Feeling lonely? Don’t have as many close friends as you’d like? Worry not, because Mark Zuckerberg—after pouring $46 billion into the metaverse since 2021, about the same amount of money it would cost each year to end world hunger by 2030—now says that AI could help mitigate the loneliness pandemic. Here’s the clip that’s been going around social media, eliciting plenty of scorn.
This risibly awful idea is part of a broader push to digitize our world—every aspect of it, including human beings. That’s the subject of my newest article in Truthdig, titled “The Endgame of Edgelord Eschatology.” I did not come up with that headline (authors almost never write their own headlines), but I love it! The article makes, I hope, a few novel points that provide a bit of conceptual clarity to discussions about the eschatological visions driving Silicon Valley. In my opinion, it is absolutely crucial for people to understand that just about everyone in the tech world believes that our current biological world has an expiration date, and that a radical transition to a new digital world is imminent and—according to many—should be eagerly welcomed.
Give the article a read if you have the time, or listen to some commentary about it in the most recent episode of Dystopia Now, my podcast with the comedian Kate Willett. I’d love to know what you think—do you disagree with any aspect of my argument? Am I missing something? I’d love to know what you think! For no particular reason, I leave you with Grimes’ song “I Wanna Be Software.” :-)
Now Meta is introducing AI chatbots on Instagram that simulate conversations with deceased celebrities, like Kurt Cobain. Super eerie. We’re using world-changing technology not to improve the future, but to recreate safe, nostalgia from the past … social media taught us to perform and not be real … now AI is being used to create synthetic realities .. it’s a poignant time to live
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I am no longer certain these Technoligarchs really believe they are building a god or a superior life form. Let's say the goal is to further the work of building an open-air prison subject to Total Information Awareness (and that certainly seems to be the goal). The easiest way to slip the digital shackles on us human animals would be to convince us to do it ourselves, without resistance, because after all we are flawed humans and they are gods. The means to that end would be a relentless campaign to get people to think of machines as companions to confide in and superior beings to obey.
I'll never forget the first words my first professor of computer programming said as he began our first lecture. "The most important thing you need to know about computers is that they're dumb. Dumb as a toaster." I have a hard time believing the aspiring Technocrats are THAT dumb, although at the same time the Techno Mind Virus can't be dismissed either.
I'm not sure of course.. There's definitely a real cult of weird in Technoland, but there are other possible reasons to push these ideas other than the Bunker Bros being True Believers.