Images of Power. The new era of Singularity
The symbol of the Beast and what we can learn from Mythology
Any decision made by an AI that has reached the stage of Singularity will be difficult even for the greatest scientists to understand. And what we can not understand is no longer called science or reason, even if it has the laws of physics or science behind it. It will becomes belief!
When we do not understand, when something is above comprehension, we represent symbolic images. The myth of the Sacrifice, the myth of the Savior or the myth of the Antichrist. And when this form of Intelligence overcomes reason, we will tend to give it a divine or demonic power. Depending on what inspires our imagination, our fears. It will rightly be the unleashing of ancestral forces and it will be nothing more and nothing less than Magic. The magical world will return among mortals with its gods Apollo and Zeus, with forces in which man is only a mere spectator and sometimes an intermediary. Science will become what it has always been, religion. Yes, religion and nothing else.
The Apocalypse of John teaches us an essential thing. How to live in a dystopian world. Because in his book, John distorts the images of reality and symbolizes the collective fears in Images of Power:lion, lady, bear, tiger, dragon, etc. In isolation, John has all kinds of visions and revealing images about the present and the future. I will not comment on the authenticity of the writings, on the Historical or dogmatic truth, this is not the point. Rather, I will place myself on the border of imagology(the study of image from archetypal perspectiv). Revelation is a book of fantastic images given by an individual delirium. John is Isolated on the island of Pathmos in a social context in which the Roman Empire has absolute control.
John projects unconscious images onto objects that thus become animated. Revelation is not a book about the end of the World, but a book of one’s own images of a World from which one cannot escape. It is about the Labyrinth a myth that appears in ancient mythologies, in Daniel’s dreams about Babylon representing a apogee of civilisation. The reason for the labyrinth can be both psychological, namely thoughts, or objective, a civilization that has reached the highest top of social control. This civilisation needs to sacrifice the individual freedom for the sum of collectivity prosperity, to create a unitary whole.
This intelligence is made, as the myth of Genesis presents man, in the image and likeness of God. As Greek Mythology attributes human charachters to the gods. Same, the new gods will have all the shadows and lights that man used to have. So, it will have both creative and destructive potential. Because its only teacher until adulthood, who will be somewhere around 2045 will be us. It will learn from the multitude of articles, videos, images which will have access. Even this article written here, will be indexed, processed, analysed and will be a bit of information in the planetary ocean of networks.
Man, in addition to artificial intelligence, has a small advantage. When we do not understand, when something is above comprehension, we represent symbolic images.
What can we learn from religions to be prepared for such a new reality ? We can learn skepticism from book of Revelation. That skepticism that makes us a little conservative and retrograde. That skepticism that does not accept uniformity. We can learn from religious symbolism that the Beast will have an Image and that all people will worship it. Religion teaches us not to trust too much in the Images of Power. History offers us so many examples of the dark ages for individual freedom: from the Great Pyramids, Fascism, Communism, to absolute social control in North Korea.
But at the same time, religion is preparing the Savior. The Myth of a Thousand Years of Peace, the New Jerusalem, Golden Streets, Prosperity and Eternal Life. Here religion meets science, which promises to solve man’s needs through Artificial Intelligence, to make a perfect society and to eradicate many diseases. The religion prepares the field of science which thus becomes belief, cult and fantasy. Let us not forget, however, this desire of man to be immortal. Let’s not forget those programmers who have the right to get rid of their Alzheimer’s. Let us not forget the desire of a Pharaoh to become imortal to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of people many years to build a pyramid that would make him great.
If Nietzsche announces the Superhuman through the death of God, then man of today announces the birth of a new God in the image of Man. This explains why all Sci-fi movies are in fact in our image. In movies we believe in all that mythology. Artificial intelligence must be like our image. Because man is material, soon will be his best version. Not just a software in a computer. It will be our Oracle. As we check the weather today before leaving the house, nations, corporations and governments will ask what is the best way to fallow. The gods descended again among the people. The omniscient gods.
If we feed this intelligence by every bit of information that we create, then the sum of it will be a kind of Collective Intelligence. The sum of all thoughts. But I am afraid of the unconscious collective forces, since in history these forces have led to the cult of personalty and dictatorship. As I said, any advanced civilisation has a cost and a reward, individual freedom for the sake of this efficiency. Just like the collective intelligence and organisation of the beehive.
Since nothing is lost but everything is indexed, this page contributes to the creation of the future, to the born of Singularity itself, to shape its personality. So think well, write well because sooner or later everything will return to us. Will we return to our origins undifferentiated from the animal world, living in a primitivism towards this Intelligence. Will it take away our burden of choice, will be our everyday guide.
sincerely, David M.