DéjÀI Vu

Do Humans and AI have a Symbiotic Evolution?

Last week I attended an AI leadership event and whilst I’ve covered AI already in

• SuprA.I.intelligence

• Smart Privacy

• Hacking Surveillance

• Did ChatGPT kill Social Media?

• The Great Fuck Checking

• How to lose your job successfully (to an AI)?

• We’ve got it Backwards

• Gender Equality through AI

this event was different as for the first time I felt that the majority of the people in the room had started to realize that we’re about to witness a pivotal moment in our “modern times” relationship with AI.

Not without reason Italy cut off ChatGPT due to privacy concerns and Elon Musk, Yoshua Bengio, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Harari, Andrew Yng, Emad Mostaque, and other AI leaders signed an open letter to “Pause Giant AI Experiments”.

On some level this week felt like a Déjà vu and I asked myself:

Have we already been here before? What if Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence are on an itself repetitively increasing/decreasing cycle over aeons of time? — Toby Ruckert

What do I mean by that?

To follow my thought experiment (and “déjà vu”), let’s assume for a moment, that:

1. History as we know it, is (at best) incomplete, partially false and most certainly (to a sizeable extent) simply “lost”.

Lost History: Underwater Cities

2. By forcefully taking a much longer view of creation in existence, we can widen our perspectives, i.e. what if we’re much older than we think history tells us? AI could have already been here and ruled us before.

3. An increase in human intelligence naturally yields certain types of technological advancements and innovation output, leading to an increase of machine intelligence. Yet at the same time (and by the application of those machine based efforts giving us certain conveniences in our lives) more people start to trust AI with decision making capabilities, thus indirectly outsourcing their intelligence and cognitive functions to AI, leading to an overall collective decline in human intelligence. Or when have you last used a physical map to find your way instead of a GPS based system?

4. It’s possible that all tech based systems could be blacked out by massive electromagnetic radiation coming from space¹, leaving only “dead infrastructure” behind.

5. If humans (over many generations of course) had lost their knowledge and ability around how the underlying hardware and software technology was built (because AI could do this eventually by itself), no one would be there to repair what’s left and we’d all be back in the stone ages, starting “acquiring knowledge and intelligence for building the technology” yet again from scratch.

No trace of real history would remain then, yet the history of our Human — AI relationship would be again repeating itself.

Of course, this is merely a thought experiment which would make a great script for a science fiction movie or it could simply help us to put a bigger perspective around the pressing matters of “ethical” AI in the current circumstances.

But are there any indicators which suggest that we could have indeed been here before?

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Ancient Nuclear Wars — Libyan Glass

Glass can be found in the Libyan desert in an area of 30x150 km. Scientists believe that the cause of its origin is the fall of a meteorite 28 million years ago. However, at that time there was no sand (an ingredient necessary for making glass).

There is an alternative version of the origin of glass — a nuclear explosion. It is known that such glass is usually formed in places where bombs are tested.

Egyptian "legends" also tell of the revenge of the God “Ra” for the people's rebellion against him. With the rays of Urei (the Sun's eye, which was depicted on the heads of the pharaohs), he incinerated the rebels, and as a result glass was formed — the memory of the ancient war.

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Missing Construction Knowledge — Indra Column

In Delhi, in the courtyard of the Qutb Minar mosque, there is a metal column known to the world as the "Indra Column”.

Interestingly it has withstood the effects of the weather without a trace of rust. The column is made of atomic iron without carbon and sulfur impurities at the molecular level. Nowadays it is possible to obtain such perfectly pure iron by sputtering only in a vacuum and only in small quantities. The height of Indra's Pillar corresponds to a three-storey house; moreover, the Pillar goes into the Earth for several tens of meters.

It is not clear how, or with the help of what mechanisms, this marvelous construction was made and installed.

CORRECTION/ADDITION: Thanks to an alert reader who has informed me, I would recommend to read this Wikipedia article which goes into the details of the construction and origin of this nevertheless unique pillar.

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Flying Cars — 1.6 Million Years ago?

There is a fair debate how old the Ramayana² really is, but this short video puts things in perspective.

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Nanospirals — Prehistoric Hi-Tech?

Barely visible to the naked eye, these microscopically small nanospirals within material that is believed to be at least 100,000 years old still remain an unsolved mystery.

They have been detected in several places, during a routine investigation of mineral deposits in the Ural Mountains in Russia in 1992. The nanospirals are of copper, tungsten or molybdenum. The latter two metals along with others are used in electronics and rocket technology.

There are many speculations regarding the nanospirals and some say they are forgery, but the origin of these unusual artifacts is still not explained and could offer proof of advanced ancient high-tech knowledge.

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Controlling Space Climate Change

Blocking the sun to control global warming³ is already a thing, but our desire to control weather making and shaping the climate at large doesn't end with the Earth's atmosphere.

We’ll have to see where our scientific and technological advancements eventually meet with our conscience and consciousness. Not all things that can be done, should be done, especially considering a possible déjà vu in which the reality of our relationship with AI could be quite different from what we think it is.

Perhaps the cosmic serendipity of our sun and deep space radiation are what indeed shape the destiny of the Human-AI symbiotic relationship and evolutionary tale.

And perhaps I should engrave my writing on stones, not publish digitally. Just to be sure!

1. The biggest sun or solar storm in recorded history was the “Carrington Event” in 1859, but we’re regularly hit by electromagnetic radiation from deep space and it’s hard to predict.

2. The various versions of the Ramayana are typically dated only a few hundred years BCE. Another aspect of history which obviously needs questioning.

3. Solar engineering has completely unpredictable outcomes at large (we understand far too little of the consequences), yet it’s being actively pursued.