bordering on science fiction or some unobtainable technology instead of debating it when technological progress is happening at an alarming rate and we have the technology before we have developed the regulatory framework or we have even been primed as a society to deal with these consequences. 

Preparing for a New Era: Societal Transformation and the Future We Choose.

The role digital immortality plays is one of deep philosophical and technological importance because it is the convergence of different things, on one hand, we have our mortality on the line, then the definition of what makes us US, and to finish this ungodly trinity of complexity we have the potentiality of AI developing a mind of its own. 

And this brings a whole slew of debates that we are going to need to be having the further we walk on this path towards greater freedom and transcending the limitations that we currently live with towards a Posthuman era. We might need to develop a study of cyberpsychology and have some sort of way of determining the levels of consciousness an AI or a “replicated” consciousness has to have rights and protections beyond just being a program. As to maintain some sense of security for people engaging with these technologies.  This might lead to some arbitrary lines being drawn but hopefully, things will improve the more we discuss all of this.

Then we will be having a lot of conversations –sooner rather than later– about the psychological and ethical implications of creating AI that looks and sounds like real people, raising questions about the nature of identity and consciousness. Is it ethical to develop technology like that will it be ethical to put a highly complex AI in a humanoid robotic body? Or what about putting Human consciousness in robotic bodies? These are complex questions we don’t have answers or a lot of discussion yet. 

Also, we have to think about how will this impact our institutions, and how will it impact healthcare; will mind uploading be a part of all healthcare plans? How will the maintenance of this will work will human consciousness live in virtual reality or would you want to immediately be transferred to a robotic body? What about finance and economics will you take a loan for 100 years or more and keep paying it what if people just start hoarding more and more as they can now live almost infinitely? How will tax systems and other institutions work when those possibilities draw closer and closer to reality?

 I think we are in for a treat with regard to deep philosophical discussions; these might lead to uncomfortable answers and redefinitions about what it means to be human and about our condition as a species on this planet. Ultimately, this path will lead to more freedom, a greater capacity for us to explore ourselves and our universe, and a world open to more people and possibilities for living happily beyond the limitations of our current existence.

Walking to the Future or Building The Future?

In this exploration of the future of AI and digital immortality, we stand on the precipice of a profound transformation as a species. The journey through the philosophical and technical landscapes of artificial intelligence, from the foundational work with models like BERT and other LLMs to the speculative horizons of digital consciousness, reveals a future where the boundaries between human and machine, memory and data, become increasingly blurred. This narrative does not just chart a course toward technological advancement but probes the very essence of what it means to live, to remember, and to persist beyond the confines of our biological existence.

The potential for AI to embody, extend, or even replicate human consciousness invites us to reconsider our notions of identity, ethics, and the continuity of the self. The concept of digital immortality, while fraught with challenges, offers a vision of freedom and exploration that transcends our physical limitations, enabling a form of existence that is as limitless, just as our capacity for innovation is. As we navigate this complex terrain, it is essential to approach these developments with a blend of caution, curiosity, and an open mind, acknowledging the profound implications they hold for our individual and collective futures.

As we look towards this horizon, it is worth remembering that "The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create. This sentiment resonates deeply with the journey of AI and digital immortality, reminding us that the shape of tomorrow is forged by our aspirations, our choices, and our willingness to explore the unknown. In this spirit, let us embrace the possibilities that lie ahead, crafting a future that reflects our highest hopes for technology and humanity alike.

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I was raised in a very meat-heavy culture as I would imagine most of you reading too –at least according to the statistics of those who read this newsletter–  it was always considered the main source of protein in our diets and it also had an aspirational quality to it, going out to a steakhouse was (and still is in many places) considered as a celebratory occasion, and the inclusion of lower quality meats into the daily meal plan is mandatory (who hasn’t heard the phrase “where is the meat in this” referring to a meat-less meal as a second-class food due to the lack of meat) 

But as we now know the meat industry represents an incredibly inefficient use of resources for calories and proteins for human consumption. We waste, land that could be used to feed humans to feed animals with a low growth yield so that then we can slaughter them and eat them. We lose so many calories in the process of growing an animal for consumption. Especially in today’s world where we are aware of the impact that human action has had on the planet, we might start to rethink if we need to keep on not eating meat, but doing it in such inefficient ways occupying large swaths of our planet for growing crops that will be wasted in the mouths of ineffective meat growing vessels such as cows pigs chickens and lambs.  

Give me The LAB Meat

Faced with this conundrum and the mounting evidence and information about the negative effects of human activity on the planet we as a species are on a path towards improving ourselves and the methodologies where we supply ourselves with, energy, water, materials, and of course food! This is one of the reasons why more and more people are switching to vegetarian or vegan diets or are looking for alternatives or a meat-reduced diet. 

But let us be honest most people are still eating meat worldwide and as more and more people escape from the poverty line and increase their income we will be making more and more people want to eat meat and incorporate animal protein into their diet. So I ask ourselves who are we to limit and control other people's decisions and consumption habits if it brings them joy and happiness? Also one of the most difficult pathways is to modify habits already on an individual basis and try to do that quickly on a global scale... Ha! Good luck with that. 

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So, one of the better solutions that will reduce or even eliminate most of the usage of land for feeding cattle while at the same time providing delicious meat for humans without the environmental impact and the slaughter of so many billions of animals is cultivated meat or lab-grown meat or whatever other term you can figure out because It seems like there isn’t yet a standardized name for this practice and still there needs to be some marketing magics going on so regular humans can adjust and adapt to this magnificent piece of technology. 

In a nutshell, cultivated meat is meat grown in Petri dishes, or 3D printed or other methods but grabbing stem cells from the cow (or other animals) and growing the muscle tissue that we eventually eat, the advantage of this is the consistency in quality because you can grab a sample from an A5 Wagyu and replicate it over and over again keeping the standards of marbling and just scale up production. 

The benefits of this sort of manufacturing meat instead of taking it from killing animals are manyfold:

• Eliminating animals from the supply chain: After you get the samples you can release the cows to the fields and let them live the rest of their lives freely and eliminate suffering as well as depending on them as a means to provide animal protein for us. 

• Reduced usage of arable land: We will no longer need the excessive amounts of croplands to feed them which can be used for rewilding, or planting back again native forests or whatever was there before farms. 

• Saving up water and food for humans: Again we no longer need so many tons of food going to animals which can now go to humans we save up on water and overall food production becomes a whole lot more sustainable. 

• Reduce emissions for humanity: The supply chain for meat protein is incredibly carbon and greenhouse gasses intensive the number of gasses produced by this represents around 6.2% of all greenhouse gases humanity produces, we could reduce that greatly by using cultivated meats. 

• Reducing the risk of pandemics and other pathogens: Cattle growing is an incredibly dirty industry with many outbreaks of diseases since the medieval period because of how we stacked animals on top of each other for us to eat them afterward. 

Costly Cultivated Cuisine

Cultivated meat, offers a revolutionary approach to protein production, promising ethical, environmental, and health benefits as we have seen previously. However, this technology currently faces a significant hurdle to overcome: its high cost. Sadly even though the technology exists and we have been making great strides towards the reduction of costs it is still somewhat prohibitive and making the slaughter of animals (and its subsequent supply chain) still cheaper than this.

One major contributor is the cell culture medium. This is a complex cocktail of nutrients, growth factors, and hormones that sustains the animal cells in vitro while the muscle tissue grows to become a wonderful steak. While scientists are actively developing cheaper alternatives, current formulas remain expensive, with estimates ranging from $100 to $1,000 per liter. Scaling this up requires large volumes of this pricey solution, significantly driving up production costs.

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Another key factor is the cost of a bioreactor, these specialized vessels provide a controlled environment for cell growth and differentiation. Trust me these things are expensive as hell when I had a biotech company some years ago we were looking to purchase a small one and god damn they’re costly and very delicate to work with. Currently, bioreactors designed for meat production are sophisticated and expensive, often requiring sterile conditions and constant monitoring. A 2020 study estimated the cost of producing a single burger patty using bioreactors at €500. So of course the cost needs to scale down significantly if we ever expect this industry to reach the mass market and we can have delicious cultivated meat on our plates. 

Scaling production further amplifies the cost issue. While traditional meat production benefits from economies of scale, lab-grown meat is still in its infancy. Setting up large-scale facilities, optimizing production processes, and ensuring regulatory compliance all contribute to the initial investment burden. For example, JUST Egg, a company producing plant-based alternatives, highlights the capital-intensive nature of scaling production as a major challenge for cultivated meat companies. 

Luckily, researchers and companies are actively addressing these challenges through investment into R&D as well as new technologies and methodologies that push every day the costs of these meats further down. Advancements in cell culture media, bioreactor technologies, and production efficiencies are expected to drive down costs significantly. Additionally, research into animal-free media and sustainable production practices is ongoing. A great signaling that is happening comes from companies like Memphis Meats have committed to achieving cost parity with conventional meat by 2025. While this may seem ambitious, continuous innovation and investment could make lab-grown meat a more accessible option in the near future. Also, we need to consider the impact in other areas of science, research, and consumer trends that might help and further accelerate this industry. 

Promising Solutions on the Horizon

Luckily we are already seeing some advances that might help alleviate and reduce the cost of a lot of cultivated meats which will translate soon enough into delicious meals in more and more people’s homes.

One of these advances was a recent paper published on a type of animal cell grown for the cultivated meat industry that doesn’t require some key ingredients of the medium (which we discussed previously) this new type of muscular stem cell could reduce the costs of mediums for growing cultivated meats up to 90% according to the paper authors. This is an incredible price reduction opening up a possible bright future for the cultivated meat industry in the coming years if this type of cell production gets streamlined and popularized amongst different companies and research centers. Once again genetic modification comes to save the day. 

Another interesting development for the cultivated meat industry is the development of a new combination of a hybrid type of meat and rice combination where rice is grown with a pinkish hue that is infused with animal cells within it. Or you could say these are animal cells with rice all over them. Even though it sounds a bit gruesome it doesn’t involve any gene modification but a novel methodology for developing this hybrid combo. Which honestly sounds delicious to me. 

 A Future Filled with Flavor?

The potential impact of cultivated meats is huge, from environmental to animal welfare, to human diets and affordability of high-quality animal protein for many more people around the globe. Hopefully, we will be seeing the rise and growth of this industry in the coming years. 

From the sustainability perspective as previously stated when we need less land for cattle feed we can reuse most of that land for feeding humans directly or very importantly re-wilding these lands and return them to the biosphere as new natural reserves that can help alleviate the effects of the climate crisis and becoming carbon sinks once the vegetation and biodiversity is restored. 

Also from the standpoint of ethics and animal welfare, we will have billions of animals right now that will probably be consumed or used as subjects to extract the cells that will become the meals that we will eat but it will reduce substantially the amount of animals who are brought to this world raised and eventually killed just for our consumption and pleasure eliminating a lot of unnecessary animal suffering while also reducing the chances of new pathogens to develop in the unsanitary conditions involved with the supply chain of animal products. 

Now, the food industry will have an impact and we have already seen how the old guard of companies react in the food business when newcomers come to disrupt their profitable markets, they cry and whine and complain instead of adapting and adjusting. As an example in Chile, the AI-based food tech company called NotCo (previously known as Not Company) developed a plant-based milk they called “NotMilk” and they got into a legal battle that lasted for years with the Chilean Milk cartel because they claimed the name “NotMilk” would confuse consumers and dissuade them from drinking regular milk. Luckily this case was won by Notco and it shows a bit how little innovation some of these companies are doing and how much they need to either adapt or die. 

Specifically, those farmers whose entire livelihood depends right now on raising and killing animals. And, honestly, I feel almost no sympathy for farmers overall. They are but an incredibly loud minority of people who could easily choose a different job and adapt to the changing landscape. But I don’t know I might be sour since the protests across Europe from farmers who are crying to the government asking for cheaper fossil fuels and more subsidies for them to increase their impact on the environment by their actions instead of developing innovative solutions to the problems they rely upon subsidies and government help to stay competitive in the marketplace. So, yeah my stand is more on the side of innovation and progress rather than crying and asking for handouts from the state.

So a couple of days ago Elon Musk announced that his company Neuralink has managed to test its implant on the first human subject. And that is great news and regardless of our personal opinion of Musk (he kind of sucks but honestly SpaceX and Neuralink have a soft spot in my heart) This sounds great. I can't wait to see more companies developing innovative devices and bringing back functionality to people who suffer from different mental ailments conditions or have had accidents rendering them incapable of a normal healthy life.

If you want to know more about other companies developing these solutions I recommend you to check this article (Conrad Gray's article about implant companies). Now, I think these companies developing brain implants are fascinating and a beautiful thing. On one hand, we are closing the gap that separates humanity and hour technology on such a fundamental level that the symbiosis between us and technology seems to be a future that is within our grasp, a future where we can heal damaged brains, where people who are trapped in their bodies can experience freedom once again. 

But, we have to acknowledge the complexity and difficulty that messing with a human brain can be it is our most precious and delicate organ, and while extremely resilient and flexible sometimes (yeah this is about that dude that got an iron rod through his brain) it can also be extremely sensitive and any small injury can forever change who you are irreversibly. So yeah I think it is a fascinating and wonderful technology that is being developed but oh hell naw am I not gonna be the ones first in line to get one of those. I believe of course at the moment and with the current development of these technologies they could be life-changing implants and developments for people with disabilities or brain injuries, but there is still a long way to go before we see people queueing in front of their doctor and request a neural implant unto their healthy and functional brain. 

Major Players and the Evolving Landscape of Neural Implants

But even though it might be a leap or a couple of years for ME to line up and get me some neural implants the field is rapidly evolving and luckily more and more companies are developing interesting technologies, each vying to bridge the gap between the human brain and technology. Here's a glimpse into the key players and the diverse applications this technology holds:

• Neuralink: Led by the ever-present – and ever-insufferable–  Elon Musk, Neuralink aims for seamless brain-computer integration. Their highly invasive "threads" aim to control external devices and potentially enhance cognitive abilities. They might be stealing all the headlines but they are not the only ones in the market.

• Synchron: Focused on minimally invasive implants, Synchron's Stentrode device sits within a blood vessel near the brain, recording and stimulating neural activity. Their initial trials focus on restoring communication and mobility for paralyzed individuals. This company already has had experience with human patients for over 3 years ago

• Kernel: This company (founded by anti-aging daddy Bryan Johnson) explores various applications, including memory augmentation and brain-computer interfaces for communication and entertainment. Their focus lies on non-invasive and ethically driven development. Also, their systems seem like the goofiest helmets ever but might as well be the safest on this list. Also, they did a test to analyze the effects of ketamine on the brain and it is wacky! I love it

I got a brain implant what can I do now?

Well, the reach of neural implants extends far beyond the realm of science fiction (as most of us associate this technology still with these imaginary scenarios and not with the reality of people who could have life-changing procedures and benefit incredibly today with these technologies.. Some key applications include:

• Restoring Lost Function: Implants offer hope for individuals with paralysis, blindness, or other sensory impairments. Deep brain stimulation already helps manage Parkinson's, while retinal implants restore vision. 

• Augmenting Cognitive Abilities:  This one is still a bit far-reaching but Imagine learning skills instantly or accessing information directly from the internet. While ethical concerns abound, some companies explore enhancing memory, focus, and communication(and I am so down for this let’s go!).

• Treating Neurological Disorders: Implants are being investigated for treating depression, epilepsy, and even Alzheimer's disease by modulating brain activity in targeted regions to fight against the effects of these debilitating conditions.

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Of course, in a field of technological development as nascent as this, it is inevitable to face a whole bunch of challenges and we will be seeing a lot of them in the coming future. But promising results are emerging. Early trials, like Synchron's Stentrode for paralysis, show potential. However, significant hurdles remain such as:

• Technological Challenges: Miniaturization, biocompatibility, and long-term safety are ongoing concerns. Ensuring seamless integration with the brain and minimizing tissue damage requires further refinement.

• Regulatory Landscape:  This I believe is the biggest challenge (believe me I’ve had to deal with the FDA and it is NOT an easy task) Rigorous clinical trials and ethical considerations are crucial. Regulatory bodies are still developing frameworks for implant approval, creating a dynamic landscape where hopefully it will be rigorous but a clear pipeline for future developments is cleared out.

• Ethical Concerns: Issues like privacy, data security, and potential manipulation of brain functions raise serious ethical questions. which we will talk a bit further down if you’re a bit patient with me. 

While the path forward is riddled with challenges, the potential of neural implants to improve lives and push the boundaries of human-technology interaction is undeniable. By remaining mindful of the ethical considerations and navigating the regulatory landscape cautiously, this field can usher in a new era of personalized medicine and human augmentation. Where we can heal and regain lost capabilities for millions worldwide and humanity could access a whole new level of intellectual and creative capabilities the likes of which we have never seen before. 

What Happens When Your Brain Implant Company Goes Bankrupt?

In the labyrinthine corridors of healthcare and technology, the specter of bankruptcy for medical devices casts a dark shadow of potential peril over the patients and the people developing these devices. The main concern is regarding logistical and financial intricacies. How to safeguard patient safety and uninterrupted access to essential treatments for those who have these devices after a company goes bankrupt? What to do when you have a brain implant making you smarter, wiser, and able to overcome a brain injury you sustained after an accident when Elon Musk tweeted too many horrible things affecting the bottom line of Neuralink? Will you have to remove it and hand it back rendering you back to a handicapped condition? 

This is why regulatory entities like the FDA in the United States and their counterparts across the European Union, such as Eucomed wield their power with a delicate balance of oversight and intervention to keep those whose livelihoods depend on medical devices to keep the lights on in this crucial supply chain. 

This was a happy surprise when I started to research this topic because firstly I had the idea that if anything happened people with these medical devices were somewhat screwed and had no way of recovering or sustaining themselves or the supplies needed for their devices. Luckily in developed nations, there are alternatives for those patients where the primary concerns are as follows: 

• Facilitating supply chain continuity: They may work with remaining manufacturers or distributors to ensure continued device availability.

• Issuing guidance for healthcare providers: This guidance informs providers on managing existing implants, alternative options, and potential risks.

• Offering humanitarian exemptions: They can grant exemptions for continued use of unsupported devices if no alternatives exist.

• Device Maintenance and Support: Bankruptcies can disrupt maintenance and support services for implanted devices. This can be critical for devices requiring firmware updates, bug fixes, or data security patches. 

• Require existing service providers to continue support: This ensures patients receive necessary service for a defined period.

• Facilitate knowledge transfer: They may encourage knowledge transfer to other qualified providers to ensure future support.

• Financial Reimbursement: Patients might face challenges with warranty claims or coverage for replacement devices if the original company is no longer operational. Regulatory bodies and healthcare institutions may collaborate to:

• Establish patient assistance programs: This can help alleviate financial burdens for affected patients.

• Offer alternative reimbursement pathways: They may explore alternative coverage options for necessary treatment with alternative devices.

For more info, this podcast has a lot of insights 

Concerns are Natural

Now, of course, there are a lot of concerns with this technology. And again as mentioned it is something that is going to be IN YOUR brain so the fear and trepidation of the public is understandable (even though a lot of it is fueled by sci-fi hysteria honestly) On one hand we have all the issues of data privacy and security if we already are not 100% sure of these two issues which are paramount, with regards to our data online and in our phones and other devices how will we trust private companies with the data from our brain – and the one that goes into our brains for that matter as well– So the regulation and the oversight around this will need to be airtight so people can willingly trust into these companies to meddle into their brains eventually. 

Also another issue with brain implants is the question of accessibility and equity, because when this technology can enhance people and provide them for example with an AI assistant communicating directly with their brains 24/7 the increase in productivity and intellectual capacity of these augmented humans will put them above and beyond the baseline human capabilities and most likely when these technologies are available and good enough they of course will be more democratically available( just look how mobile phones went from bricks fro wallstreet to the democratization of smartphones) but still the middle stages might be tricky to work around and try to have most humans benefitting from this and not going off into an arms race to see who gets he implant first and can achieve this “enhancement” and reap the rewards before others. 

Finally, we have issues of consent and autonomy how can we ensure informed consent for implanting devices that alter the brain function for example with patients who are unable to properly communicate consent? What if a family decides to implant a relative who's in a coma or has had some other condition that affects their capability to communicate and they don’t want to but the removal of said device now is a life-threatening surgery? It is a complex field that opens up in front of us.

Hopefully, more and more conversations around this topic bring forth other issues and solutions, we got the BRAIN initiative by the US which hopefully not only accelerates this technological development but also helps a safe and robust regulatory pathway so this technology can be as safe as possible for end consumers and future patients which might be you or me. 

Where is my Brain Chip Bruh?

I think the future of neural implants looks bright – I mean I am an optimist at heart– but that doesn’t mean that the technology doesn’t offer some dark pathways for us to fall if we are not careful enough. Overall I’d say medical devices and the ecosystem around it is something a lot more regulated and safe than what we have seen in the Tech scene with companies launching products without enough experience or approval and then eroding the foundations of democratic institutions all over the world (here’s looking at you social media) but then again the repercussions of a symbiosis between humanity and technology are philosophically earth shattering and honestly species-redefinyng if you ask me.

The moment we take a step in this direction we are effectively starting to create a new species on this planet the first technological-human symbiote will emerge from this and this poses a lot of questions about how we continue to define and integrate more and more technology into ourselves once the “line” of our brains has been crossed. Also hopefully we don’t end up like this: 

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With the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Regime, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Alongside all the other conflicts happening in Africa, Asia, and the Americas we are starting to see a clear rise in the number of wars happening all over the place. 

In this Changing landscape, technological development can change the tides of war while at the same time preventing or accelerating the number of people who will die a futile death in the bloodshed. With concerns about the usage of AI in autonomous weaponry being a thing the UN has been trying to make the world aware of its risks and repercussions, it seems the warning is falling on deaf ears just because of the rise and proliferation of companies using AI in weapon systems ( or thinking about it) 

Curiously enough some of these companies are defense startups working in military technology development and some of the most high-profile companies have very high-profile founders or backers to bring forth innovations in the killingI mean defense industry. Some of these could be like Anduril Industries founded by Palmer Luckey the Inventor of the Oculus Rift the innovative VR headset, or White Stork the “secret” project supported by Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s also had a previous encounter with backing Military Technology startups though with a company that ended up burning billions and seems to be on a slow spiral towards its downfall. 

The Rise of Warfare Startups 

The military industry is by no means a sleeping one with billions flowing constantly into funding defense contracts it has been something of a silent giant ever since the war on Terror mellowed down ( or just became background noise for the world) But with the Invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the visibility this conflict has had it brought a breath of fresh air– and capital– towards military companies and defense contractors. Especially in NATO and European countries after realizing that Russia is still a military and geopolitical threat to their stability (also let us not forget the potential chaos that an Invasion of Taiwan by China would mean for all of us)

 So of course this acceleration of the threat of Authoritarian regimes has sent a whole bunch of countries and investors rushing to fund innovative technologies that might give free countries the upper hand against the threat of dark forces looming over the horizon. This also has brought unconventional players throwing their hats into the ring coming from Silicon Valley it seems like more and more entrepreneurs, investors and other figures are entering into MilTech. 

White Storks Falling From The Sky

Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, has been discreetly developing a military drone startup, White Stork, in the U.S. and Ukraine, concealed within a series of LLCs. Forbes, revealing White Stork for the first time, highlights its focus on mass-producible AI-driven drones capable of operating in environments with GPS jamming. This initiative, reflecting Schmidt's investment in military technology, aims to support Ukraine against Russian forces, leveraging his role as a defense tech advisor and financier in the region.

White Stork, named after Ukraine's national bird, was established in August of 2023 it seems, with its development centered on drones designed for visual targeting without the need for communications, a critical advantage in electronic warfare scenarios. Despite operating under stealth, White Stork's efforts have attracted attention within the drone community, with Schmidt actively engaging with factories, testing ranges, and startups in Ukraine. This can also be seen by his interest in the Ukraine-based military tech accelerator Dare to Defend Democracy (god that’s a cool name) 

Schmidt's advocacy for drone technology as a countermeasure to Russian forces has been public, stressing the importance of "kamikaze drones" in combat scenarios. However, his direct involvement with White Stork and its mission to equip Ukraine with competitive drone technology has been less known. His efforts align with broader U.S. national security interests, reflecting his continuous engagement with military tech innovation, including his leadership roles within the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Defense Innovation Board.

Deep Dive into Anduril Industries

Palmer Luckey, once a celebrated young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, built a billion-dollar fortune with Oculus VR the virtual reality company that was bought by Meta and eventually, he was ousted from the company for supporting Donald Trump. Afterward, he decided to radically shift in sectors when he co-founded Anduril Industries in 2017, venturing into the realm of defense technology.

Anduril focuses on advanced autonomous systems, developing AI-powered solutions like sentry towers, drones, and counter-drone technology. Their core software, Lattice, aims to connect autonomous systems for "mission autonomy," enabling them to react and make decisions without human intervention. This is exactly what the UN is warning about regarding the risks of autonomous weapon systems while some in the defense sector claim this will be the ultimate reduction of unnecessary deaths and offering more humane solutions by automating decision-making from humans to machines. 

But, unlike traditional defense contractors waiting for Pentagon requests, Anduril has been walking its path by actively developing technologies they believe the military will need in the future. This bold approach for war suppliers seems to be paying off or at least attracting investors, with investments exceeding $1.8 billion, aiming to speed up acquisition and potentially disrupting the defense –wink– industry

Luckey's political views and Anduril's aggressive tactics have drawn criticism. However, the company gained validation through recent contracts – notably, securing U.S. Special Operations Command's drone defense for potentially $1 billion and contributing to the Army's JADC2 program. This is a program developed by the Department of Defense focused on connecting sensors from all branches of the armed forces into a unified network powered by artificial intelligence. This could bring unprecedented information to generals and other military decision-makers in real time about what is happening under the fog of war. (I played so many RTS games when I was young that I had to use this term at least once in this article) 

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Anduril stands out with its ambitious vision for AI-driven warfare. They face intense competition and ethical challenges, but their success could significantly shape the future of military technology.

The Future of Warfare and AI 

Now, with companies like these, venture funds, the DoD and so many other players actively pursuing innovations in the industry of war we are left to ponder whether is this a good innovation or not. And I think it is important to discuss while this side of the industry is still somewhat in its infancy. 

Automating decision-making on killing another human being on the battlefield reduces the risk for soldiers from whoever developed the technology first, from that perspective it can potentially save some lives. The problem is that it dehumanizes the decision to end someone else’s life so much that it isn’t even a decision made by a person but a probability calculation done by a machine. 

We need to balance both sides into this perspective of how will these technologies affect how we live in the XXI century. The rise of suicide drones that can be easily and cheaply made and then can find a target poses a very innovative low-cost solution on the battlefield as has been seen in Ukraine. But, what happens when this technology continues to advance (which it will) and we get smaller and faster and more nimble drones till we can have a small drone the size of a small bug with just enough explosive charge to self-detonate on a specific human skull and “terminate the target” we could release swarms of small cheap drones with a small explosive charge and have them track down and eliminate someone almost anywhere in the world. 

How can we feel safe in a world where something like that exists and is efficient enough to infiltrate someone's house or to find a target if they are walking outside and CCTV cameras happen to get a hold of them which thanks to facial recognition software can be easily tracked and then inform a central command system that calculates the probability of this person committing some crime and then delivering a drone that preemptively kills that target. That is assuming this is a bad person I don’t know let's assume it was a horrible criminal. But what if the company that handles this decision-making gets hacked and the automated system decides EVERYONE is a threat and launches swarms of suicide drones to kill targets? It will be an increasingly complex and hard scenario to deal with.

This chilling scenario becomes even more complex when we consider the "alignment problem": have AI systems been programmed with our values? Are we handing them weapons capable of killing thousands before ensuring they share our morality?

This is not a matter to be taken lightly. Before proliferating further, we must embark on a global conversation about the ethical implications and potential dangers of AI-powered weaponry. As with any powerful technology, the path forward demands careful consideration, lest we tread a precipice with unforeseen consequences.

What does this all mean?

I am not an expert in warfare and Geopolitics, nor am I unbiased (as you can probably tell by this point) I am not in favor of wars but sadly I believe them to be an inevitability of our times and the systems that we live in (no, it’s not capitalism the one to blame for everything here). I think that automated systems are an interesting alternative and innovation, no doubt. The problem is that it centralizes power and decision-making in vulnerable systems. Systems that are too complex for us to fully understand and that haven’t been able to be developed in a way that aligns with human values. 

It could of course optimize the logistics of war to reduce waste, it can deliver more efficient bombs to reduce civilian casualties and collateral damage. But is that uptake worth putting even more humans at risk from nonhuman intelligence if they misalign from our orders or the interpretations of them? 

I think it is a very complex topic but it also can not  NOT be developed it is again this prisoner dilemma that we are kinda stuck with AI “If we don’t develop it first THEY might develop one as well” and when on the other you got malicious authoritarian regimes with no respect for personal freedoms, the rule of law and democracy it kinda puts you on your toes to be on the lookout and tirelessly develop solutions and technology to countermeasure what your opponent might have. But then again this can be an argument to further accelerate us towards a mutually assured destruction. Again War is complicated complex violent and overall weird as a concept for me. But let me know what you think. Will wars be automated sooner rather than later or will we continue to have humans pulling the triggers?

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.One of the more ambitious projects that have been undergoing in recent years is the Belt and  Road Initiative, possibly the largest investment in infrastructure we have seen this century with highways rail lines ports, and almost anything you can imagine to connect the Eurasian continent to China, both as the center of this logistic network but also as the main financier. This, of course, is a long-term project aimed at China to have a place under the sun once again and maybe make for the century of humiliation. 

But as we know nothing that China does is for the well-being of anyone else but China and when the regime wants to expand its influence and the strength it has on other governments to make them subservient this has been one of its greatest ploys. And a big part of this Belt and Road initiative passes also through the digital world. Where the Chinese regime wants to grow its dominance and influence on economic development but also to spread its ideals and methodologies for social control and population surveillance.

Digital Silk Road

Now don't get me wrong as previously stated I think a rising China economically is a great thing for everyone it means more and more people are joining the global economy and that is a net positive we have more workers enjoying the benefits of the global marketplace and it is noticeable how people on both sides end up better thanks to trade and commerce.

Under the Belt and Road initiative, we have seen the Rise of the Digital Silk Road (DSR) this initiative is to support other countries and provide them with valuable technological infrastructure while at the same time giving incentives and benefits to exporting companies to facilitate goods and services for other countries. 

Also part of the investment done worldwide in infrastructure is sometimes filling a void some. nations don't have the capital or the technological capacity for developing and installing. So the fact that China has been developing and exporting a whole bunch of technology and infrastructure is a great thing the problem comes back to politics and surveillance.

Chinese infrastructure is developed by Chinese companies which on the surface might seem like private companies with autonomy and safety precautions to prevent intervention from outside forces but sadly time and time again it has been a facade where Chinese companies in strategic areas are much more aligned with the CCP and subservient to its commands than we might think which of course compromises a lot of the safety and privacy concerns that are basic when we talk about essential infrastructure. Because you might doubt installing some 5g towers that come from a Chinese company or you know they might have a backdoor accessible by a foreign regime. 

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This mistrust of the independence of Chinese firms from the CCP has led many countries to ban Chinese companies from participating in public infrastructure contracts due to these well-found doubts about the transparency and safety concerns over handling this important infrastructure to Chinese firms. 

Digital Authoritarianism 

A great quote from the late 90s and early 2000s came from President Clinton talking about internet censorship in China claiming it was like trying to nail jello to a wall, decades afterward the Chinese have been able to nail that jello very very well. China is the largest surveillance authoritarian state in the world(never forget this fact) with all of its population living under constant watch of course, due to its population, the job of keeping your population in check is not possible to be done only by party officials.

This is why China has mastered the “art” of state surveillance and Chinese companies are the great unsung “heroes” of this modern-day dystopia. The development of face-tracking software which has been implemented in most CCTV cameras spread out across the country provides the government a clear picture of where you are and at what time. 

Then we got WeChat the “everything app” where most Chinese netizens chat, shop, post, and use it as a map for so many other things thanks to this centralization it is incredibly easy to track what people say, what they are consuming, and where they in real-time. After years of perfecting, it becomes a constant eye floating over each Chinese citizen and reports 24/7 what people are doing and lets party officials know whenever someone is acting out of line.

And if that wasn't enough we got the system lock-in of the Sesame Credit system, China's most recent innovation in social engineering and population control. Using this as an excuse to provide a credit score system like most countries have to provide trust and safety so that banks could know if people had good or bad credit and based on that knowing they were trustworthy humans. This on the surface doesn't seem like that much of a bad thing, but when you start digging deeper notice some characteristics of this “social credit score” and how it is tied not only to how fast you paid your last loan but mostly to how loyal are you to the CCP’s ideology and commands for its people if you are not committing any crimes of thought for example and behaving outside of what the regime wants its citizens to be doing. 

The problem for people outside of China of systems like these is that more and more authoritarianism regimes are looking to China as a role model in surveillance and repression with “simple” systems that don't require thousands of spies and collaborators checking their neighbors and reporting like the GDR during the cold war. But creating subtle systems that can incentivize the population to be on the lookout constantly both self-policing but also watching the behavior of its neighbors to avoid disturbing the orders of the regime.

So with the decline in democratic rule around the world will the Chinese surveillance state become the new norm in the coming century? I hope this is not the case thinking of what would that mean for the billions who are living in countries that are sliding away from democracy and into authoritarian regimes.

AI: Weaponizing Information

We've discussed how AI is such an important technology for the coming century we know that in so many areas it can increase scientific discovery rates to unprecedented rates and increase productivity all over the place. But, another great/scary way AI will be used in the coming years is for manipulation and charisma. More and more we will have to be on the lookout for dark players using top-notch technology to craft subtle and powerful arguments for very unsavory ideas. 

This is one of the reasons why AI has scaled to become a geopolitical tool or even a weapon shortly. With it, you could develop camouflaged propaganda campaigns to unravel the logic of a government or erode the trust of a population in the institutions they live in. This is a very dangerous thought because if weaponized like this we could be seeing a complete fragmentation of institutions globally regardless of our position on the political spectrum and that would be a very dangerous scenario to be in.

In this scenario, we have to safeguard the development and some limitations or better tools to prevent AI from being misused like that. The current model of China exporting its surveillance and repression technologies and systems abroad is NOT setting a good precedent for the near future where they also have developed robust -enough AI systems that could develop powerful arguments about whether people should slowly give in to authoritarian regimes and even support them. 

It's becoming alarmingly clear that authoritarian shadows are creeping into our free societies, and they're doing it through our screens. TikTok, a giant in the social media world, is at the forefront, wielding unmatched influence from the palm of our hands. The evidence is mounting: sophisticated algorithms and filters are being used not just to entertain, but to skew our perceptions. They're pushing specific hashtags and stories, subtly shaping the narrative to favor the goals of the Chinese Communist Party and chip away at the foundations of democratic and free values. It's a silent battle for our minds, playing out in the open, yet hidden in plain sight.

This is a powerful precedent that more people should be made aware and the risk this represents should be treated more seriously. We know the dangers and harm that social media already has just by existing from companies that try to be somewhat neutral and let its users be free to express themselves on these platforms without the influence of any government (though they do have cultural biases of course). Still, now we have social media giants with clear explicit guidelines aligned with an authoritarian regime and this should be taken with more caution than other cases because of the influence this can have in societies and on generations to come who are consuming more and more content from these biased and curated apps that could slowly hit surely veer the trust of citizens away from democratic and open societies towards more and more acceptance of dictatorships and China-like authoritarian regimes.

Conclusion

As we approach the horizon of a new era, marked by rapid advancements in technology and shifting global dynamics, the need for international cooperation and ethical guidelines has never been more critical. The implications of AI and digital infrastructure, as leveraged by authoritarian regimes such as China, pose a stark reminder of the dual-use nature of technology. It is capable of uplifting humanity or serving as a tool for surveillance and control. The case of China's ascendancy and its strategic initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road, underscores a broader challenge facing the global community: balancing the benefits of economic integration and technological progress with the imperative to safeguard human rights and democratic principles. Sadly I think this has failed so far in the decline of democracies worldwide and the rise (or even acceptance) of authoritarian regimes in the global discussion. We need to be fighting to defend and uplift humanity towards democracies and open societies harder still. 

To navigate this complex landscape, a multifaceted approach is essential. It involves bolstering international norms and agreements that prioritize transparency, privacy, and freedom; incentivizing technological innovation that empowers individuals rather than suppressing them which is why the development of AI as a tool for empowering individuals with a logical safety precaution and avoid its exploitation by dark forces worldwide is an imperative of our times. We need also to enhance public awareness about the nuanced ways in which technology is manipulating us for geopolitical ends. As the world grapples with the increasing integration of AI into the fabric of daily life and the pervasive reach of digital surveillance, the collective action of governments, civil society, and the tech community is crucial. Together, we must ensure that the march of progress leads to a future where technology serves as a beacon of empowerment and inclusivity, rather than an instrument of authoritarian control and division. In doing so, we uphold the promise of a global order that values freedom, justice, and human dignity above all.

More and more industries have indeed been on the path towards digitalization where more and more of the scientific, analytical, and even empirical work is being done by software rather than anywhere else.

Of course, AI is penetrating most if not all data, and programming jobs faster and faster which leaves us with a new question, if now more and more work is done by programming and More and more AIs are developing increasingly better skills for coding what happens when AI can code at a sufficiently good level or even better than most humans?

Magic Stones With Runes on Them 

In the world of computing and coding, it's almost like practicing a form of modern magic. Like ancient incantations, you learn a secret language full of mysterious codes and phrases. This knowledge allows you to transform ordinary materials like silicon and plastic into magical objects, inscribed with complex circuitry like old runes. By applying these secret words and intricate designs, you can make these seemingly mundane rocks perform extraordinary tasks, from calculating complex equations that help us explore distant planets, to bringing to life a stream of your favorite TikTok videos on your phone screen.

Since the late 90s, the magic of computing has increasingly woven its spell over every aspect of human life, transforming it into the most influential and dominant force in technology and industry. Computing has permeated every human endeavor, bestowing upon almost every individual a kind of magical capability through their devices. These modern-day talismans – smartphones, laptops, and tablets – are imbued with the power to connect, create, and calculate at a scale once unimaginable.

This world-changing technology has revolutionized the way we communicate, turning distant whispers into global conversations. It has redefined our access to knowledge, making the sum of human understanding merely a few taps away. In the realms of medicine, space exploration, and engineering, this magic has enabled leaps in innovation and problem-solving, harnessing vast computational power to tackle challenges from mapping the human genome to exploring the farthest reaches of space.

In business and industry, this sorcery of computing has brought about an era of unprecedented efficiency and connectivity, weaving together global markets and supply chains with the intricacy of a spell. The arts and entertainment have been transformed as well, with digital wizardry creating new realms of creativity and storytelling.

Now, the magic is advanced enough that we can create GLLMs(Generative Large Language Models), and just like the golems of tales they can be incredible assistants and tools that can help us or they represent a potential risk, so we need to be responsible on how we raise and develop our golems. 

Golems Everywhere 

With the rise of GLLMs(I read this as Golems, hope you too) we can start to feel the profound impact of generative AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot or Chat GPT on software development. These tools are transforming the developer workflow by offering code suggestions and entire functions to developers. They represent a significant shift from traditional coding methods, enabling developers to work more creatively and productively since they have at their disposal a somewhat competent coder with deep knowledge and speed to produce code. Generative AI differs from other AI tools and automation in that it allows for more creative and less restricted coding, enhancing the developer's role to focus on strategic decision-making and abstract thinking while the AI does the “grunt work”.

The benefits of generative AI in coding are substantial. GitHub Copilot, for example, has been shown to increase coding speed by up to 55%, with developers feeling 88% more productive. GLLMs are not just about automating tedious tasks, they empower developers to be more creative and tackle larger, more complex problems. This technology is still in its early stages, but its potential for transforming software development is vast and exciting. Also, they offer no-coding solutions and pathways for people with little or no knowledge of coding to describe a problem thoroughly enough and get something of a cohesive answer. 

And yeah, at the moment someone with completely zero experience in coding could solve small problems and develop small programs that could assist them in their job, which is amazing, but the current state of the art for GLLMs is not enough to completely develop or build large or complex enough programs and tools But it is only a matter of time. Now we could be having low-level positions of coders being replaced by some competent programmers alongside an AI. But what happens when these tools improve exponentially?

The Diminishing Need for Basic Coding

The advent of Generative Large Language Models (GLLMs) will usher in a new era in the field of software development, particularly with the rise of 'non-coding coding' which is not just a cute oxymoron but a possible reality that we will be seeing soon. This means people without formal programming expertise could develop software using intuitive, natural language interfaces alongside AIs, that translate plain language commands into complex code, effectively democratizing software development. 

This shift lowers the entry barrier to coding, allowing enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and professionals from non-technical backgrounds to create or contribute to software projects. (Also, it can help not-so-savvy economists/data scientists like yours truly be more competent) It could also foster a more inclusive environment where the ability to conceptualize solutions is more critical than the technical know-how of writing code. As a result, we are hopefully on the way to witnessing a power surge in innovation and diversity in software development, as a broader range of perspectives and ideas find their way to the world because people with expertise in other areas can become software sorcerers as well.

The impact of GLLMs and non-coding coding on education and job markets will be profound and multi-faceted no doubt. In education, there's a potential shift from a traditional, syntax-heavy programming curriculum toward a more conceptual and problem-solving-focused approach. As the need to memorize specific programming languages decreases, education can focus more on teaching the fundamental principles of computer science, logic, and algorithmic thinking. And just like the job market more and more fields of study will be infused with software development and  software-thinking which could accelerate and increase the efficiency and the capabilities of different areas. And this is not even counting the impact that AI could have as assistants, personal teachers, and guides for students in their educational path.

This shift could make computer science more accessible and appealing to a wider range of students, fostering a diverse generation of tech-savvy individuals. In the job market, the demand for traditional coding skills may evolve, placing higher value on creative problem-solving, design thinking, and the ability to work collaboratively with AI tools. Also, it could cast a stronger doubt for a lot of people if going into a formal university is even worth it because maybe self-teaching alongside an AI teacher and some minimum competence in coding could secure a somewhat effective career for some people. This seems like a dream to some and a nightmare to others, personally if there are more pathways opening up for humans to develop and achieve their own personal dreams and goals, good for them. 

Will Developers Become This Century’s Wagoneers?

I mean If you think about low-end and most “corporate” usages of coding and software for businesses and even some basic development I think most Data analytic jobs will be quickly automated or efficiently done by fewer and fewer people. Just like what was previously described about the growing capabilities of GLLMs to help people code and write software will have a huge impact on the job markets and probably send a lot of people looking for any other career path ( though who knows if we will even have jobs by then?) But still on the high end of this scale for the extremely productive and competent programmers, the job market is incredibly competitive. 

The Big tech companies are spilling BILLIONS into AI development and competing to develop and release larger and better AI tools it has become this century’s space race towards AGI. And so far we cannot develop newer AIs being built by their previous model (that would be a singularity and we’re some years away from it) So the need for extremely capable and advanced human capital is at an all-time high, which has had effects in other areas of the tech world. 

So even though we might see the trend of GLLMs developing better capabilities for software development based on natural language prompts. The full erasure and rendering obsolete of developers and coders is still a distant thought, also most likely we will automate a whole bunch of other jobs before those. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind when approaching a potential shift in your career in these uncertain times we live in. Maybe the job you’re in right now might be on a downward trend, but software jobs in the same industry might be still needed in the future and a shift or complement to what you are currently doing with a ✨Sprinkle✨ of Data science or programming on the top might put you on the path towards survival in the age of AI… for some time at least… 

So should I learn how to code?

I mean I ain't an expert in job hunting or career building but yeah sure why not, if that is something that you see as attractive and fun, but also on a bigger picture vision, I would highly recommend having a baseline portfolio of software skills will become more and more demanded and even be the baseline for most positions in the future. Not necessarily having in-depth expertise or knowledge but at least skills on how to problem solve and work alongside GLLMs that could accelerate your workflow. 

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I am way more excited to see the impact these golems will have in entrepreneurship and innovation of new solutions to problems we have with AI-enhanced solutions rolling out faster and faster, Scientists and technical-savvy people from different industries will have their productivity and capacity for building companies and solutions be enhanced incredibly in the coming years. So we might be seeing a huge wave of half-baked AI-generated startups claiming to solve the world's problems, but in between the muck of mediocrity, I know this will also increase the chances of finding golden opportunities and ideas that will thrive and flourish.

Like all change and shift this will democratize the access and capacity to build great things but not everyone will be capable of wielding these tools properly so as an optimist at heart I can’t wait for the future of coding and the companies that will jump into the scene in the coming years.

Honestly, I think. the Hype is justified, because thanks to the proliferation of AI in a short couple of years, there is a very real possibility of imbuing every single human on planet Earth with a superintelligence in their pocket and that is a revolutionary idea, which is at the same time both magnificent and incredibly unnerving.

We know the existential risk that AI may pose and we need to develop tools policies and failsafe measures to future-proof this technology against the risk of unalignment and also the debate of how democratic should this technology be with the current debate of open source or in-house AI models being developed and launched into the market. Indeed it is a very complex scenario we are in. But is it even possible for all of this to slow down or even stop? 

Now, some experts have been calling for a 6-month moratorium on this technology for a while now. But in all reality, I think we are kinda stuck in the inertia of the industry and the geopolitics behind it so we might as well buckle up and both work and pray that things turn out the best way possible. 

The Global Landscape of AI Development 

This report done by  McKinsey 2023 AI report highlights generative AI's significant growth and its increasing integration into various business operations. With investments coming from private companies, governments, the military, and Investors themselves everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of AI and it is expected.  This growth is fueled by substantial and diversified investment sources and by the technology's potential to revolutionize many different sectors. 

As we have previously mentioned sectors such as education could benefit from AI leveraging the vast quantities of knowledge with the capacity to customize their offerings to each student and their behavior being a personal tutor with world-quality education and knowledge that can be custom-built to all the parameters that make each student unique.  We’ve also talked about the acceleration that will be happening in the rate of scientific discoveries, and we are already seeing this happening in front of our eyes. We already have a Google AI discovering over 2.2 Million new materials in crystalline structures –which need to be synthesized and then tested for properties.– Also we got an AI from a Japanese company that developed an AI for bakeries and then it started discovering cancers that doctors were not capable of identifying. If these are not examples of the deep impact potential that AI will be having in SO many industries and sectors you are missing out on a very important lesson for this century and our species. 

 However, the report also points out significant challenges such as data inaccuracy– remember the hallucinations– and cybersecurity risks. On one hand, we have the issue of data inaccuracy and synthetic content where more and more generative AIs will be able to create seamless audiovisual content that might confuse the population or actors that might use a very effective AI at convincing people to change their vote or the spread of misinformation throughout the web. On the other hand, we have concerns about privacy and cybersecurity where AIs could be used to analyze the code of a specific website or system and to figure out vulnerabilities in the system in a way that’s better than any human programmer is at the moment. 

These issues are critical, and they are part of a broader context where the AI industry is grappling with balancing rapid innovation against the need for reliability and safety in AI systems. This is creating some pushback by regulators wanting to have more information about the industry and also having a very justified concern of leaving the industry running wild without any sort of cohesive regulatory framework to align and guide the industry towards the maximization of its benefits and the reduction of its risks. 

The Rising Threat From the East 

As if all the issues we just described aren’t enough of a concern we also have a geopolitical scenario bubbling with regards to AI. Because given its relevance AI has something of a first-past-the-post vibe that goes a little something like “ the first company/country to develop AGI wins the game” because suddenly that AI becomes the dominant intelligence in the planet and then is a bit of a bet of whats going to happen. So of course we got on one side the US and other Western countries developing AI companies – with an overwhelming majority being in Silicon Valley– and then we got other players like UAE (with their late open source LLM Falcon) We got India with a massive number of companies and human capital focusing on AI development and the big boy (and most likely the realest threat) China with it’s industrial prowess.

While Silicon Valley maintains a strong dominant position in the global AI landscape, characterized by its innovative spirit and market-driven approach to problem-solving, the rise of AI capabilities in China presents a notable challenge to this dominance. Silicon Valley's AI companies, with their ethos of addressing customer needs and leveraging market forces, have been instrumental in shaping AI as a tool for positive change and societal advancement. These companies, driven by principles of innovation and customer satisfaction, strive to develop AI solutions that enhance people's lives and address real-world problems.

In contrast, China's growing capabilities in AI present a different scenario. While on the surface, Chinese AI companies may share similar goals of technological advancement and problem-solving, there is an underlying concern related to the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The subservience of all Chinese companies, including those in the AI sector, to the CCP's directives and policies, raises concerns about the potential uses and intentions behind their AI developments. As well as the history of tech companies working side by side with the surveillance efforts of the Chinese regime in areas such as monitoring and tracking people’s location, purchasing habits, and text messages to see if the citizens are in line with the doctrine of the CCP. This can be seen as well in the social credit system implemented a few years back as a way for more social control by China with a complex system of ranking behavior and creating incentives to fall in line with the orders of the Party.

This situation poses a significant contrast to the relatively more transparent and market-driven environment of Silicon Valley. The potential for AI technology developed under an authoritarian regime like China's to expand globally brings with it concerns about the implications for privacy, data security, and the ethical use of AI.

This dichotomy between the Silicon Valley model and China's approach to AI underscores a broader conversation about the governance, ethical considerations, and intended uses of AI technologies on the world stage. As AI continues to evolve and permeate various aspects of global society, understanding and addressing these contrasting paradigms becomes increasingly crucial. 

The Dominance of Taiwan

This geopolitical soup starts to bubble up pretty quickly when we get into Taiwan’s role in all of this because we got a small island nation, that was formed after the defeat of Chinese nationalists and had to run away from the Red Army of Mao and the beginnings of the communist dictatorship in China – that rules to this day, let us not forget–  and since then Mainland communist China has claimed Taiwan almost as a “rebellious region” even though it has been its own damn country for almost a century. So we got that going on but now we also have that Taiwan is a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing, largely due to companies like TSMC, which dominate advanced chip production.

The country's focus on high-tech industries, significant investment in research and development, and a highly skilled workforce contribute to its leading position. Additionally, geopolitical factors and global supply chain dynamics play a role in Taiwan's dominance in the semiconductor market and making it THE place for an advanced chip that goes into the supercomputers that RUN most AI models, but also the chips that go in every computer that tun THE WORLD at this point making Taiwan a bottleneck of the global supply chain of one essential pillar f today’s Modern world. 

So, we already had a tense situation between China and Taiwan now we add the AI race on top of that, and the vested interests in protecting Taiwan from a Chinese takeover, or even a Chinese disruption are even more pressing. Now, there are also some other places on this essential supply chain and governments have been taking notice for example the US government has put down legislation to deter and stop companies from selling specific and essential chips to China and the Dutch government has tried to stop ASML to sell specific machines in Chip manufacturing to China. And these measures might – hopefully– be having an effect in slowing down China’s rise and acceleration towards the development of a strong enough AI but personally, it is just a matter of time these measures will not stop China’s development of such technologies but it will slow them down enough so that other players with better technology and ethics might take the lead in this industry. 

The Dilemma of AI Development 

Silicon Valley and Western nations are in a complex situation regarding AI development, akin to a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. On one hand, they need to rapidly advance AI technology to maintain their global leadership and prevent other entities, like China, from overtaking them. This urgency stems from the fear that less ethical or authoritarian regimes could develop AI technologies with potentially harmful applications.

 On the other hand, there's a pressing need to establish robust regulatory frameworks and solve the AI alignment problem to ensure the ethical and safe deployment of AI. Slowing down to address these issues might mean losing the technological race, but rushing ahead without proper safeguards could lead to the deployment of AI systems with unpredictable or harmful consequences.

Now, if we lived in a perfect world we could maybe draw together a global coalition made up of different countries and experts from all over the planet to address this issue and work together to share information and make real commitments for the development of a truly safe Artificial intelligence. This is why I think some people are still with glassy eyes looking at this problem like it could all be solved if we all developed open-source AIs and then we all just share this freely throughout the planet. 

Sadly I believe this is a naive approach done by academics and people who have been too deep into the open-source world and seem to have never met a truly evil person in their lives. As it stands we can see that groups of people under authoritarian regimes are not to be trusted, even though as individuals they might have a moral code and ethics that might prevent them from committing some horrible atrocity, but as part of something larger, they should not be trusted by the structure of power in the institutions that they are a part of. Sadly this puts us on the path forward to work harder and better both in the development of these technologies and in solving the ethical and regulatory dilemmas we are facing right now. 

What do you think is this geopolitical dance murking the waters of technological progress? Or will this be a decisive moment for the rise or fall of this century’s superpower?

One concept that can help us view complex scenarios in a better way is brought to us by one of the most important –and sexiest– fields of human knowledge, economics, which describes how in most policy decisions you might have unexpected allies working together to get the same goals but with radically different motivations, this sometimes can lead to funny examples of policies that benefit society, and in some other cases this can lead to certain groups with a moral concern to be used as a facade for dark forces underneath, and take advantage of the public desire for something better, while offering them a solution that on paper might be good but in reality, it will be detrimental for all of us. 

Origins.

The Term Bootleggers and Baptists comes from economist Bruce Yandle, he coined the term because, during the US prohibition era, two main forces were pushing towards the removal of legal consumption of alcohol in the US. On one hand, we had the Southern Baptists and other religious groups, their main concern was that the consumption of alcohol would corrupt the country and it was leading also to higher levels of crime. (there is indeed a vast literature about the relationship between alcohol consumption and violent crime) The other group that was also pushing for prohibition were the bootleggers and other mobsters who wanted to eliminate the competition of those who were running legal alcohol companies also because due to prohibition, bootlegged alcohol would have an increased margin, increasing their profits and revenue. 

Now, this theory illustrates that sometimes for certain policies to survive there is an uncommon alliance of groups with opposing moral positions for a common goal. Which in theory might be a positive thing and that is ok in some cases where you get the Baptists with the moral high ground advocating and changing the public perception of a specific topic, but you also require the bootleggers those that have the capital and the influence to grease up the political machinery to work and shift towards their desired common goal. But sometimes those with vested interests in certain policy changes might abuse the current turmoil to put themselves as the force of change people want and instead of a better solution, you get something even worse. 

The Kyoto Protocol 

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 41 countries plus the European Union to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. It was seen as a significant environmental treaty, and let’s be honest it is a pretty noble goal considering the environmental damage that has been caused by human actions in the past couple of centuries. 

In a very interesting article from 2001, Bruce Yandle unravels the complexity that such a multilateral agreement has how it could be better for some countries to not sign these sorts of treaties for their best interest, and why others might be pushing forward for it. In a nutshell, Yandle discusses how developed countries with high emissions are the ones with the strongest pressure to reduce their emissions this might be detrimental to their economic growth and affect the lives of their citizens and their well-being. On the other hand, developing nations with low emissions might have the incentive to be a part of this protocol because they are almost guilt-free to continue pursuing and growing their economies with dirty energy sources having an economic benefit and even an advantage over developed economies. 

Also, some energy companies have a vested interest in these protocols and agreements because of their increased profitability in their low-carbon products such as “natural” gas, and other businesses beyond basic fossil fuels. This can also lead to a phenomenon known as “regulatory capture” when a small and powerful minority can coerce or modify a piece of legislation or regulation to benefit their interests and the B&B theory clearly shows this happening when sometimes noble morally positive movements are aligned and captured by forces with nefarious interests that will not benefit society as a whole but just them, and can swindle, the public, and policymakers towards bad policy. 

Germany’s Nuclear Phase-out

The decision by Germany to shift from nuclear power to alternative renewable energy sources sent a significant message to the world's energy markets. This policy, heavily influenced by moral considerations rather than factual evidence, emerged in response to public fear following Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. This fear, fueled by a lack of public understanding, along with the influence of environmental organizations and the rising Green Party, created an ideal scenario for implementing this policy. 

Analyzing this situation through the lens of the Baptists and Bootleggers theory, it's straightforward to pinpoint and comprehend who the 'Baptists' are in this context. We have environmental group activists and the Green Party fueled by their desire for more political power, aligned with this short-term panic by the population to position themselves as the “saviors” or as the voice of those concerned by the environment, this also goes alongside a rise of renewable energy alternatives which are great don’t get me wrong but the vilification of nuclear was a political and economic ploy nonetheless.

But who were the bootleggers in this case? Well even though this political decision would take many years to come into effect the country still needs energy at an affordable cost, energy regardless of the source is the blood of civilization and a must for any economy to thrive. So, the options were to buy and import cheap fossil fuels from Russia through the diverse pipelines that entered the continent. This can also be explained not only by an attempt to have more harmonious relationships between Europe and Russia–when we still thought that was possible–  but also because a former German counselor sits on the board of Russia’s biggest oil and gas company and was being bankrolled by them. We also have the coal industry which is a powerful political pressure in German politics, so much so that the Green party had to vote to approve the destruction of an entire village due to the expansion of a coal mine, which is so bad in so many aspects, but also shows the power and influence of the coal industry which would also benefit from a nuclear phase-out. 

This marks the Nuclear phase-out in a much clearer picture, on the Bootleggers' side we have the joint forces of two incredibly contaminant fossil fuels, one backed by the Russian regime and another with deep political ties in the German establishment. And in the Baptists, we have environmental groups, and a power-hungry political party even though they might not see eye to eye their common enemy of dismantling Nuclear power has brought them together whether they like it or not. 

So, has this been a good or a bad decision? It yet remains to be seen in the big picture, the benefits of using nuclear as a consistent way for carbon-free energy are clear, but the problem is also the signaling that Germany has given to other countries and the frictions inside the EU this has brought. But to see if this is a good or bad policy just look at the carbon intensity of the electricity production of Germany after its phase out and that of France which has always been a very pro-nuclear country, the results speak for themselves but sadly not strong enough for the politicians and the people who follow them. 

B&B Meet AI Regulation

As we hurdle into the era of AI one of the biggest concerns is concerning regulation. How can we develop and deploy safely newer and better AI models to the public is one of the key issues that we NEED to be debating in the next couple of years and I think the B&B theory gives us a good framework to analyze and evaluate the regulation pipeline that will be coming up and to try and identify the Baptists and the Bootleggers in this industry and regulatory landscape can help us make informed decisions for the benefit of humanity. 

But, because of the relevance and influence AI will represent for the future of humanity, it is unavoidable that different actors are trying to capture this technology for themselves and regulation is a pathway to do that. Especially if there is a large public outcry without much information and an easily developed pipeline to position an individual, a group, or a specific piece of policy as the “savior” of the people during their time of need. 

So as we currently see the current regulatory landscape for AI we have different actors and we have to understand their positions and what is their explicit goals and moral concerns but also look at the potential underbelly of the situation and who might be pushing this forward for their benefit. 

The EU has been proactive in proposing comprehensive AI regulation, particularly with the AI Act. This Act focuses on imposing mandatory requirements for high-risk AI uses, including restrictions on facial recognition technologies. The EU's approach is often considered the de facto global standard due to its influence–we did an article about this–, similar to the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

In contrast to the EU, the US has historically adopted a more light-touch approach to AI regulation, emphasizing voluntary industry guidance and sector-specific rules. However, this stance shifted with President Biden's executive order, which mandates developers to share safety test results with the government and notify them if their AI models pose national security, economic, or health risks. This represents a significant move towards more robust AI regulation in the US​​​.

China’s stance has been more reactionary than anything else with pieces of legislation and piecemeal policies. This also comes with the fact that the Chinese regime uses a lot of AI and similar surveillance technologies to persecute political dissidents, subjugate the lives of its citizens by the Party’s doctrine inside the country, and exert their influence worldwide. 

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This is why it needs to be watched with caution the regulation that is imposed on different AI companies in the US and EU because if the regulation can become a hindrance to the development of more advanced AI in these countries its opponents in China, Russia UAE, and other nations who are not aligned with values of democratic rule, economic and individual freedoms it is a clear indicator of who the bootleggers pushing forward for stricter rules on AI might be. 

Also, tech companies and tech giants have a vested interest in regulation because depending on how the regulation is constructed it can put more barriers to entry which can be easily hurdled by billion or even trillion-dollar companies but almost impossible for new entrants. As well as position themselves as the only ones who can solve this problem which then again sets the balance of power away from people governments and institutions and lays them bare to the tech companies to self-regulate or to solve the problem by themselves. 

You have to B&B very careful (bad pun I know)

I think the Baptists & Bootleggers theory is a very interesting framework to view most policy debates because it not only underscores the importance of scrutinizing the motivations behind policy advocacy but also highlights the potential risks of regulatory capture and unintended consequences. Of course, it is not a perfect tool but it gives us a more in-depth analysis of politics, regulation, and the forces behind it. 

I think that looking back at various historical and contemporary scenarios illustrates the nuanced and often hidden interplay of interests in policy formulation. And even though sometimes these unorthodox alignments can lead to positive public policies, they can also lead to policies that, while well-intentioned, may not effectively address the underlying issues or may even exacerbate them but make us feel like “we did the right thing” which is a dangerous goal instead of solving the problems around us regardless of our feelings.

As we stand on the cusp of significant technological advancements, the Baptists and Bootleggers theory offers a critical lens through which to view impending AI regulations. It serves as a reminder to remain vigilant, to question the true motivations behind policy advocacies, and to strive for solutions that are not only morally commendable but also pragmatically beneficial for the broader society. This balanced perspective is crucial for navigating the complexities of our world, ensuring that progress is not only technologically sound but also ethically grounded and socially responsible, to the best of what we can do hopefully. 

In her book "Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions" Suchman examines the interaction and dynamics between humans and machines. It explores the evolving conceptualizations of this relationship, emphasizing the performative nature of both humans and machines. The book critically assesses the rhetoric and practices in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, advocating for a nuanced understanding that avoids divides. Suchman proposes an expanded analytical approach that considers specific socio-material arrangements and their emergent properties, aiming to trace differences without resorting to binary categorizations. 

Which in a nutshell provides us with a very interesting outlook on how not to separate and distance ourselves so much from our technology and how the interactions we have with it mold our perception of technology and the next generation in something of a recursive cycle of feedback loops building upon each other. So it is not so much the “everything looks like a nail with a hammer” but more of an “as we use the hammer it changes us and with that, we change the hammer” which I think is a beautiful way to see and have a border perception on how we influence technology and it influences us. As we can see in today's world is a deep relationship the one where we have with our technology to the point that we are reaching into a symbiotic relationship of needs and wants intertwined between us.  

Unpacking Suchman's Perspective

Suchman’s work and her overall philosophy of human-machine interactions came like a revelation during her peak influence in the early 2000s when most technologies were still being seen as functional pieces of machinery that made something or solved a problem and humans just interacted with them in isolation. Not necessarily isolation in the sense that they operate machinery in uncomfortable or non-ergonomic positions – no, that’s something for others to study– What I mean is that ever since the Industrial Revolution or probably even longer before that the dominant vision of the relationship of humanity and our technology was very much separate. With humanity on one side and technology on the other side, our interactions with technology were very much limited to “person grabs a tool and does a thing with it” Not much thought was put into the design of most things beyond “try to solve X problem” and then efficiency kicked in and we added “with the least amount of resources possible” 

With the rise of computing and digital technologies, both of these advancements brought a whole new perspective of human-machine interactions because it was no longer only outsourcing human muscle to do tasks and modify the physical world but the rise of computing overall changed the technological paradigm of humanity because it had a physical component by the interfaces we interacted with our technology but also a virtual component this meta physical level if you will. A level that was affected by human cognition and enhanced it accelerating the capacity for people to do more things develop new ideas and accelerate the computing power that was before being done by human brains could now be done by digital ones. This shift brought deep changes to how we interact with our physical world. 

One way this Human-Machine interaction evolves could be described with the introduction of digital computers, which shifted the dynamic from humans adapting to machines to machines being designed to respond to human actions. This change led to more intuitive, user-centric designs, allowing for more natural and effective interactions between humans and technology.  

The Essence of Symbiotic Relationships 

And the key part that we can see is the permeation of technology into every aspect of our lives. Because technology is an inherent part of our nature. I would even go on a limb and say it’s humanity’s most important feature, is what took us as a species to the places that we are, it is the poietic nature of human intellect combined with our imagination to bring forth ideas and imaginations unto reality. To modify matter and the physical world to make these imaginations real. And to turn what was once the far-distant dreams of a crazy innovator of the past into what today we might consider the most mundane thing ever. 

That is how we have been doing it since we decided to sharpen a piece of rock and tie it to a stick, to the latest developments in virtual reality. Technology has only made life better and better for us it has broadened our horizons it has given us the capacity to build upon the knowledge of our species and construct a more and more complex world rising above and beyond the restrictions and limitations of our muscles and our brains outsourcing and specializing making us capable of all the things we can be doing right now as a species instead of subsistence farming and miserable pre-industrial life-expectancies. 

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In this context, Lucy Suchman's "Human-Machine Reconfigurations" shows us that a symbiotic relationship in human-machine interactions is not just about technology aiding humans, but about an integrated system where both elements evolve together. This shift from traditional, separate entities to interdependent, collaborative systems marks a significant transformation. Early examples of such symbiosis can be seen in advanced AI applications, smart home systems, and assistive robotics, which not only perform specific tasks but also adapt and respond to human behavior and preferences, illustrating the beginning stages of this profound integration.

Co-Evolution

This profound integration could almost be seen as a Co-evolution between humans and the technology we have built and it can be seen as the history of humanity itself because just Like Kevin Kelly’s work in his Book “What Technology Wants” shows us is that we’ve outsourced so much of human capabilities in our technologies and the benefits this has given to us. An example of this in very primitive ways is the invention of cooking our meals from something as basic as roasting vegetables and meat on an open flame it helped us to preserve food but also it was an outsourcing of our stomachs on breaking down food and extracting nutrients so cooked meals saved us up some very precious calories needed so with that excessive energy we could do more and better things. 

The trend doesn’t seem like it will change if we’ve been using technology from time immemorial to today it is very unlikely that humanity’s convergence with technology will not happen soon enough. (unless some global catastrophic risk destroys humanity as a species or something crazy like that) Thanks to advances in biotechnology we are closer and closer to unraveling the wondrous complexities of biology, thanks to neurotechnology we can see deeper and understand the inner workings of our incredibly complex brains which will soon enough allow us to interact and enhance them to overcome ailments and illnesses that affect our most precious organ and the core of our identity and soul if you will.  

All of it will be supported, and accelerated, by AI, our outsourced and enhanced cyber-brains, which are evolving alongside us (at an unprecedented pace, mind you), but still, because of how Large Language Models (LLMs) work, and how most popular ones use their interactions with their users as training data for further improvement, we can see that depending on what we “feed” unto these AIs, and how we interact with them, it guides the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, which in its way will also guide the evolution of humanity, thanks to its use in our scientific endeavors, and as it penetrates deeper and deeper unto our collective minds through the widespread use of platforms such as ChatGPT.

So much so is this co-evolution present and visible that last year there were reports of users interacting with chatGPT and it being “lazy” and not giving proper answers, and some of the hypotheses could have been that since it was close to Christmas time, the influence of culture and the data that was fed to the AI made it work less during the winter break. So we as a collective species have created an Artificial intelligence that replicates our behavior in such a way that it “decides” to be lazy during Christmas time. 

So, Is all Technology Bad? 

For me, the argument that technology is a modern horror and that we’ve “strayed too far from nature” seems rather simplistic when considering the coevolution we’ve experienced since the dawn of our species. This perspective highlights the intrinsic connection and the necessity of harmonious coexistence with the physical world we've constructed. Around the globe, geography and topography have been significantly altered by human activities over generations. This is evident from countries reclaiming land from the ocean in coastal regions– here’s looking at you Netherlands–  to the development of extensive irrigation systems that have redirected entire rivers across the planet. 

And, that is not even considering the positive benefits that technology has had on human health, longevity, quality of life, access to clean water, improved communication capabilities, the democratization of education, the fostering of global connections, advancing scientific knowledge, driving environmental sustainability efforts, and enhancing creative expression across various mediums. It has provided tools for social empowerment and enabled rapid response to global crises, fundamentally reshaping our societal structures and individual experiences in countless beneficial ways.

But, we also need to be aware of the impact that these modifications have had in our world from the environmental impact of global industrialization to the diversion of rivers, the drying out of entire seas thanks to horrible irrigation policies, and the endless list of affronts that we have done against natural environments for most of our history, because for most of our history, we were not aware of the depth of the impact that we were having in the environment. This is why I partially am not on the boat of blaming everything on the past but I look forward to the future where we have the technology and the capacity to solve the problems our forebearers created and move forward toward a better future. 

The Future of Human-Machine Symbiosis

What a bright future awaits us remains to be seen but undoubtedly it will be a future with a closer and closer relationship with technology. Hopefully, it could be the beginning of a new era for humanity where we leave behind our biological restrictions and jump ahead toward our posthuman future. Following both Suchman and Kelly’s work it seems to be that evolution of humanity alongside technology will become more and more intertwined in a symbiotic autopietic relationship of evolution and dependency. 

Now, there is a risk of course of AI becoming superintelligent and “leaving us behind” in a certain way where a runaway intelligence could be harmful to humanity or have goals that are not aligned with us. This might be an emergent behavior that is not under the control of the creators of said AI, or it could be influenced –ironically– by human culture and our expectations that any other smarter entity would like to destroy us or eliminate us. So since we “fed” this data and this bias to our AI systems they in turn become that – just like the lazy AI during the holiday season– So we have to be careful with the development and implementation of these technologies in the future because they are an integral part of us as a species but if mismanaged could be a risky endeavor. 

Optimists claim that this is not a real possibility and is all fear-mongering to give more power to AI companies and experts so they can gatekeep and claim more power and relevance to themselves. Since an AI can’t interact directly with the physical world and other limitations it is limited to being nothing more than a “brain in a box ”

Conclusion 

Drawing inspiration from Suchman's and Kelly's works, we can appreciate the beautiful and ancient symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology. This relationship has evolved from basic utility to a complex interplay, symbolizing a dynamic dance of innovation and progress. It's an uplifting thought that within this partnership lies the potential to overcome current challenges and propel humanity towards a brighter, more advanced future on Earth and beyond.

This vision is not a daunting prospect but a hopeful trajectory toward a harmonious posthuman era, where our integration with technology enriches us all.  What do you think is this too much of a scary proposition of humanity merging with our technology in a cyborg-like nightmare? Or, will our posthuman dreams become a beautiful future for us and the rest of humanity? Please share with me your thoughts.

Year 1

This was the first year I ever incurred a writing endeavor such as this and, to be honest, it has been a surprise, 45 Articles, 89.445 words, if put all of them together this first year of articles could make a 357-page book. And I’m like What?! How did this happen and how was I able to (almost) deliver one 1988-averaged-word article every week non-stop since late January that’s crazy.

I have to say, a lot of the motivation to keep on going was you guys the community that reads and makes this possible every week over 500 subscribers across different platforms reading each article and most of you contact me personally and tell me how you guys are enjoying the articles and reading about them and that is great. (though for algorithm purposes can you guys tell me all this beautiful feedback in the comment sections and share it with your friends, please?)

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And yeah it has been much fun researching and learning all about different economic theories, and random facts about the market of Organ Market in Iran — which as a side note the Newly elected president of Argentina has proposed that they implement a similar thing over there so hopefully we will see another country trying to save people’s lives who are on organ waiting lists, that’s great!—

Also, you guys, we need to talk about the Toyota Article, literally a fun little gimmicky article I wrote because I had read something about it years ago and it is the most-read article with over 5 times more views than the second most read. Also, so many of you guys keep sending me every meme and video about Toyotas in any conflict in the Middle East or Subsaharan Africa please stop I can’t like, and see them all. And the funniest thing is that I am not even a car guy.

If you’re thinking I’m writing too much about AI well it has a bit of kidnapped the entire spectrum of topics I want to cover in the newsletter but I blame also that is the hot topic this year since we are at the gates of a new era of human technology. But also because it is the theme of my Master's thesis which I will be finishing in the coming days (is kinda fun now seeing the statistics I’ve written almost 9 times more for this newsletter than what I’ve done for my thesis this year but the influence can be felt nonetheless.)

I Need your Help

But not in such a dramatic way so chill…

After one year of writing for The Placeholdr, I think I’ve managed to get the hang of things, though, of course, there is still much to be learned and a lot of room to grow so I would love to get your feedback for this Newsletter so I created a small survey to get some datapoints from you, my beautiful community and see how can I better deliver great things that will be coming down the pipeline in 2024.

So please Fill out this Survey and I will be sending also a special message next week for all of the subscribers reminding you to fill it out, if you have already done you can just ignore it. And if you are reading this and are NOT subscribed don’t be a stranger Subscribe Now

The survey is very short and easy and there is an open-ended question at the end, for you to drop any sort of message of thank you or feedback or criticism or anything I might have forgotten about and you think is necessary.

So here is the link or if you like clicking big orange buttons:

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The Best is Yet to Come

Oh yeah, baby! so many new ideas and things I want to do once I have more time and focus to work on this. As some of you know I’m a huge fan of Podcasting so There will be more audio content for The Placeholdr Coming in 2024 because I just can’t keep quiet and I want to talk to more people doing fun stuff in many different fields.

Also, a bit of an aesthetic overhaul because the Logo done in 10 minutes with CANVA has got to go and do something more in tune with the newsletter and see how we continue to grow.

Hopefully, we can see if we get more collaborative Articles as well as bring in new voices and people to the Team So if you’d like to write for The Placeholdr and you think you got what it takes drop down a comment and let’s talk :)

Also, some publishing companies have been sending me some great books that will be coming out real soon. I will gladly be reading them and bringing you guys some fun reviews about great ideas that need to be spread into the world, I am so happy that in just one year things have been so fun and exciting.

2023 Highlights

Yeah since I will be taking a break until 2024 have here some of my Favorite Articles From This Year and I hope you give them a read if you haven’t.:

#1 The impact of AI on Human Bonds

The impact of AI on Human Bonds is probably the first of the more “Soft” articles I wrote about AI technology and the relationship it will have with human Emotions. so if you’re into Parasocial relationships with cute Anime shark girls

#2 Redesigning Humanity

This was my first article where the mask was out and my Transhumanist Ideas came to the surface and no turning back on that, for many years I was very shy to talk openly about this but since writing more and more about this topic and seeing the positive feedback I’m all in for Genetic Freedom of humanity and the next stage of human evolution LETS GO!

#3 Mirage Economics

I think this is a sleeper article that not a lot of people think about the geopolitical repercussions. According to satellite Data Economies such as China are at least 30% smaller than what they Claim! If more people and governments were aware of this I don’t think the world would bend down and submit to the likes of authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. but oh well…

#4 Why Latinos are Always Late?

Showing some Love to my first Article, The tone is weird the AI images are horrible and the Anime references are bad. But still, I think is a fun cute little read if you feel like it. Also I’m surprised by how "popular” this was on Linkedin Compared to Others

#5 Toyota Hilux: The Unexpected War Machine.

Of course! I was not gonna pass up the chance to share this article, it’s silly it shows a very rough reality about global supply chains and how products you make for one market might be used in ways you never expected by other end users. Enjoy it if you haven’t and hopefully, I will not be known as the “Toyota of War” Guy I’m not even running their meme page

A final Thank You

If you had asked me last year If I would think I’d have over 500 people reading almost 2000 words that I had to say about AI economics and the future of humanity every week I would probably totally believe you because you are a time traveler so yeah you already know what’s gonna happen. But, still, I would be surprised about it, and above all beyond the paradoxes of time travel, I would like to thank you guys and gals out there who read on average 49% of all weekly articles.

Thank you to those who like and share the Articles on Linkedin (our second home) thank you to those who send me random memes on Insta about tangents of past articles(97% Toyotas of War-related) Thank you to whoever takes the time to write me a DM or a message commenting about this week’s article or when you see me in the real world and say how much you loved one article I wrote three months ago. I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to all of you and to the time you’ve taken to read my humble words.

Quick Reminder don’t forget to fill out the Survey If you Haven’t:

Pioneering Perspectives Poll

Historical Impact of the Adult Industry in Technology

Technology has been pushed forward in many different historical moments by the loins of humanity, wanting to push forward towards bigger, longer, and better ways to reach their desires or explore new ones. Here are some ways that certain technologies made history thanks to the adult entertainment industry as a throbbing force behind technological and digital innovations. 

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Early Cinematography: The first known porn film, "Le Coucher de la Mariée" (1896), demonstrated the potential of film as a medium for adult content. The demand for this film indicated a willingness of audiences to pay for such content, marking the birth of porn as a commercial enterprise. I can just imagine the raunchiness this film represented back then and to see this compared to today’s media landscape shows a lot of the evolution and liberation that humanity has had towards greater expression of human sexuality. 

8mm Film and Cameras: British photographer Harrison Marks' 8mm short films of women undressing and posing topless in 1958 significantly boosted the sales of 8mm cameras and projectors. The affordability and ease of use of the Super 8 camera made it popular in the porn industry eventually leading this model of the camera into the gateway for some of the greatest minds of Cinema and it was pushed because of its low cost and ease of use. So if you like Spielberg films you gotta thank horny Brits from the 50s for that. 

VHS vs Betamax: The format wars have always been a thing and in the case of the VHS its triumph over Sony's Betamax in the 1970s is partly due to the porn industry's preference for VHS tapes, which could hold more footage. This decision greatly influenced home video consumption.

Internet Boom: The exponential growth of adult sites on the Internet from an estimated 70,000 in 2001 to over 26 million demonstrates the significant role of porn in driving the Internet boom so much so that right now porn represents over 12% of all Internet traffic. I cannot NOT share this video whenever I read this data:

Online Credit Card Transactions: The adoption of credit card transactions online was paved by Electronic Card Systems developed by Richard Gordon in the 1990s used primarily for adult entertainment. From this development, Gordon built an online empire and made a fortune from small commissions made for each transaction that was validated using his system. Which is to say my man built an online empire from people enjoying life and paying for porn. 

Blu-Ray Vs HD-DVD*: Another format war happened after the dominance of DVDs for video content and when the demand for higher resolutions and more data was to be stored in physical disks. This war was between Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD and just like with VHS tapes, Blu-ray won because it was the format preferred by the adult entertainment industry with Blu-ray giving more storage space for high-definition content.

Video Streaming  The adult entertainment industry was a trailblazer in online video streaming technology, long before mainstream platforms like YouTube. The industry pioneered streaming videos and was the first to utilize streaming JPEG push video that functioned seamlessly in browsers without extra plugins. Sadly a complicated litigation involving patent wars eventually extended to mainstream companies, underscoring the adult industry's role in developing online video technologies that have become ubiquitous for various content types, from news to entertainment.

Contemporary Impacts 

We can see how sex, pleasure, and intimacy will continue to be impacted by technology as we move forward and how the adult industry will have a non-negligible influence on it as well. We can see surely that in the short term as Virtual Reality(VR) becomes more and more present in our lives it is its applications and uses for adult entertainment – not something new– but what might be new could be integration with AI companions – the likes of which we’ve talked about before–  where you could be experiencing dates, conversations and more with AI-backed avatars on digital worlds to recreate and explore possibilities and fantasies that might be difficult in the real world. 

But also we will see how technology will impact our intimacy and the relationship we have with sex as well. We already have vast data on how much has social media affected us in the ways we relate but how about in the way we view our sexuality? The internet can alter the perception of how and what is to be expected of sex and it can have negative and positive repercussions if handled properly. Also, the use of social media in a good way to educate people about sex can eliminate the taboo that certain societies have on this topic and open up people to information about safe sex and other methods of taking care of all the parties involved. 

Of course, these are the early results we get after a whole decade of social media being studied now by academics and how that has impacted us in our sexuality but looking on towards the future no doubt that things will look minuscule compared to the impact that more and more AI will play in our lives we cannot discard the role that it will be playing in how we experience pleasure, how we connect with others sexually and how we connect with ourselves as well.

We have seen the impact of dating apps in relationships and intimacy creating a never-ending market of possibilities but what happens when we create an endless marketplace of intimate AI companions that can provide and optimize in ways to connect and create emotional bonds with non-human intelligences?  

WASP Influence: Shaping Digital Discourse and Cultural Norms. 

I have always found very interesting the big-picture influence of cultures online and I think that the influence that WASP culture has had on the global discourse is something subtle that we don’t take enough time to acknowledge. Just as a quick introduction WASP culture refers to the culture of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants mainly located in the US and how the views of those groups have in one way or another influenced so much of what we consume online and off as well.

Puritans are a subdivision of followers of the church of England who emerged in the 16th century in England and greatly influenced North American society through their stringent religious beliefs and ethical codes. Focused on moral purity, simplicity in worship, and disciplined community life, they significantly shaped the cultural and social landscape of early America. Their emphasis on education, hard work, and community responsibility left a lasting imprint on American values. Puritanism's legacy in America is evident in various aspects of American life, including its legal system, social norms, and the historical context of American Protestantism. 

Now why am I bringing 16th century colonists to a discussion about technology and sex? Well, the effects and influence of Puritan morality have been at the backbone of North American culture with a focus on the repression of human sexuality, pleasure, and the subjugation of women as a breeding machine and as housekeepers. This deep influence was also put into media restricting what artists could or couldn’t do in their own creative expressions and of course when photography and cinema came to the world and started as a thriving industry in Hollywood (running away from Thomas Edison’s Goons) But after some short years of starting the industry felt the criticisms and influence of Puritan and WASP culture over its head which eventually lead to Holywood self-imposing a censorship code called The Hays Code. 

This code of conduct had a very powerful tone and it set the stage for what was and wasn’t allowed to be filmed you can argue that the Hays Code has been one of the most important documents in guiding human culture in the 20th century. Guiding what was being produced by the world’s most influential culture-exporting industry from the 1930s until the 1980s and even to this day maybe the code was abandoned but the influence of the Hays code can be felt to this day on how society and culture approach certain topics like drugs, violence and sex. Censoring and claiming some are more harmful for society – always using kids as the scapegoat– while ignoring completely the influence of other parts of the code.

 This is the classic debate on how a woman with her bare breasts or nakedness is more damaging to society than an image of a person killing another human with a weapon in a film. So one is censored or restricted while the other becomes the summer blockbuster. 

So, has this influence passed down to social media and by consequence to the world itself? I think it has and I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about this topic –or maybe my Google skills suck–  Because this WASPy Puritan mindset is such a part of North American Culture of course when a technology company that was founded by people from that culture decides to implement a Community guideline for the content that people can and can not upload to their platforms the bias and influence of centuries of Puritanism is inevitable. 

I think it is interesting to see if there has been an influence because it is estimated that around 4.9 Billion people use social media, over half of humanity using social media, and half of humanity is influenced by what they can post, what they can say and what they can upload according to the community guidelines of a half a dozen of American companies in Silicon Valley carrying the cultural baggage of generations of Puritan colonists. So the influence of culture in technology and technology in culture is this ever-present ebb and flow If I had the time and resources I would hire a team of researchers to do a more in-depth analysis on this. 

Are Puritans still in Control?

Technology and sexuality are intertwined as we can see, driving innovation and expanding the ways we connect and explore our sexual identities, which is a wonderful thing don’t get me wrong.

However, the influence of culture on our sexuality cannot be overlooked. Current social media guidelines, deeply rooted in American WASPy Puritan culture, echo the principles of the Hays Code but on a global scale. These guidelines, much like the Hays Code once did for cinema, now shape worldwide perceptions of what constitutes acceptable sexual content. This imposition of a single cultural norm across diverse global audiences risks stifling varied expressions of human sexuality and could hinder a broader understanding and exploration of sexual experiences.

Also, will these influences and perceptions of human sexuality influence the tools and development of future technologies like AI and how could that feed into the autopoietic loop that is AI training data to prevent more restrictions upon human liberties and pathways for people to explore and develop themselves?

 The critical question remains: Is this interplay of technology and sexuality beneficial, or are we losing perspective in its complexity? How significantly do these community guidelines impact our global sexual discovery, especially in the era of social media? Do you think these concerns are valid on the big picture or are we getting lost in the sauce?

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We've outdone ourselves when we consider how much we have tweaked and tailored the world to our whims, haven't we? Take a look around – we've guided nature into giving us juicier fruits, tastier veggies, and domesticated wolves that won't think twice about fetching you a ball to your hand and provide unconditional love towards you. And let's not forget our flair for mixing up metal alloys, whipping up brand-new materials, and even tapping into the energy of the atom to power our ambitions. I'm practically a cheerleader for Team Humanity, pom-poms and all, and I'm not quitting anytime soon. Sure, we've got our blunders and a list of global catastrophic risks to tackle in the next century, but honestly, can you name another intelligence in the cosmos that's as wildly captivating and downright entertaining as we humans? I don’t think so…

They took our jobs 

 But even though it is fascinating and I will always be Team Human we have to come and face the truth of one of the the big questions that we will need to ask ourselves many times throughout the next years: What is the Value of a human? And I’m not asking monetary wise, we already got the value of a statistical life, but what is the value of a human and by consequence of humanity? Because as we enter into the age of AI with great strides we are seeing how this intelligence we have created is automating more and more tasks and jobs that today are being done by humans. 

Now, this is nothing new we have been automating and outsourcing jobs from humans to our technology since we developed the plow or we used animals to push wagons. But more and more we will be seeing jobs being automated and what took a large group of people to achieve a task will be possible by one person or in most cases 0 humans as part of the task itself. So what is so special about humans? 

Where is the value of having humans in organizations if you could automate every single job eventually from the CEO to the reception desk could be a single digital entity or the agglomeration of different systems that have a legal name and representation as a company in the marketplace. How do we interact with such an entity just as consumers? 

What happens if that automated company is more effective and efficient than its competitors do we legislate against it? What if the AI running the company has enough money and the capacity to influence and persuade humans to change regulations and protect this AI? 

How will the global economy work if large swaths of humanity are unemployable through no fault of their own? Will we be forced to radically change our economic institutions implement a universal basic income for every human and make the most out of this automated economic system? I think this is a possibility, even though empirically, UBIs haven’t fared all that well honestly, I have seen this question being asked since 2012 and I haven’t seen a better solution so far, of course, this debate is longer but I wasn’t following it before or probably didn’t even care about it.

In the meantime, one pathway that I see for humans to overcome the challenge of staying productive at this age is to use these tools as much as possible. Humans using generative AI are up to 66% more productive than their baseline human peers and will be the more productive ones in the coming years as AI tools improve so you either find the tool that better suits the needs of your job or the tasks that you do and see how to enhance yourself with this technology. 

The Acceleration of Evolution 

Enhancing, is a very peculiar word, because, I think it describes a lot of what the human condition is all about ever since we started developing technology it has been all about making lives easier to survive and thrive and we have done an excellent job so far we are currently living in the best time of human history of course with pitfalls and things to improve but overall I woulda rogue we live today better than how humanity was 50 years ago. 

Not only are we living in the best of times I think we are also living in the fastest of times human technological progress is starting to reach a tipping point where things seem out of control and out of our capacity to grasp all the things that are happening – just try to follow the latest developments in AI or Computer Science– you’ll go mad. 

This acceleration and the gradual move towards this tipping point reminds me of Ray Kurzweil’s 6 epochs of information evolution about how information has been stored and its evolution from information being stored in the chemistry of the universe and then its jump in complexity to wards biology and DNA then a jump in complexity towards brains then in technology and eventually a merge of these last two and finally an awakening of the universe itself with a burst of information imbued into matter.

Now, do I think this is kinda wacky? Totally, but I think it points more to a trend of how things have progressed and it goes back to our questions about humanity’s value and the solutions to avoid our obsolescence through the merger of ourselves and our technology. This is not that much of a foreign concept when you start to think about technology in the bigger picture beyond just AI and computers and how they’ve always been a fundamental part of our lives and part of our nature, so much so that some people believe technology to be an entire realm of nature by itself.

The Next Steps in Human Evolution:

In this symbiosis of humanity and our technology, in this case, AI it might be the first step of humanity to accelerate and integrate other technologies into our biology as well, we have talked about genetic and biological freedom before, how with better tools of genetic engineering humanity is leaving behind biology as a shackle for limiting ourselves. But with technologies such as AI being embedded into ourselves we could also accelerate so many other transformations into what could be a new stage in human evolution where we took biology to its limits but to be able to keep up with our accelerating demands and needs we might need to go beyond biology as a species. 

The potential for us could be almost endless beyond the limitations of our bodies and our minds the possibilities start expanding in so many realms that we currently don’t even know where the future might lead us. 

This new era is shining with thrilling possibilities. Imagine a future unbounded by the physical and cognitive limitations that have defined human existence. The synergy of AI and human intelligence could unlock realms of creativity, intellect, and capability previously unimagined. The prospect of transcending our biological roots holds the promise of a future where the only limits for humanity will be those of our collective imagination. As we venture into this uncharted territory, the paths we choose could redefine the very essence of what it means to be human, opening doors to possibilities that today, we can scarcely conceive.

Ethical Considerations:

Even though that last part sounds beautiful and enticing personally I believe that’s a future worth striving for as a species. I am concerned about how we get there. Because we are facing challenges today and will be facing even more when we think about the economic and political institutions we built our societies and our lives, once again we circle back to the question of the value of humanity because does the future even need humans? more and more our societies have increasingly equated the value of human life with productivity, a perspective that carries profound implications in the age of artificial intelligence.

Viewing individuals primarily through the lens of their economic output has led to a devaluation of aspects of human life that are not directly quantifiable or profitable, such as creativity, empathy, and community engagement(no we are not talking about people running social media accounts for corporations as community engagement). As AI advances, automating tasks once considered the exclusive domain of humans, this productivity-centered view presents a significant challenge. It risks rendering vast swaths of the population 'economically redundant,' exacerbating issues like unemployment, and social inequality, but also a more deep impact towards a loss of self-worth and identity in a lot of humanity. Because let’s be honest for so many people their job IS their identity, so we are faced with a deep conundrum here. 

The increasing reliance on AI and automation could deepen the societal rifts between those who can adapt and those who are left behind, urging a reevaluation of how we define and appreciate the intrinsic value of human life beyond mere economic metrics. This reevaluation is crucial for ensuring a future where technology enhances human society rather than diminishes it and leaves us behind in the dust. 

How do we construct innovative and better societies and economic systems that can harness the great changes and benefits that AI and other technologies will bring forth, but at the same time can survive and withstand the disruption that all of this will inevitably bring? 

Don’t get me wrong I’m all in for a post-human utopia but if we don’t take steps now human value will only decrease more and more if we keep thinking that productivity is the unit of measure of human value. 

Next Steps for the Human Experiment

Humanity is at a crossroads on how to tackle this topic do we just passively watch from the sidelines or do we engage and act to preemptively develop new ideas and possible solutions on how humanity can keep being relevant in the coming years as a force of economic and technological development that keeps developing solutions for our species problems. If not we might risk losing our place as the dominant intelligence on this planet. 

As mentioned above using AII might help you in the short term when these tools are very reliant upon us but sure enough AI will outpace humans and eventually it will outpace humanity if we are not prepared and have some of these questions figured out the path towards a brighter future for humanity will be a very painful one or we might not even get there. 

I believe we need to reevaluate some of the most essential economic and political institutions we’ve had for the past couple of centuries because an existential disruption is being developed as we speak and the technology is advancing way faster than the ideas on how to adapt to this technology. And I sure as hell have no clever solutions to this, only questions If you have any ideas or thoughts about this or you believe yourself to be a valuable human share with me your thoughts, that would be cool of you.

Luckily, advances in different genetic modification tools such as CRISPR are advancing – thanks to a boost in its developments thanks to AI– and coming to a watershed moment where technological development and societal acceptance will reach a breaking point where humanity might finally embrace more and more its genetic freedom and take the reigns of our genetic destiny, breaking away from the shackles of our biology.  Also, we are developing an appropriate and ethical legal framework for these technologies and their applications which will focus on an ethical uplift of human genetics. 

My genes are Crisp but they could be CRISPR 

As a quick reminder, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, that’s a mouthful) is a revolutionary gene-editing technology that enables scientists to modify DNA sequences and gene function with high precision. It works by using a protein called Cas9, guided by a custom RNA sequence, to cut DNA at a specific location, like scissors at a specific spot compared to other gene editing tools we had before that worked more like trying to cut a sheet of paper with a sharp axe. This allows for the removal, addition, or alteration of sections of the DNA sequence. CRISPR has transformed genetic research, offering potential applications in treating genetic disorders, improving crops, and combating disease, and also gives us a way to fight against the yoke of biology. 

And this might sound a little bit sci-fi for some of you but we’ve had this technology for years now so much so that there have already been given our Nobel prizes for this 3 years ago for the discovery of this technology in the early 2010s. And we can see how this technology has been advancing perfecting itself and being a key weapon in the fight against a series of genetic diseases. So much so that a report by the Innovative Genomics Institute provides a comprehensive update on CRISPR clinical trials as of this year and I highly suggest you should check it out if this rocks your boat. This report highlights so much cool work being done for potential therapies for various diseases such as sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia, cancer, hereditary angioedema, and others that I have no idea what they mean but they sound nasty. 

So we already have this incredible tool for genetic modification on everything that has DNA inside of it so we could be working in so many creative and beautiful ways to develop new crops that could better survive the ravaging effects of the climate crisis and allow people to not starve to death across the planet when the food supply will be inevitably impacted by it. Also, we can see how CRISPR could help us develop organic solutions for the climate crisis with carbon capture crops this technology has opened the doors on how humanity can relate to and modify the organic world and we are just getting started with so many more great and beautiful things will be coming down the pipeline no doubt.  

AI in Genetics: More Than Just a Byte-Sized Contribution

As we’ve previously discussed AI will have a huge impact in the scientific fields thanks to its speed and capacity for understanding, and the emergent properties that we have seen when AIs become larger and more powerful. So without a doubt, AI will be working alongside CRISPR and other gene editing technologies helping humanity in their pathway towards genetic freedom. From analyzing data to identifying patterns that we cannot see in unfathomable amounts of data, AI is poised to become a great ally in genetics research – and then again in most human endeavors let's not forget– Some specific examples that we can see applications of AI in gene therapy and research could be as follows:

Clinical Trial Predictions: AI is adept at forecasting the effectiveness and safety of gene therapies by merging various data types. It creates models to predict the results of treatments and fine-tune procedures, thereby improving patient outcomes reducing costs for clinical trials, and accelerating the go-to-market of various treatments and therapies.

Personalized Medicine: AI contributes to custom treatment plans by evaluating genomic data and pinpointing genetic variations linked to diseases. It aids in creating specific gene therapy strategies and forecasting individual treatment results. Also, it allows for the ongoing monitoring of patient information through various information sources effectively providing an ongoing medical checkup and detecting patterns and potential anomalies in your health indicators. Getting custom-made treatments and diagnostics. 

Target Area Identification and Validation: AI algorithms are instrumental in pinpointing and confirming the therapeutic value of potential gene targets by analyzing extensive genomic and molecular data. This process facilitates the discovery of new gene candidates and assessing their appropriateness for gene therapy treatments.

Optimizing Gene Delivery: AI is crucial in refining gene delivery mechanisms and avoiding any potentially harmful gene splicing or wrong insertion of genes into the patient’s genome. AI-based computational modeling and simulations are employed to improve the effectiveness, safety, and precision of these gene delivery techniques.

These are somewhat “mild” developments and techniques because of course, we could be talking about advances in the identification of new drugs using AI potential genetic modifications and expressions of specific areas of the human genome that could have positive effects on human health but that haven’t been conducted or tested yet for ethical and safety concerns. 

Luckily we’ve already had clinical trials for gene therapy with promising results that have shown the power and effectiveness to treat certain conditions using these genetic modification therapies. For those who don’t remember gene therapy is like a clever trick where a virus, which usually causes sickness, is turned into a helpful tool. Scientists change the virus's genetic material, so instead of causing disease, it carries a special set of genetic instructions. When this modified virus enters a person's body, it doesn't make them sick. Instead, it delivers these instructions to the body's cells. These instructions can fix or change genes in a way that helps treat or even cure certain illnesses.

Public Opinion's Turn 

But just as this technology advances we have to be aware of how much of a sensitive topic genetic modification is for most people and societies. And yes I am all down for genetic modification as you can see by reading this and previous articles I’ve written about this topic. But how will society at large respond to this technological breakthrough, because, even though the benefits and the reduction of human suffering that could come from more genetic editing in humans are great, it's understandable that people might be a bit reluctant.

 Especially considering the dark implications and associations that gene editing could come with eugenics and other rather nasty ideas of the antiquated past. But luckily new research has shown that actually, almost 46% of the US population thinks gene editing is not a moral issue (and 24% believe it is morally acceptable) when asked if they would have their children or themselves under gene therapy to achieve higher results in their education. This is a very shocking result because it is the acceptance of gene editing not for a life-threatening ailment or genetic disease where a person has no choice over it but for a more “frivolous” end (comparatively speaking) 

This piece of news fills me with the optimism of a future where more and more people will embrace not only the idea of gene editing but will be open to doing it to themselves and their children so that they can have a better life with fewer diseases or other hindrances that are outside of their control and even enhance and increase their probabilities of living a better life with better academic results and a wider realm of possibilities in their future. 

Transcending Biology: More Than Just a Gene-ius Idea

This is the core of what I mean when I say genetic freedom for humans to no longer be shackled by our biology as the ruler over our health, over our capacity to learn and feel and experience this world to the limitations of our biology but we can break free from those limitations and go beyond what we got at birth. Go beyond diseases that afflict us without us doing anything wrong but just by the fact of being born. 

And it is in the pursuit of transcending our biological boundaries, CRISPR emerges as a beacon of genetic liberation, heralding an era where 'genetic freedom' is not just a concept, but a tangible reality. This revolutionary technology offers us the unprecedented power to rewrite the script of our DNA, to liberate ourselves from the inherited constraints that have long defined human existence. As we stand at this pivotal crossroads in our evolutionary journey, CRISPR empowers us to overcome genetic predispositions to disease, enhance our capabilities, and boldly step into new frontiers of human potential. It's a call for humanity to embrace this tool of self-determination, to responsibly guide our evolution, and to redefine what it means to be human in an age where our genetic destiny is ours to shape.

The Future's in Our Genes: Unzipping the Potential

I believe we are at possibly one of the most interesting times to be a human in almost any way, we are facing huge challenges that risk the very existence of our species and we are developing technologies that can help us solve most if not all of these problems but also that pose existential threats just as big as the ones we want it to solve. 

We need to overcome a wide set of challenges for the changes that we desire to come true. A better regulatory framework is always necessary for a piece of technology to maximize its utilities for the welfare of humanity, luckily the EU has some ethical and regulatory guidelines that could offer a very interesting glimpse into how to regulate gene editing in the future. 

Hopefully, this technology comes sooner rather than later and most humans can benefit from the gains of gene editing before it is too late for them. We are seeing interest and funding being driven into the anti-aging field with competitions like the latest Xprize (who wants to win 101 million dollars check the link)  

This also means that there’s gotta be concerns about safety and consent when implementing these technologies it is controversial when you mention parents genetically modifying their child, it is an easy choice when is some life-threatening disease or condition but when it is something like cognitive capacity will we draw the line there or only when something is purely aesthetic or cosmetic will we draw the line there? Or are there other concerns we haven’t discussed in this article? If you feel like that let me know I’d love to read your ideas.

We are at a crux regarding one of the key issues in artificial intelligence is it creative, or is it just stealing content from the web and then remixing it in a consumable manner? I think the answer isn’t as clear cut either way at this moment I think if you grab some early AIs from a couple of years ago I would say a more definitive no, and if we grab some AIs from a couple of years – damn, maybe even some months– from now, I’d go for a resounding yes. 

Creativity is the cornerstone of human ingenuity and probably one of the key components that led us to the dominance of our planet (and maybe of other planets in the not-so-distant future) It is the capacity to imagine things that do not yet exist and then build and rework the physical realm to match what we had in our dreams and in our brains. This is a beautiful quirk that our species has and now we are creating another intelligence on this planet that is slowly showing hints of this as well. 

AI has the capacity to create new things based on past data and towards a goal that we provide for it. So by some definitions, AI is creative and this from a technical standpoint is also what is called a hallucination in the AI world. A hallucination for an AI model is a way of filling in the gaps between past previous data and how to construct a solution that might not have been said or is not in the training dataset. So, it is with these Hallucinations that AI is capable of many wonderful things(like 99% of all images I’ve used for this Newsletter, thank you Midjourney) 

Are The Machines Tripping?

Now, these Hallucinations can be incredible when you’re trying to get some cool images from a generative Art AI and it interprets your prompt in a new and different direction –which is fun and great– but it can be a very complicated and even dangerous characteristic if it this happens when hundreds of millions of people are using your AI tool for their work, to write essays or to ask for instructions and assistance. 

The danger of this is that, for example, if you have hundreds of thousands of people asking for medical advice for an AI, and the AI is hallucinating for a large percentage of the results it can lead to thousands of people getting faulty medical advice because they lack the knowledge and the digital literacy to even know that AIs hallucinate. 

The risk is real and there are even researchers working on how to reduce hallucination for certain AI models and also to identify the ranking of hallucinations with these models to identify which models have the highest levels of hallucination. 

If you want to know a bit more in-depth about AI hallucinations here is a nice article and a  nice video by IBM explaining:

Although this term is a hotly debated topic in the realm of AI there are some proposals on how to eliminate or reduce hallucinations to a minimum one of the most popular solutions is a framework called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) which is a framework that focuses on grounding the AI’s with the most accurate and up-to-date information. By feeding the model with facts from an external knowledge repository in real-time, you can improve the LLM responses. This of course represents an issue of resources and time but of course, alongside better prompt engineering could improve results and I think these are great techniques for industrial or more specialized uses of AI and Large Language Models(LLMs) 

On the other hand, there are researchers who claim the usage of the term hallucination is misleading in nature because some LLMs like ChatGPT4 are not Hallucinating, since that would imply that SME of the data it spits out is right and some of it is wrong like a human brain also fails sometimes to remember accurately all the information it holds, but because there is no right or wrong for the AI everything in itself is a hallucination and not just when it spits out wrong facts. And honestly, when I saw this debate it seemed more like splitting hairs but if you think otherwise let me know in the comments. 

Can AI Be Creative if it Doesn’t Live off its Wealthy Parents on a Flat in Berlin?

But let’s return to the initial question is AI creative or not? Some recent research on AI creativity and its measurement highlights significant advancements and raises some philosophical questions. State-of-the-art generative AI has reached a level where it can match humans in creativity tests, opening up the possibility of augmenting human creativity across various fields. This advancement is complemented by integrating insights from psychological sciences, leading to a better understanding of creativity and fostering human-AI co-creativity in areas like dance, music, poetry, gaming, fashion, and sketching. Which to me sounds amazing thinking of human creativity being enhanced by AI and seeing the results like right now just go to some AI art creators and you can see this firsthand. 

Another study demonstrated that AI chatbots achieved higher average scores than humans in the Alternate Uses Test, This is that test for creativity where you are given the command “List as many uses as you can think for a paperclip” and you get like 1 minute and depending on the number of uses if they are real and original, creative or if you consider other factors into it for your answers is a gauge of your creativity. A great answer for these is when you break away from the limitations of material and size for the paperclip in your answers and you can go wild if the paperclip can be 30 meters tall and made out of styrofoam for example. 

So in this test, AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4 and others, were prompted to generate creative uses for everyday objects. The assessment of creativity was based on an algorithm rating the closeness of the suggested use to the object’s original purpose and evaluations by human assessors on the creativity and originality of the responses. And humanity LOST so yeah Skynet and the Terminator are coming for our paperclips. 

Although AI responses were rated higher on average, the top human responses scored better, suggesting nuances in creative capacity, ok so the top humans get to keep being creative and design paperclips, but most of humanity could just be outdone and outworked by current-level AIs.Of course, there are some dissident voices claiming that AI's performance on these tasks doesn't necessarily indicate original thought AI models could be recalling data from their training datasets, including similar tasks, rather than demonstrating genuine creativity, which is a great point to be made but how different is that from human’s creativity which is also somewhat bound by our previous experiences and other factors such as culture, language, and other parameters. 

Hallucinogenic Ethics  

Of course, as we said before, the uses of AI in different scenarios could add and enhance human creativity and output in economic and creative terms – which is AMAZING– but we also need to consider the risks of hallucinations and inaccuracies as AI penetrates more and more of humanity’s endeavors. We need more and better digital literacy and prompt engineering being taught at schools and to more people. But there are also other cases that we need to watch out like: 

Misuse Potential: AI-generated images and videos could be manipulated to spread false information, influence public opinion, or perpetuate harmful stereotypes, especially considering the ease of dissemination through social media and other platforms. The possibility of malicious uses, such as creating deep fakes, is particularly alarming​​ (so please never upload photos of your underage children online you have no idea the risks there) 

Bias and Discrimination: AI models trained on biased data can perpetuate existing biases and discrimination, leading to ethical concerns in how these models are applied and the outputs they produce. There is a great case about this in an algorithm that was giving extremely biased results regarding the probability of felons and giving a suggestion on sentencing for criminals and it was incredibly racist. 

Transparency and Accountability: The lack of transparency in AI algorithms' decision-making processes can lead to a lack of accountability for the content produced, making it challenging to detect harmful outputs or biases inherent in the AI-generated content. The so-called Black box effect we see in many LLMs where at some point even some engineers working with these models are unaware of how the AI came up with the answers for some of the prompts they were given. 

Data Privacy and Protection: Reliance on large datasets for training AI algorithms raises concerns about privacy and data protection, particularly when sensitive or personal data are used without consent. Especially since we know that most AI models train on the data they get by interacting with their users. So,  the next version of chatGPT, for example, might have all the interactions of its previous versions as training data to provide better output, but have you given consent that all the interactions you had with chatGPT were recorded by openAI for future use? 

Impact on Creativity and Originality: The use of AI algorithms in generating content raises questions about the role of human creativity and the value of originality, especially in artistic and media-related fields. Also the legality and putting big doubts about our copyright system for the protection of intellectual property in the age of AI. So much so that artists are developing tools to “poison” Generative AIs as a way to fight back against them in what they perceive to be an overstepping and a theft of their work to be used as training data for AIs. 

AI hallucinations significantly influence generative AI, a field focused on creating new and original content. While they offer the potential for increased creativity and originality, there are concerns about the accuracy and reliability of generative AI models, especially since these hallucinations are not grounded in real-world data. This raises issues about producing inaccurate or misleading outputs, and the potential to perpetuate biases or ethical concerns if trained on biased or incomplete data. Which I don’t think is that different from dumb humans who are taught wrong ideas or are raised in awful cultures/religions/environments. But unlike humans who have a limited range of influence as individuals. AI if it is not done properly could influence hundreds of millions or even billions without them even being aware.

Conclusion

Personally, I believe that AIs are in a very interesting point of inflection regarding creativity. At first, we’ve always outsourced our physical labor to machines, then we started outsourcing our “hard” intellectual calculations to computers, and now it seems like the Age of Creative Machines is upon us now we can be outsourcing our creativity to AI and what will be exclusively “human actions” or “human tasks” I don’t think there will be and the sooner we accept this fact will help us embrace sooner the need of us and our technology merging to help us accelerate towards the next steps of our species evolution. Where we can do more, think beyond our limits, and create art the likes of which we have never imagined.  

What do you think about all of this? Do you believe AI is creative? Will these creative AIs be here to enhance and help us or are they just tools without a “soul” that can actually create “true” art or truly creative ideas? 

Let me know while you watch this old-school AI video from 8 years ago. 

Economics! huh! yeah, what is it good for?

AI's foray into economic forecasting represents a significant leap from traditional econometric models(which I suck at). Traditionally, economic forecasting relied heavily on past historical data and linear models to do their work and give out somewhat relevant insights to economists and then use that for policymaking or influence the public’s opinion about something – you know economists stuff... 

However, given the complexity and dynamic nature of global economies, we are left falling short in being able to model and comprehend all the variables and their dynamics and relationships on a large scale to be able to forecast effectively certain phenomena in our economies. But, it seems that  AI and machine learning algorithms,  will be capable of handling this task in a better way since their capacity to work with vast datasets and uncovering intricate patterns, offer a more nuanced and accurate approach to predicting economic trends better than “old-school” economics trying to fit the complexities of the world into somewhat simple equations. So we might be seeing a very interesting shift in the field.

The Evolution of AI in Economic Forecasting

In recent years we have witnessed a surge in AI applications within economics. For instance, Wharton Professor Jules van Binsbergen co-authored a study using a machine learning algorithm to generate more accurate and detailed forecasts for GDP growth, employment, and interest rates. This advancement is part of a broader trend where AI economists are predicted to eventually replace human economists in many areas, leveraging unsupervised or reinforcement learning algorithms to process an almost infinite set of relations and variables. This goes back to the question old economic models had the incapability of working with all the relations and variables the REAL economy has so maybe AI economists will have a better capacity to work than human economists in these incredibly complex designs.

AI-driven predictive analytics are revolutionizing econometric analysis, transforming the economic landscape from forecasting and data analysis to decision-making processes and so much more a recently published research done by goddamned McKinsey's research team suggests that the global economic impact of AI could be monumental, potentially delivering an additional $13 trillion in global economic activity by 2030. This equates to approximately 1.2 percent additional GDP growth per year,  which is incredible to think about we are already in 2023 which means one piece of technology could add to the global economic activity an entire China’s worth of GDP in LESS THAN A DECADE! 

The Evolution of Economics from Credibility to Bots

Economic forecasting has its roots in traditional econometric methods. Initially, these models relied heavily on historical data and were often constrained by the limitations of human analysis and the finite nature of data sets also these models were constrained by the mathematical capabilities of economists in pre-computational eras or even during the beginnings of computation which helped but still were very much archaic compared to what we can do today. Due to human constraints, traditional economic models often had low prediction accuracy. The limited data available in these traditional methods made it a pain in the ass to control and forecast macroeconomic and development trends comprehensively.

Also, another revolution was happening in the field of economics before the meteor strike of AI and ML, a tectonic shift in the field that strode away from needlessly modeling overly complex things that resemble reality and then retroactively trying to fit the economy into them but actually using natural experiments and from those results derive insights, this is known as the credibility revolution. This revolution came from a movement of economists that started using data from phenomena happening in the real world and using those as sources to draw conclusions and then replicate or advise in policymaking based on previous results. This movement has garnered more and more support, especially after the 2021 Nobel of Economics to  David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens for their work in fostering the credibility revolution. Also recently 2023’s recipient Claudia Goldin is also one of the spearheads of the credibility revolution researching labor differences among men and women in the labor force worldwide.

Thanks to the advent of the digital economy and big data these phenomena have significantly transformed the traditional means of economic analysis. This era marked the beginning of the transition from a purely statistical economy to what can be described as an “intelligent economy”, thanks to the enhanced connectivity and precise data sharing facilitated by the digitalization of most economic processes and companies. AI tools have significantly improved the accuracy and efficiency of economic forecasting. They are capable of processing and analyzing data at unprecedented speeds, allowing economists to develop more accurate models that capture complex relationships between various economic variables

These AI tools as well as other software (thank you Python, R, and fuck you Matlab)  have automated many repetitive tasks like data cleaning, processing, and model optimization. This automation has freed up economists' time for more strategic decision-making and higher-level analysis, allowing them to explore complex economic relationships and conduct more nuanced policy analysis.

AI tools will continue to evolve, and economists are expected to play a crucial role in reshaping economic policy-making with these tools. AI-generated econometric models will likely aid policymakers in understanding the potential impacts of different policy decisions and in designing more effective interventions in complex economic systems. This means that there is a growing need for economists who are proficient in both econometric analysis and AI technologies(ooh I wonder where we could find economists who have in-depth experience in both… OH WOW LOOKIE HERE). Continuous learning and upskilling are essential to staying abreast of advancements in AI and machine learning, ensuring the effective utilization of AI tools in economic analysis and also in all fields, I would say if you are not making the most and learning to work alongside AI tools for your Job you will most likely be out of that job in the short to medium run...

AI-Driven Predictive Analytics in Action:

AI can and will be implemented in many different areas of economics and certainly, these applications will lead to a more in-depth and insightful overview and results coming from the field in the coming years. Maybe even some world-changing ideas about how we manage and deal with our economies now that we are approaching an ever-changing world.

It is a very interesting thing to see some of the scenarios done by a group of economists describing the transition from the digital economy to the “intelligent economy” and the repercussions this will have on the field of study and in our lives as well. 

• Evolution to an Intelligent Economy: The paper discusses how the integration of big data and AI is transforming traditional statistical economics into an intelligent economy. Traditional economic models, limited by human consciousness and small sample sizes, are being replaced by AI methods that offer more objective and comprehensive analysis this will inevitably lead to better conclusions and in-depth analysis, and even some emergent properties we are not yet aware might arise from this level of data analysis. ​​.

• Applications and Advantages: AI-based big data analysis methods are being applied in various economic sectors including stock analysis, industry analysis, capitalist economic development, and more. These methods enable rapid and efficient analysis of vast datasets, guiding policymakers in formulating more effective economic policies. This could be a great incentive for governments to rely more on AI-economists which could provide better results than purely human ones.

• Advanced Modeling Techniques: The paper also proposes advanced economic modeling and forecasting methods using big data and AI. These methods account for the multiple factors influencing economic activity, using graph network structures and Long short-term memory (LSTM) models for comprehensive forecasting​.

• Stock Forecasting: A case study on stock forecasting using LSTM shows that the AI method effectively fuses multimodal data for accurate predictions, demonstrating a significant improvement in prediction accuracy. And, this for me is very interesting and something that could be a game-changer. The development of a sufficiently complex AI that could “beat” the stock market and turn into a constant consistent profit would be a “cheat code” for capitalism and whoever is able to have that tool and provide that to its investors and stakeholders kinda “wins” the game so this is something to be very much aware for in future (I might do an entire article just for this in the future)

But we can see the implementation of AI-driven forecasting has shown tremendous performance improvements across the board and soon we will be seeing more and more cases not only in economics but of course in other fields of study, technological development, and innovation. Leveraging AI techniques suitable for different data environments has enabled companies to significantly enhance their operational efficiency and decision-making processes​​ of economists in their fields. 

So, When do we get our EconoBots? 

We can see that the application, and integration of AI are inevitable in the field of economics, the benefits on a technical level and the output increase that this could bring are incredibly positive and could lead to great policymaking for the global economy which would increase global welfare and enhance the economic prospects of the future greatly. This is always a noble endeavor that economists should pursue with their work helping us to better understand and predict the future of economic development and growth. 

But we have to be careful because this trend of relying on and using AI economists does open the door for our policies to be driven by AI-biased economic forecasts and insights which puts a lot of pressure on how to design these systems to avoid abuses and reduce biases because if not we could be going into the dark side of automating analysis and giving us biased results that might lead us towards unfavorable economic decisions and not putting human welfare maximization at the center of it all and that is a key concern that we all should be aware.   

This is not exclusive to economics, but, given the high regard we as societies put into economists (as we should) it is extremely important to be aware of the potential risks when designing these tools before full implementation and adoption by academics to prevent any unintended consequences.