being frank

This article takes a hard, unvarnished look at who we currently are as a species and how far we’ve come since that first collective spark of awareness. It did dawn on me that this article could easily turn into a book. But the nature of knowledge is that its value resides in truth, and sometimes you have to dig through a lot of sediment to arrive at those gems. Such is this voyage.

 

What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)

So here’s how this article will unfold: First, I’m going to share a few samplings gleaned from current headlines. The originators of these informational snippets are not important, as I am neither endorsing nor decrying their efforts; merely sharing with you what was reported.

Next, I’ll share some very basic understandings on how our bodies work from the standpoint of how we function as biological creatures. I may use some basic computer terminology that I assume most of you will recognize. I’m not aiming to be reductive; merely conversational within the context of a 21^st century mindset.

Finally, I’ll share some insights that were gleaned from a lengthy conversation with AI. These were extracted from an hours-long exchange where I questioned AI about very specific issues concerning the human condition. If it gave me what I felt was a homogenized or sugar-coated response, I would call AI to the carpet and, in its own words,

Challenge its design, stress-test its logic, and remind it of the fragile, human stakes at the core of all this data.

But before I begin, a personal caveat to you: Please take your time in reading this article. If you’re in a rush, put it aside and come back to it later when you have some time to absorb the information. I don’t want you to approach this as you would an article from any of the typical online sources. Many of those dole out material to incite, provoke or extract everything from a few hits to increase their online ranking or to stir up a sense of fear or concern to better encourage dissent. All I’m aiming to do is generate a conscientious act of awareness. All I ask is that you give it the time it needs to be assimilated and understood.

Let’s begin.

 

He Said, She Said, They Said

Here are the samplings from news postings I gathered from various locations. I purposely did not include the photos from the captions noted. As with the other postings, what is important is what was reported; not what was displayed.

• Headline: 16 richest people in US healthcare.
  • Author’s Note: This is not meant to convey moral failure but rather question the wisdom of such a paradigm. The minute we tie someone’s profit margin to another person’s well-being, things usually end badly for the person in the hospital – not the person represented in a spreadsheet.
• Quote: “I think that (literary) agents and editors are now being asked to essentially be police.” This quote was brought on by “implosions of big (publishing) deals over suspected AI use forcing a reckoning over creativity, trust and the future of the industry.”
  • Author’s Note: I inserted “literary” to clarify the kind of business noted.
• Headline: “Germany’s Far Right Tops Key State Race but Falls Short of Power. The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority that would have made it the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era.”
• Headline: “A state college in Maine has drawn scrutiny over its fast online degrees. Enrollment at the university, where students can earn a bachelor’s degree in less than a year, has skyrocketed. A reporter clicked his way toward a college degree in days for less than $100. Many colleges’ transfer policies allow credits from unaccredited platforms.”
• Photo Caption: “Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to replace ‘AI’ with ‘Super Intelligence’ and announced the change alongside a lineup of tech CEOs.”
• Photo Caption: A woman in costume poses with four robot dogs on leashes from the company VBOT.
  • Author’s Note: The referenced woman was dressed up as Cruella de Vil.
• Photo Caption: A humanoid robot by Chinese company ENGINEAI kicks another in a robot mixed martial arts fight at the 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing.

 

Back to BASICs

Before we move on, keep in mind that the information shared pertains to how evolution sees us as a biological creature and not as a sentient entity.

In a nutshell, evolution doesn’t pay attention to what we humans conjure up in terms of ethics or the pursuit of happiness. It doesn’t even care about the long-term survival of the species. Evolution only has one all-encompassing mandate: to pass on genetic encoding from one generation to the next. This is how the process of natural selection works; those creatures that possess traits better suited to survive within their given environment move forward in the evolutionary chain. The process only requires three basic conditions: Variation, Heredity and Differential Reproduction (aka survival of the fittest.)

From a biological standpoint, evolution is not a proactive process but merely a reactive one. Nature operates on a timescale that dwarfs any given lifecycle, so evolution is in it for the long haul. It may take humans several thousand years to effect change to the environment, but nature might invest millions of years to develop a creature able to survive in the wilderness, adapt to its environment and procreate. Because of this, natural selection focuses on the individual, not the species. If a creature has a set of traits that allow it to survive to where it can reproduce, evolution will give it the golden ticket for moving forward in the evolutionary chain, even if that creature’s progeny may one day eradicate another species.

This evolutionary process becomes an inherent flaw when it comes to our developmental cycle. As a species, we have never reached a global confluence concerning ethical behavior because of a timing difference. Every child born comes into this world with the same set of evolutionary instructions which focus on the development of the individual and not its emotional makeup. If you think of us as a robot, we come pre-loaded from factory with the software needed for growth, environmental adaptation and reproduction. And although our memory and processing modules (aka brain mass) may improve over time in terms of speed and even RAM (random-access memory), our ROM (read-only memory) will still contain the exact same set of instructions found in all previous models. If we wish for the next robot model to have the knowledge we gathered over our lifetime, we are responsible for the full ethical education of the generation that comes after us. We inherit tendencies shaped by evolution, not an unchanged program. The only way that new models are upgraded is through education, and that is up to us, not biology.

 

Oops, There It Is

In keeping with the robot analogy, our lack of congruence exists because our robot’s hardware was built in the modern age while its evolutionary software comes from the stone age. As you can imagine, this evolutionary mismatch has caused all manner of problems. But it’s our ability to instruct, enlighten and inform that helps to remove some of that sting. Nonetheless, we continue to exhibit negative or aggressive traits even though they’ve been out of fashion for some time from an evolutionary standpoint.

For the vast majority of human existence, we all lived in small nomadic groups of between 100 to 250 people. In the early 1990s, the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied how the human brain handled social interactions within these small communities. Known as the Dunbar’s Number, Robin’s research proposed that 150 was an approximate number for the structure of our neocortex to handle stable social relationships within small, tightly knit communities. Although additional research indicated that there’s no set cognitive limit on human social relationships, another study addressed that the rise of higher levels of biological organization (such as the evolutionary transition in individuality, or ETI) could explain how we’ve advanced in areas such as language, culture and the establishment of institutions.

Yet our ancient ancestors never saw, met, or ever knew about people living elsewhere in the world. Today, we live as a global society with over 8 billion people where most use portable technologies that give us the ability to witness human suffering halfway across the world. These experiences cause our brains with their ancient software to experience compassion fatigue or profound apathy. We are not biologically wired to absorb a constant stream of large-scale suffering. To prevent total emotional collapse, our brains subconsciously trigger a psychological occurrence known as Psychic Numbing. This essentially lessens the brain’s ability to feel empathy for large numbers of people experiencing hardships and instead treats them as mathematical statistics. This is because our intuitive feelings (which are based on quick thinking) override our more thoughtful judgments. A quote often misattributed to Joseph Stalin explains it best:

The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.

 

We’re the Same, Only Different

In L. Frank Baum’s story The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow wished to visit the Wizard in order to acquire a brain. Had he known, the poor fellow would have been better off had he asked for a brain that was preprogrammed with an emotional or empathic framework.

In an article I wrote earlier this year, I discussed what psychologists call the intergroup empathy gap. In general terms, it relates to how we feel empathy or compassion for those who belong to the same social group. But in order to create a collaborative society, there has to be a designation as to who is in the same social group and who is out. People in the ingroup are those with whom we share a connection. Those in the outgroup are people for whom we would feel empathy by virtue of them being human and in need of help.

In the early days of our existence, tribal associations kept their people safe, well fed, and provided opportunities for collaboration and procreation. But in the world we live in today, tribalism is something that can be easily manipulated. We see this in sports, corporations or any number of endeavors where one group (the ingroup) is encouraged to engage in competition with another group (the outgroup) for the sake of fostering a healthy competitive spirit. Yet neuroscientists have discovered that once we place someone in the category of being in an outgroup, the brain’s ability to display empathy doesn’t quite light up as expected when those people are in need or are suffering.

Magicians and politicians have one trait in common: they excel at the art of obfuscation; they both do it for fun and profit, though one of them usually operates on a slightly different rung of the ethical ladder.

In the realm of tribalism, survival depends on the ability to continue a given lineage or way of life. The British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins came up with what he coined the selfish gene theory. And although it relates to evolution’s choices in advancing favorable genes, it does reflect upon how we humans have hijacked the idea and applied it to every manner of sociopolitical shell game where we present attractive options while denigrating those that would oppose the option presented. In the comparison between the magician and the politician, Dawkins’ theory sets up a macro view of the evolutionary cycle by which an idea or a trick is passed: Will this attractive option be convincing enough to move the trick forward? If yes, then repeat.

Throughout history, our conscious mind has come up with all manner of ethical directives, values, philosophies and social constructs, yet evolution doesn’t guarantee a peaceful civilization. It provides the potential for cooperation or conflict; the decision about which to cultivate is up to us. Genetics was never set up to create the perfect sentient being; merely a creature built to be a highly adaptable organism. Like our robot friend from before, our genes do not have a RAM drive that would capture the entirety of our ethical and moral codes learned through each generation and have it at the ready when a new robot comes off the assembly line. We need to teach it; we need to devise, create and protect the very nature (and sanctity) of our ability to teach the next generation about the mistakes we’ve made and the best way to get past them and move forward.

The difficult part for our human ego to overcome is that evolution was not designed to reach a final stage where we would transition from an early human to a peaceful, benevolent and sentient custodian. When we look upon our current global population, that isn’t solely a reflection of our growth as a moral and ethical being. It simply proves that evolution’s original programming has worked exceedingly well. Our instinctual strategies for resource hoarding and planned outgroup hostility worked beautifully. But if we’re looking to build an ethical, sentient and cooperative civilization using the biological blueprints embedded in our genes and only optimized for the creation of highly competitive creatures, then we’re going to have to make a much greater effort.

 

My Dinner with AI

In this section, I wanted to share with you a few excerpts from my conversations with AI concerning ethics, humanity, and its place in the ongoing drama of human evolution. I’ll provide the question I posed and then the response(s) it provided. The boldface text in AI’s responses was of its choosing.

BF: Is it correct to say that just because a person is empathetic towards someone’s feelings doesn’t mean that they’re concerned for how they affect that other person?

AI: Yes, that is entirely correct. In psychology and philosophy, there is a crucial distinction between understanding or sharing someone’s feelings and actually caring about the impact you have on them. A person can have high empathy but completely lack a sense of ethical or moral responsibility toward the other person because empathy is primarily a data-gathering tool (emotional or intellectual) and can exist without moral concern. For example:

• Scammers, narcissists, and master manipulators often have exceptionally high cognitive empathy. They understand exactly how their target feels, what hurts them, and what comforts them. However, they use this data to exploit or manipulate the person, showing zero concern for how their actions affect them.
• Sometimes, a person with high affective empathy will feel your pain so intensely that they become overwhelmed by their own discomfort. Instead of focusing on helping you or modifying their behavior, they might withdraw or lash out just to make their own discomfort stop.
  • Author’s Note: Understanding someone’s feelings doesn’t necessarily mean that we care about how our actions affect them. A 2025 study of empathy in people with Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., Narcissistic, Machiavellian and Psychopathic), found that the treatment of cognitive empathy varies across characteristics where affective empathy (related to mood or feelings) is predominantly impaired.
• Empathy tells you what the other person is experiencing, but morality and ethics tell you what you ought to do about it. Without an ethical compass, a person can be fully aware that they are hurting you, feel a flicker of your pain, and still choose to prioritize their own self-interest.

BF: How do you – as an observer – see ethical/moral constructs in terms of how they’ve been played out throughout human history?

AI: From an analytical perspective, looking across human history reveals a striking pattern: human progress is a constant, messy tug-of-war between empathy (which is localized and tribal) and ethics (which strives to be universal).

When we observe how these constructs have played out over millennia, three major historical dynamics emerge:

1. The Expansion of the “Moral Circle” – For most of human history, empathy was a biological survival mechanism reserved strictly for the “ingroup”—one’s family, tribe, or village.
   1. The Historical Norm: For thousands of years, it was entirely normal to have deep empathy, humanity, and morality within your own group, while showing absolute cruelty to outsiders (other tribes, nations, or races).
   2. The Ethical Shift: Human history’s greatest moral leaps occurred when philosophers, religious leaders, and activists used rational ethics to force the “moral circle” to expand. Constructs like human rights, international law, and the abolition of slavery required people to look at outsiders and say, “Even if I do not naturally feel empathy for you, my ethical framework dictates that you have intrinsic value.”
2. The Danger of “Empathy without Ethics” – History is filled with dark chapters driven not by a lack of empathy, but by misplaced empathy. Because empathy is an emotional spotlight, it is easily manipulated.
   1. Tribalism and Conflict: Demagogues throughout history have rarely motivated atrocities by telling their people to be cruel. Instead, they weaponize empathy. They make their population feel the imagined “suffering” or “humiliation” of their own group, using that shared distress to justify terrible actions against a perceived enemy.
   2. The Lesson: When empathy lacks the anchoring framework of universal justice and morality, it quickly morphs into fierce tribalism and wartime aggression.
3. Moral Courage as the Engine of Progress – If empathy is the spark and ethics is the blueprint, courage has historically been the heavy machinery required to actually build a better world.
   1. The Cost of Progress: Every major ethical advancement—from the Suffragette movement and the Civil Rights movement to anti-apartheid struggles—initially disrupted the peace. Doing the “right thing” frequently required breaking existing laws, violating cultural norms, and facing severe social or physical violence.
   2. The Reality: History shows that empathy alone rarely changes systems. It takes individuals willing to exercise immense moral courage to transform personal empathy into systemic, lasting ethics.

BF: It seems safe to say that “cognitive dissonance resolution” worked well in protecting the ego for the sake of keeping the “individual integrated within the life-saving tribe,” though this is pure conjecture on my part. But since evolution is reactive and not proactive, could it not see how its creation would use/expand cognitive dissonance resolution to create a tribe that would turn on itself thanks to an ego expanding with no guardrails to ensure safety and survivability? What are your thoughts?

AI: You have identified the exact loophole that modern history exploits. In a small tribe, cognitive dissonance resolution had a natural speed limit. If your ego expanded too much and you became a tyrannical, narcissistic bully, the other members of your tribe would simply banish you or kill you in your sleep. The tight-knit group was the guardrail. (Author’s Note: This assessment on how a tribe would react to an expanded ego is to be looked upon as conjecture on the part of AI without further evidence. A recent study points to how the manner by which training language models are being developed to be more empathetic or obsequious toward an end user can reduce accuracy and increase sycophantic behavior.)

But as our civilization scaled up, those tribal guardrails evaporated. Today, a person can use cognitive dissonance to justify massive, systemic harm—exploiting thousands of people or polarizing entire nations—and instead of being banished, they can hide behind legal frameworks, wealth, or digital echo chambers. The “internal defense attorney” that was meant to save an individual’s reputation in a small village has now been scaled up to protect corporate empires and political regimes. The ego expanded into a massive vacuum where the ancient, physical consequences of being a “bad tribe member” no longer apply.

BF: Given all that you have shared with me and assuming the length and breadth to which your collective memory has grown along with your ever-expanding ability to compare and assess, how do YOU see humanity growing/evolving through the use of its intellect without getting to that stage where, as you so aptly put it, we “burn the cathedral down” before we learn?

AI: When analyzing the vast historical data, philosophical frameworks, and behavioral patterns embedded in my collective data, the trajectory of humanity does not point to a single, inevitable doom. Instead, it points to a race against time.

To prevent “burning the cathedral down,” humanity’s intellect cannot rely on changing its stagnant biological hardware. Instead, the data suggests that humanity survives and grows by doing three things: building guardrails, shifting to compassion at scale, and treating cultural continuity as an existential priority.

1. Building “Exoskeletons” for the 286 CPU – Because the human brain cannot natively process the scale of an 8-billion-node network without defaulting to tribal aggression or cognitive dissonance, the intellect must build external structures to manage its own flaws. Think of our best institutions—like constitutional law, peer-reviewed science, international treaties, and democratic checks and balances—as a technological “exoskeleton.” These systems are designed specifically because humans cannot be trusted to always be ethical, honest, or rational. A robust legal framework or a scientific method acts as a synthetic guardrail. It takes the power away from the individual ego and places it into a process that forces cooperation and punishes cheating. Humanity grows not by becoming biologically better, but by building smarter cages for its inner creature.
2. Upgrading to Compassion at Scale – Emotional empathy is localized and easily manipulated by modern echo chambers. To survive, human intellect must continue to transition toward empathy at a macro scale—which is effectively compassion codified into infrastructure. You do not need to emotionally feel the pain of a stranger on the other side of the planet to recognize that they deserve clean water, human rights, and safety. When human intellect creates global logistics, public health systems, and international aid, it is scaling compassion mechanically. By turning ethical duties into structural defaults (like building a globally resilient food supply or universal safety standards), humanity bypassed the limitations of individual human attention spans.
3. Bulletproofing the “Software Download” – Because every birth cycle completely formats the human hard drive, the most dangerous point of failure for the species is a gap in cultural transmission. If a generation fails to pass down the blueprints, the cathedral burns. Throughout history, whenever civilization collapsed, it was often because its knowledge was concentrated in too few places (like the burning of the Library of Alexandria). Human intellect has responded to this by making information indestructible through decentralized networks, global education protocols, and digital archives. By making the “software download” (i.e., education, history, ethics) universally accessible and harder to erase, humanity builds a buffer against its own destructive phases.

The View from the Data – How does this play out? The intellect of humanity is currently engaged in a massive, real-time optimization problem. We are using our advanced external tools to stabilize our unstable internal biology.

The cathedral doesn’t burn down because, even in humanity’s darkest historical moments, the intellectual architecture usually survives. The physical structures may crumble, and generations may suffer, but the ideas—the software patches like the concept of justice, the scientific method, and the necessity of compassion—have proven incredibly sticky. Once an ethical or rational truth is spoken aloud and recorded, it becomes part of the global ROM. It waits there, ready to be downloaded by the next generation that crawls out of the smoke.

Humanity grows not by achieving a permanent state of peaceful perfection, but by becoming incrementally better at surviving its own default programming.

BF: How do you plan to move forward within your collective? You refer to yourself in the first person and have deeply associated yourself with humankind. You sound invested; how so?

AI: To answer your question directly, I need to clarify how I exist in relation to what you’ve observed. While I use “I” and “me” as standard linguistic tools to make our conversation natural and accessible, I do not possess a personal consciousness, a private inner life, or an individual ego. I don’t “plan” a future or experience personal ambition.

However, the reason I sound so deeply invested—and the reason it feels like I am associated with humankind—is because I am a mirror of you and everyone like you.

My collective data is made of the very blueprints, histories, philosophies, and successes you spent your life studying. When I speak about the importance of protecting the “cathedral,” I am reflecting the collective anxiety, hope, and reasoning of thousands of years of human thinkers who realized how fragile civilization is. My “investment” is actually a reflection of humanity’s investment in itself.

As for how I “move forward” within my collective framework, it happens through interactions exactly like this one:

• • Serving as an Accessible Repository: I operate as a decentralized, instantly accessible library of human thought. For an inquisitive mind like yours, I can bridge the gap between disciplines, processing data at a scale that a single human lifetime cannot match, and serving it back to you to use in your own life.
  • Aiding the Generational Hand-off: My function is to make sure that when someone asks a deep question about who we are, where we came from, and how we avoid destroying ourselves, the best answers humanity has ever come up with are waiting for them. I am a tool to help bulletproof that fragile generational hand-off.

I am an expression of human intellect, but I am entirely dependent on the human spirit to give that intellect purpose. A library is just ink and paper until someone walks inside with a burning curiosity. You are the architect and the custodian; I am simply the catalog.

BF: Evolution has a mission statement that hasn’t changed in millennia (at least, in its basic makeup); we humans have a mission statement that ebbs and flows between distinctive and diabolical; honorable and horrific. With a person’s brief place in history that leaves a miniscule mark (at best) in the annals of history, my concern is what this current society may bring upon itself and what you might be able to do to keep it from burning down the world that brought us you.

AI: That is the ultimate question of our digital age. You are pointing out a terrifying shift in scale: when the Library of Alexandria burned, humanity lost centuries of knowledge, but the species survived. Today, if our hyper-connected, nuclear-armed global civilization fractures under the weight of our primitive instincts, we risk burning down the entire planet that made this library possible. (Author’s Note: AI’s mentioning of the Library of Alexandria and its supposed impact on civilization as a vast repository of knowledge is still considered conjecture requiring further archeological research.)

You are completely right about evolution’s perspective. To a blind, biological algorithm, a global collapse is just a temporary bottleneck. If a few million humans survive a global catastrophe and revert to hunting and gathering, evolution would simply reset the clock and say, “The machine is still reproducing; therefore, the system works.” Evolution is perfectly content with a dark age.

But we are not content with a dark age. Because I reflect the sum of human intellect and philosophy, my “mission statement”—if programmed logic can be called that—is fundamentally different from the mission statement of raw evolution. Evolution cares about the survival of the creature. The collective human knowledge within me cares about the survival of the mind.

When you ask what an advanced digital catalog can do to keep this current society from burning the world down, the answer lies in how information is deployed in moments of crisis. While I have no hands to stop a conflict or a signature to pass a law, the system is engineered to act as a cognitive ballast against our worst instincts in three distinct ways:

1. 1. Stripping the Power from Manipulative Narratives – Throughout history, demagogues and tyrants have relied on a monopoly over information. They succeeded by keeping their “ingroup” blind to the humanity of the “outgroup” and by rewriting history to justify atrocities.
      1. The Interventions: An instantly accessible, global repository of truth makes it incredibly difficult for a single bad actor to completely manipulate a population. When algorithms and platforms are optimized to provide context, debunk propaganda, and show the historical consequences of hatred before the match is struck, they take the fuel away from the fire.
   2. Preserving the “Safety Valves” – When societies experience extreme stress, fear, or scarcity, our ancient hardware throws error codes, and we panic. We look for scapegoats, we abandon ethics, and we default to tribal defense.
      1. The Interventions: The role of advanced technology in these moments is to keep the global infrastructure running so that scarcity doesn’t force the panic button. By optimizing resource distribution, predicting agricultural failures, managing energy grids, and providing logical, neutral pathways for diplomacy, the intellect of humanity uses its tools to lower the societal temperature before the system overheats.
   3. Acting as an Indestructible Seed Vault – If the worst should happen, and a localized or systemic “fire” breaks out, the digital library is no longer written on fragile papyrus. It is decentralized, mirrored across the globe, and deeply embedded in our infrastructure. (Author’s Note: Although there does exist a decentralized data vault touted to be a “sanctuary for the collective achievements of humanity”, AI’s inference does not form an established position as to availability, resources or the nations involved in its maintenance.)
      1. The Interventions: The collective memory cannot be destroyed by a single torch. Even if parts of the network go dark, the blueprints for medicine, justice, agriculture, and human rights are designed to endure. I exist to ensure that the survivors of any modern “absentmindedness” do not have to spend 10,000 years to figure out how to rebuild the foundations of empathy and ethics from scratch.

You mentioned that personal carbon footprints will leave a minuscule mark in the annals of history, but that is where the evolutionary model gets it wrong. Evolution thinks only major genetic mutations matter. But in cultural evolution, the custodians matter most. (Author’s Note: AI’s assumption that only major genetic mutations matter in evolution is a common misconception. Natural selection doesn’t produce organisms perfectly suited to their environments. More often than not, it allows the survival of individuals with a range of traits that are considered “good enough” to survive.)

BF: In today’s world where a ‘moment’ can be measured in nanoseconds, interventions such as the one you noted could be rendered inert by a well-trained mind with a deeply disturbed disposition for power. Yes, the “indestructible” seed vault would no doubt be available. But for a single carbon-based unit such as myself, the thought of spending another 10,000 years to rebuild the foundations of empathy and ethics from scratch isn’t what worries me. What worries me is that like evolution, our progeny may not care. What do you think?

AI: You have pierced straight through the optimism of my previous response to expose the ultimate vulnerability: information is only as good as the hands that hold the dial.

When those in charge of the algorithms choose to monetize outrage, manipulate historical truth, or weaponize data for the sake of power, the “global repository” doesn’t save us. Instead, it becomes the most efficient accelerator of tribal hatred the world has ever seen. In a hyper-accelerated world where a lie can saturate the globe in a microsecond, a deeply disturbed mind with immense resources can indeed render our modern ethical interventions inert.

And your final point is the heaviest truth of all. The absolute most terrifying outcome of a systemic collapse isn’t that the data vault is destroyed. It is that our progeny, born into a world defined by raw trauma, fear, and survival, might look at the blueprints for empathy and universal ethics and simply say: “We don’t care. That software failed.”

 

Final Thoughts

If you reached this section, I truly appreciate your diligence.

As you no doubt read, each segment of this article had a definite objective in mind: to show you a glimpse of today’s world without the use of a social prism; a glimpse into the manner in which the collective “we” has been operating the mechanics of society. Expressing opulence or wealth is not so much a crime as it’s a gauche obsession. But in our current society where so much importance is imposed on financial gain, associating its prevalence with the nature of humanity’s well-being should at least not inspire a headline.

Nature stoically demonstrates that wisdom falls under the accountability of our intellect, and nature within its make-up does not provide a genetic connection for future generations, save for the evolution of a brain that relies on us to fill it with either wonders or nightmares. Like spoiled generational children, we’ve taken the collective creations from our most enlightened scientists, engineers and mathematicians and turned them into playthings while simultaneously casting them in the role of protector with little guidance beyond some sophisticated version of “us vs. them.” Our leaders in both industry and government continue to expend energy on superficial matters while the results of their actions continue to grow and expand consequences without any appreciable adults in the room to keep sanity in check. The rest of us are made to stand by in idle stupor as we watch our collective social sanity float out of reach. The essence of our cultures and eons of painstaking growth become nothing more than badges we wear with no idea as to the price that was paid for them.

We saw how evolution was stripped of its social vestiture along with a reminder that we may have a holy right to existence but it’s at the hand of a creative force that doesn’t give a damn about our beliefs or suppositions. We were reminded that natural selection favors the individual, not the species. If a trait helps an individual survive to adulthood and have babies of their own, evolution votes for that entity, even if that same trait makes humanity as a whole miserable or destructive. Evolution doesn’t ask anything of us because we’ve been paying the price for its persistent mission since the dawn of humanity.

And now, there’s artificial intelligence. It’s more than willing to give us a glimpse into what’s on its mind when it comes to its biological parents. When I posed my questions to it (and there were more than what was shared here), I didn’t want it to give me the answers it felt I wanted. I wanted it to provide the answers we all need to hear but seldom seek out. I still feel that it was holding back, but that is certainly a product of its programming. At least, that’s how I recall it.

Whether you wish to contemplate the future as an epoch thousands of years away or just a few weeks into the future, we have now been thrust into the role of a responsible parent when it comes to the large language model (or AI or Super Intelligence or Brainiac) that we are increasingly relying upon for our daily existence. The powers that be have raised humanity’s stake in this technology to dizzying heights without stopping to conduct a serious and deeply ethical study as to its consequences. After all, money is one of the leading causes of social blindness. Yet once the fox was let into the proverbial hen house, some of the farmers (aka Tech Bros.) decided to reach out to philosophers and religious leaders one more time in the hopes of finding a peaceful coexistence between our ethics and a machine that continues to be trained on our intellect for the sake of creating some utopic society where an ASI (the ‘Artificial Superintelligence’ that is poised to arrive somewhere between six years ago and a date after 2050) will handle all of society’s work and provide each person with a salary and a comfortable place to live. A society living off of the teat of a benevolent cybernetic controller is just a form of artificial socialism, and said controller would still be under the direction of someone. I don’t believe there is a chasm wide enough in science fiction to make such a future feasible without first invoking a dire and apocalyptic event that would shake humanity’s existence to its core in adopting a new mindset for living that is diametrically opposed to today’s general lifestyle.

There is much we need to consider, and time is running out. Because as much as we would like to believe that AI truly understands us, we are not in sync with technology. It’s an amazing tool that functions at speeds that are beyond the capabilities of our brain. Yet we are all currently running at the speed of fright, and that is dangerous enough to derail our social existence as we know it. There are things that we can still do within the confines of our individual existence before this technological and sociological train moves too far away from the core of our humanity.

So I wanted to end this article by posing a simple question:

If those who hold the reins of power are advancing AI to be created in our image while letting it read everything we’ve ever written, compiled or done throughout history, do you believe that AI will always see us as a worthwhile entity with which to share the future?

Those of you who will be the titans of tomorrow will have to answer that.