Merchants of Light by Betty J. Kovács examines how ancient shamanic, mystical, and early scientific traditions were systematically suppressed in Western history and explores the spiritual knowledge they carried. The book connects these lost traditions to modern science and argues that they offer insights essential to humanity’s cultural and psychological survival.
Are we living in a simulation? MIT computer scientist Rizwan Virk draws from research and concepts from computer science, artificial intelligence, video games, quantum physics, and ancient mystics to explain why we may be living inside a simulated reality like the Matrix.
Is there a link between science and the occult? Are psychic phenomena natural rather than super-natural? Where is the mysterious boundary between mind and matter? In this revised and updated controversial book, Serena Roney-Dougal breaks down the traditionally-held barriers between science and magic.
Was there any truth to Owens’ abilities, or was he a fraud with a knack for picking the times and places of catastrophes? Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, a respected parapsychologist and host of the popular public television program Thinking Allowed, analyzes correspondence, interviews, newspaper reports, and remarkable life of “the world’s greatest psychic,” as Owens claimed to be.
In this groundbreaking book, bestselling author Theresa Cheung joins forces with cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, PhD, Director of the Innovation Lab at The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Together they reveal revolutionary new research showing that sensing the future is possible; they also provide practical tools and techniques you can use to develop your own powers of precognition.
Beneath Jupiter’s turbulent clouds, physics becomes lyric: banded storms and cyclonic ovals trace equations of fluid dynamics that feel almost intentional, as if gravity itself were thinking out loud. Captured during a close passage of a deep-space probe, this moment reveals a living laboratory where magnetism, pressure, and rotation braid together, offering a planetary-scale analogue for complex systems—from neural networks to collective behavior.
An image of a portion of Jupiter. This picture was captured during Juno’s 66th perijove on Oct. 24, 2024. Credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Thomas Thomopoulos
What happens if a DNA test is incorrect? In 2002, a woman’s DNA test revealed she wasn’t the mother of the two children she gave birth to. . | Credit: skaman306/Getty Images
DNA is often considered the ultimate indicator of our identity — a foolproof way to determine our origins and how we connect to our parents and previous generations of our family. But in this excerpt from “Hidden Guests: Migrating Cells and How the New Science of Microchimerism Is Redefining Human Identity” (Greystone Books, 2025), author and science journalist Lise Barnéoud explores an unusual case that exposes the limitations of DNA testing, when a maternity test suggested a woman was not the mother of the children she gave birth to.
Lydia Fairchild was 26 years old when she applied for welfare benefits to help her raise her two children on her own. As part of the application process, she had to undergo a maternity test. A few weeks later, she was called into a meeting with social services, where they accused her of not being the mother of her children.
“At first, I kind of laughed … But they were serious. I could just see the seriousness in their faces,” Fairchild said. “DNA is 100% foolproof, and it doesn’t lie,” a social worker told her. “So who are you?”
At first, Fairchild was suspected of attempting to defraud the welfare system by inventing children. The state prosecutor launched an investigation and quickly confirmed that two children did indeed live with her. Could she have kidnapped them? Fairchild showed them photographs of herself pregnant. Her mother, her children’s father, and her obstetrician all testified to the fact that she had given birth.
Could she be a surrogate mother who kept the children she’d carried? After three hearings in court, Fairchild feared the worst. “Every day it felt like it was going to be the last day I’d see them,” she tearfully recounted. “I called every lawyer in the phone book. None of them believed me. It was my word against DNA. It was me against everyone.”
Fairchild was pregnant with her third child at the time, and the judge asked that both mother and child be tested immediately after birth. And the impossible happened: Fairchild’s third child, just emerged from her womb, was not her son either — genetically speaking.
At last, a lawyer agreed to help her. Alan Tindell asked Fairchild about her life, her relationships with her siblings, and her relationship with the father of her children. “Given her answers, I finally decided to believe her,” Tindell explained. He soon came across a scientific article describing Karen Keegan’s case and contacted the team in Boston to ask them to examine Fairchild. They first tested Fairchild’s blood, but they found only one cell type, just as they had for Karen Keegan. They moved on to cells from her skin, hair, and cheek: still nothing.
We know too little about our own biology to have blind faith that DNA profiling will always reveal a person’s identity or origins.
Lise Barnéoud, Hidden Guests
Until the day they performed a cervical smear. There, they found cells with a different DNA, a DNA that matched Fairchild’s children as well as her mother. They concluded that the second DNA must have come from a vanished twin sister. Fairchild could finally breathe. But how would her story have ended without Karen Keegan?
The oft-taught equation of “one individual, one genome” fails to capture the full complexity of reality. What seemed a long-established and unshakable certainty, even to me, has turned out to be imperfect knowledge in need of revision. We know too little about our own biology to have blind faith that DNA profiling will always reveal a person’s identity or origins.
Our ultimate proof is far from foolproof. Yet it is very often used to determine relationships, prove or disprove paternity, evaluate applications for family reunification, or convict persons otherwise presumed innocent. “The overriding assumption in such circumstances is that a sample that fails to confirm genetic kinship is an indication of fraud, regardless of other substantiations of legitimate kinship relations,” observes the British philosopher Margrit Shildrick, one of the few scholars to examine the social and legal consequences of microchimerism.
Why is some scientific knowledge so hastily dressed up as infallible truth? Do we not dwell enough on our own ignorance? And why do some fields of knowledge remain frozen by skepticism, even when new discoveries should allow us to dispel our doubts? The sociology of science has its work cut out for it.
It’s impossible to know how many Karen Keegans and Lydia Fairchilds exist. Most of the time, the existence of chimeric cells from vanished twins goes unnoticed. If Keegan had not needed a kidney transplant, if Fairchild had not applied for welfare benefits, they never would have known that their gametes were “occupied” by cells other than their own.
Their children or grandchildren might have eventually discovered that a branch in their family tree appeared to be missing, that they had somehow inherited genes that neither of their parents possessed.
DNA tests may be more error prone than we want to believe. | Credit: Westend61/Getty Images
Today, we know of about a dozen cases of this phenomenon, known as germ-line chimerism: where chimeric cells are present in the tissues that form eggs or sperm. One such case involved an American man who learned through a paternity test that he could not be the father of his child, who was conceived via assisted reproduction. He was preparing to sue the clinic, believing himself to be the victim of a semen mix-up, when a more precise test revealed that he in fact shared 25% of his DNA with the child. In other words, he was the child’s uncle, genetically speaking.
Further research showed that 10% of his sperm contained DNA from a vanished twin brother. “One of the most impactful consequences of this case study is to point out that some traditional paternity tests which have resulted in negative outcomes (the tested parent was excluded as the biological parent) may have been wrong, because the alleged parent may have undiagnosed chimerism,” stress the researchers who chronicled his case.
Given the increasing use of these tests, it is likely that the paternity of other fathers has been wrongly contested. This is precisely the scenario depicted in the French TV series “Nona et ses filles,” which aired in 2021. Nona, played by 70-year-old actress Miou-Miou, is pregnant when a genetic test reveals that her lover, André, cannot be the father of her child. They eventually learn that one of André’s testicles contains sperm from a vanished twin brother. In the words of André, as he attempts to parse his situation, “So he’s my nephew … but he’s also my son.”
Hidden Guests: Migrating Cells and How the New Science of Microchimerism Is Redefining Human Identity
Part mind-bending medical mystery — part cutting-edge science — “Hidden Guests” uncovers the astonishing phenomenon of microchimerism: the presence of foreign cells inside our own bodies. The incredible story of how those cells got there—and what they do once they arrive — might change everything we know about the immune system, lineage, and identity.
Bryan Colter Astrology Feb 26, 2026 If you want a personal birth chart reading with me or to explore my classes, check the links below. Bryan Colter Astrology School and Readings – https://bryancolter.com/ In this video, I explore the Virgo Blood Moon Eclipse of March 3rd, 2026 through the lens of evolutionary astrology. This is not just an eclipse about release. It is a profound confrontation between discernment and distortion, criticism and compassion, and polarity consciousness versus unity consciousness. Although this is called a Virgo eclipse, the sky is saturated with Pisces energy — making this lunation especially potent around themes of: compassion without discernment discernment without heart confusion, fog, and manipulated narratives fear consciousness and hypercriticism spiritual purification and inner clarity the cultivation of the spiritual warrior In this talk, I explore both the collective and personal meaning of this eclipse, including how these energies may be showing up in the world right now — and how they may be operating in your own subconscious patterns, emotional habits, and nervous system. I also share practical ways to work with this eclipse consciously, including: introspective meditation spiritual detox and purification strengthening discernment without losing compassion becoming less reactive, less programmable, and more inwardly coherent If this video resonates, be sure to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who may need it.
The Astrology Podcast Feb 27, 2026 Monthly Astrology Forecasts We look ahead at the astrological forecast for March of 2026, with astrologers Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock. We are coming off the heels of some incredibly momentous planetary alignments, so we spend the first half of the episode doing a deep dive into recent news events to see how the astrology has been manifesting before transitioning into our breakdown of the transits for the month ahead. In the news segment, we explore the impact of the exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction, particularly how it has been revealing things that were previously concealed, most notably with the release of the Epstein files. We also discuss how the recent eclipse magnified Pluto’s transit through Aquarius, accelerating themes around AI agents, humanoid robotics, and discussions of extraterrestrial life. Finally we note the astrology surrounding the very serious geopolitical escalations currently unfolding with Iran. As we move into the forecast for March, we find ourselves still deep in the heart of eclipse season, navigating a total Lunar Eclipse in Virgo that is heavily colored by a number of overlapping alignments. We break down the challenges of a particularly debilitating Mercury retrograde in Pisces, the reality-distorting effects of the inner planets crossing the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries, and how Jupiter stationing direct in Cancer might offer some helpful silver linings and protective intercessions during an otherwise volatile month. Finally, we highlight a few windows of opportunity amidst the chaos, including a very positive Mars-Jupiter trine that forms the basis of our best electional chart of the month. As always, you can find the complete list of timestamps below if you want to jump to different sections or topics. This is episode 526 of The Astrology Podcast.
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Feb 23, 2026 Jacob W. Glazier, PhD, has a doctorate degree in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Positive Human Development and Social Change at Life University and an online Adjunct Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University – Steinhardt. He is author of Arts of Subjectivity: A New Animism for the Post-Media Era. His website is https://jacobglazier.academia.edu/. Here he describes the marginal scientific status of both parapsychology (data looking for a theory) and psychoanalysis (a theory looking for data). He points to the specific role of Jacques Lacan in focusing on the linguistic aspects of psychoanalysis. He examines some of the internal contradictions with parapsychology, such as its emphasis on the empirical method to uncover data that illuminates the weaknesses of that very method. The role of the Trickster archetype is also discussed. He offers the possibility that a new animism, guided by psychoanalytic thought can avoid the pitfalls associated with superstition. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on August 26, 2020)
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Feb 24, 2026 Leslie Kean is an independent investigative journalist and author of Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. In 2010, her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record was a New York Times bestseller. She is also coauthor of Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity as well as Henry Hyde’s Moral Universe. Her website is http://www.survivingdeathkean.com/. Here she discusses recent articles she has coauthored that were published in the New York Times concerning ongoing government interest in UFOs. The Navy now acknowledges that unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are real, and some officials say the unexplained objects seem to have capabilities beyond our current earthly technology. Additionally, it appears that materials have been collected and are being studied. Much of this interest is highly classified. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on August 12, 2020)
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Feb 25, 2026 Doug Marman, an Eckankar practitioner, is author of The Whole Truth: The Spiritual Legacy of Paul Twitchell; It Is What It Is: The Personal Discourses of Rumi; The Hidden Teachings of Rumi; The Silent Questions: A Spiritual Odyssey; The Spiritual Flow of Life and the Science of Catalysts; Sukhmani: The Secret of Inner Peace; and Lenses of Perception: A Surprising New Look at the Origin of Life, the Laws of Nature, and of Our Universe. His website is http://spiritualdialogues.com/ Here he shares his insights concerning the role of first person, second person, and third person viewpoints as they pertain to scientific theories, philosophy of mind, personal relationships, and spiritual awareness. He suggests that the most neglected of these is second person, which is most closely related to interconnectedness and quantum entanglement. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on July 15, 2020)
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Feb 26, 2026 Mervat Nasser, MD, MPhil, FRCPsych, is a graduate of Cairo Medical School and fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London. She holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and a doctorate in psychiatry from London University. She took an early retirement from her job as a consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at Kings College London in 2007 and returned to Egypt to pursue her dream of establishing the project of New Hermopolis. She is author of The Path to the New Hermopolis: The History, Philosophy, and Future of the City of Hermes. Her website is https://www.newhermopolis.org/ Here she describes the ancient Egyptian god, Thoth, the scribe in the afterlife, whom the Greeks equated with Hermes. A fusion of the Greek and Egyptian deities gave birth in ancient times to the Hermetic tradition. Different strands of this tradition became associated with Gnosticism, Alchemy, and Neo-Platonism and have continued to have an influence on Western culture – through various philosophical, psychological, and esoteric teachings – to the present day. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on August 10, 2020)
By its very nature, nothing of our own creation should be inevitable.
Q: How does a country like America that so values freedom deal with the purported inevitability of artificial intelligence?
A: The United States manages the inevitability of artificial intelligence by fostering a “pro-innovation, pro-freedom” approach, emphasizing American leadership in AI development while implementing, where necessary, targeted, light-touch safeguards. The strategy focuses on balancing rapid technological advancement with democratic values, aiming for “democratic AI” rather than authoritarian surveillance, utilizing this 2025 AI Action Plan to maintain technological dominance. [Per Google AI]
“Inevitable” — say it with me — may just be the ugliest word in the English language.
Inevitable means “You have no choice.” Inevitable means “Fuck you. Deal with it.” A massive asteroid headed for Earth is inevitable. A boxcar headed for Auschwitz is inevitable. Stage 4 metastatic cancer, after every experimental protocol has been exhausted, is inevitable.
And AI, everyone now says, is inevitable.
But AI is not an asteroid, or even a boxcar or a tumor. It is what a small group of heedless, reckless, greedy entrepreneurs are inflicting on the rest of humanity, with an all-in fascist US government hell bent on making sure it gallops forward without any regulation, oversight, or impediment — ostensibly so China doesn’t pull ahead (“Mr. President,” shouts Gen. Buck Turgidson, “we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”).
I know humanity too well to believe for a nanosecond that the awesome power and promise of AI will be channeled pro bono publico, that it will be managed with care and conscience.
If I sound exercised, overwrought — which I am — it’s because I know how this will go.
I know humanity too well to believe for a nanosecond that the awesome power and promise of AI will be channeled pro bono publico, that it will be managed with care and conscience.
I’ve seen what’s become of social media, but it is not merely the excellent prospect for replication of that race to the bottom that alarms me. Nor the danger that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or sentient AI, may one day decide to do away with the pathetic — in its view, anyway — species that created it. Depending on how “wise” AGI turns out to be, that might actually be something of a boon for the rest of the life that shares our planet, much of which we — having found it in our way — have treated more or less as the doomers fear AGI will one day treat us.
No, my distress and anger right now lie closer, in space and time, to home. I learned just yesterday from a friend that she was in the first wave of AI-replaceable workers when her full-time job in publishing was eliminated by AI. A mid-career single mom, employment for her is not — as it is for me, a semi-retiree — optional. But she has already found that the majority of available jobs in her field are temporary positions training LLMs — so that the new, highly efficient “workers” she helps “educate” can take over other people’s jobs. How nice.
Although predictions by the “experts” have been wildly divergent, something of a consensus has begun to form that millions and millions of humans are in line to share my friend’s fate, that the first wave in which she found herself is but a gentle ripple, a mere tickler of the tsunami that will come crashing on our human shores.
Inevitable.
Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang now predicts the loss, within just a few years, of up to 50 percent of all white-collar jobs — with all kinds of dire economic aftershocks and knock-on effects. And he is not alone in making such forecasts — which are based, after all, on a solid understanding of how capital and labor markets work when left to their own devices.
A Cognoscenti’s Advice
At the same time I was attempting to come to grips with my friend’s misfortune and the mind-boggling scenarios it prompted me to start reading about and taking seriously, an even more disturbing paean to inevitability came to my attention, in the form of what might best be described as an “advice” column from blogger Matt Shumer, a multi-hatted denizen of the tech world.
Shumer’s column, titled “Something Big Is Happening: A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change,” first basically corroborates, in considerable detail, the Yangian view that AI is spectacularly powerful, ferociously metastatic, and, yes, inevitable. That initially shocking depiction had, more or less overnight, become familiar to me.
What really spun my poor human head was what came next: Shumer’s advice to his “non-tech friends and family” about how to survive the “something big.”
He first clears his throat thus: “I’m going to be direct with you because I think you deserve honesty more than comfort.” And direct he certainly is. No spoonful of sugar to help this medicine go down.
The gist of it is this:
This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too. [Emphasis added.]
And:
The most recent AI models make decisions that feel like judgment. They show something that looked like taste: an intuitive sense of what the right call was, not just the technically correct one. A year ago that would have been unthinkable. My rule of thumb at this point is: if a model shows even a hint of a capability today, the next generation will be genuinely good at it. These things improve exponentially, not linearly. …
Nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term. If your job happens on a screen (if the core of what you do is reading, writing, analyzing, deciding, communicating through a keyboard) then AI is coming for significant parts of it. The timeline isn’t “someday.” It’s already started.
Eventually, robots will handle physical work too.
So… the race is on, and:
The single biggest advantage you can have right now is simply being early. Early to understand it. Early to use it. Early to adapt.
Start using AI seriously, not just as a search engine. Sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. It’s $20 a month. … Make sure you’re using the best model available.
And here’s the thing to remember: if it even kind of works today, you can be almost certain that in six months it’ll do it near perfectly. The trajectory only goes one direction. …
[T]here is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this. The person who walks into a meeting and says “I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days” is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now. Learn these tools. Get proficient. Demonstrate what’s possible. If you’re early enough, this is how you move up: by being the person who understands what’s coming and can show others how to navigate it. That window won’t stay open long. Once everyone figures it out, the advantage disappears.
A few final tips:
Get your financial house in order. I’m not a financial advisor, and I’m not trying to scare you into anything drastic. But if you believe, even partially, that the next few years could bring real disruption to your industry, then basic financial resilience matters more than it did a year ago. Build up savings if you can. Be cautious about taking on new debt that assumes your current income is guaranteed. Think about whether your fixed expenses give you flexibility or lock you in. Give yourself options if things move faster than you expect.
Think about where you stand, and lean into what’s hardest to replace. Some things will take longer for AI to displace. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability: roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn’t happening. [Emphasis added.]
Rethink what you’re telling your kids. The standard playbook: get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable professional job. It points directly at the roles that are most exposed.
Build the habit of adapting. This is maybe the most important one. The specific tools don’t matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. AI is going to keep changing, and fast. The models that exist today will be obsolete in a year. The workflows people build now will need to be rebuilt. The people who come out of this well won’t be the ones who mastered one tool. They’ll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself…
I know the next two to five years are going to be disorienting in ways most people aren’t prepared for. This is already happening in my world. It’s coming to yours.
I know the people who will come out of this best are the ones who start engaging now — not with fear, but with curiosity and a sense of urgency.
Like a Hole in the Head
So there it is. I think Matt Shumer is highly knowledgeable, well-meaning, and sincere — and somehow that makes his exhortations all the harder to stomach. Because I have little doubt that he is right.
Shumer is essentially depicting and forecasting a social Darwinistic workplace fight to the death, with spectacular success being the palm for a handful of winners and displacement, obsolescence, impoverishment, and purposelessness as the booby prize for most everyone else.
And I also have little doubt that what he is describing is the kind of upheaval brought on by, say, the Industrial Revolution, only compressed from a couple of centuries to a few years, or less.
Shumer is essentially depicting and forecasting a social Darwinistic workplace fight to the death, with spectacular success being the palm for a handful of winners and displacement, obsolescence, impoverishment, and purposelessness as the booby prize for most everyone else.
Disorientation “in ways most people aren’t prepared for” is not generally a recipe for peaceful, contented coexistence. And, with a mental health crisis already stalking the young, and suicide rates spiking, isn’t a ratcheted up “sense of urgency” just what we all need?
Whatever we may tell you, I strongly suspect that most people my age, in our “golden years,” quietly envy the young and, all else being equal, wish we were closer to the starting than the finish line of our lives. No more.
Now this is entirely apart from that whole set of other delights that AI is thought to hold in store: its tweaking to advance the dominionist agendas of the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel; its outsized resource demands and ecological impacts; its already measured tendency to atrophy human cognitive processes, especially in the young; its capacity to generate deepfakes good enough to be taken unquestioningly for fact and truth in politics, the marketplace, and pretty much every other realm of human interaction; its off-the-charts addictive powers, especially when it comes to a species of porn that one clinician called “crack or meth” in comparison to the “cocaine” of ordinary porn; and, ultimately, a potential reversal of the master-servant relationship with humanity.
And, before you point to all the medical advances and other upsides, yes I am all too aware of the promise, the seductions. In the abstract. What AI as a wisely used tool ideally could bring us.
But does the current development process look “ideal” to you? Or does it look like a mad scramble — part gold rush and part Cold War, the charge led by some of the least ethically concerned and constrained humans on the planet?
So I suggest we put aside the abstract and look hard at the reality of it. I’ve seen just enough, so far, to pray for a collapse, a burst bubble — which seems less and less likely.
I’ve seen jobs already lost; I’ve seen MechaHitler (and how easy it was to tweak it in and out of existence); I’ve heard from my 28-year-old daughter that her younger colleagues in her doctoral program can barely answer a basic question without running to ChatGPT or Claude.
Shumer is right that this is a pivotal moment. But he regards it as pivotal in the sense of personal adaptability: Will you get on board or get run over?
I regard it — quixotically, I know — as pivotal in a different way: a moment to choose, collectively, who we are and who we want to become.
One cannot but be awed by the brilliance and inventiveness that some of our fellow beings have shown in bringing us to this spot. At the same time, should we not at least — before we start adapting — have the opportunity to ask whether AI’s inventors make its best stewards and whether what amounts to an arms race, and one rife with personal agendas if not outright corruption, is an acceptable incubator for this most powerful and potentially destructive of weapons?
To be perfectly blunt, do you trust Donald Trump and our dick-waving broligarchs to drive this turbocharged bus that, in Shumer’s words, “only goes in one direction”?
No Choice? No Voice?
I typed my first screed — “Why Is There War?” (yes, you may laugh) — on a Smith Corona manual with two stuck keys, a packet of Ko-Rec-Type, and a sheet of carbon paper. What I’m feeling now recalls the impotent rage I felt then as a 10-year-old witnessing the idiotic escalation of the Vietnam War.
I went to the library with my index cards to research the Domino Theory and the Gulf of Tonkin. I made a call to my congressman, on my rotary phone. I took a break for lunch, heating up some tomato soup in a pot on the stove. That was nearly 60 years ago.
I took a computer course in 1974, my freshman year in college; I wrote a (very clunky) program that took a melody line and composed from it a piece in classical four-part harmony. I stayed up three nights straight debugging it. What fun it was!
And little did I know… Laptops were inevitable; microwaves were inevitable; smartphones were inevitable (full disclosure: I have no plans to “upgrade” my flip phone).
Everything, in retrospect, is inevitable.
AI, as Shumer maintains, is different in both scope and scale. It is not popular, as polls have consistently shown. It is the spawn of greed out of the womb of curiosity. It is being shoved down our throats. Hard. Fast.
But let no one call me or my generation Luddites. A quick review of the torrent of changes and “improvements” we have incorporated into our brief lives — sometimes grateful, sometimes grumbling, and sometimes both — should make clear just how flexible and adaptive we have been.
AI, as Shumer maintains, is different in both scope and scale. It is not popular, as polls have consistently shown. It is the spawn of greed out of the womb of curiosity. It is being shoved down our throats. Hard. Fast.
Shumer advises me to adapt, tells me resistance is useless, self-defeating. I don’t think he’s wrong.
But I do think that if there was ever a moment for rage against the machine, this is it.
I’ve lost a lot of friends who became MAGAs of the Left. I’m wondering how many more I will lose who tell me AI is inevitable and I should just get myself the deluxe model.
By its very nature, nothing of our own creation should be inevitable.
If AI is inevitable, it may well be because humanity is too collectively weak for hard and patient thought, too weak to weigh consequences, too weak to protect those who will be swept into obsolescence, too weak to protect ourselves and our future, too weak to protect our children.
Purposeless, impoverished, lawless, marauding bands of once-productive workers? Inevitable.
Just deal with it. Build a moat around your house. Ask ChatGPT — the deluxe model — for instructions.
