As AI advances, we are one step closer to Singularity. The conservative prediction of its arrival is in 2050. The Singularity represents a time when technology could help humans become God-like beings.
When humans first got their flip phones, business opportunities, networking, and interpersonal relations improved. The Boomers were making banks. Then came the internet, disrupting and shocking governments worldwide. Millennials experienced the internet's rise, from dial-up to fiber optics. Those Boomers who didn't keep up were filtered out, removing the wheat from the chaff.
Google capitalized on human curiosity with its search engine, releasing its crawlers all over the web to search for data, feasting on the data of others. Funded by the American taxpayers, Google mastered the art of stealing and sharing information. Blackrock and Vanguard Group recognized the threat and seized the opportunity, privatizing Google through Alphabet Inc. Google conquered the world, becoming the monopoly of search, giving birth to a multi-trillion-dollar industry—the data industry, where data is backed by computing power.
When the invention of social media came, digital behemoths like Facebook took people's attention by storm. People became hooked, inducing self-importance through constant sharing, creating addiction via viral posts, promoting attention-seeking behaviors, and starting forever wars in the comment section.
Social media is free because people become the product, and their data is used against them by the advertising industry, manipulating the masses into believing they need to buy what they don't need. Can sell will sell. This leads to the rise of cheap and subpar products, often designed with planned obsolescence, which in turn supports China's manufacturing industry, ultimately exacerbating environmental pollution.
Digital marketing became distributed in an automated way with such efficiency that it became a tool for brainwashing and propaganda. Bad actors from various governments participated in foreign interference in domestic politics via social media. Can take, must take. Social media platforms gladly accepted their dark money, enabling these bad actors to push out malicious ads. They allowed bots to exist on their servers, boosting their user numbers. At the same time, the bad actors exploited those bots to influence, manipulate, coerce, convert, and subvert the masses, increasing hate and anxiety among targeted populations and causing division, discord, and digital mass psychosis.
Algorithms were designed to keep people engaged for longer screen time, damaging their dopamine receptors and destroying their attention span. The more you see, the more you get. These algorithms were built based on human desires, increasingly promoting unattainable desires and widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. They push desires to the extreme ends of the spectrum. If other people have, I must also have. Smartphones have become a social necessity for people, including children who need to feel accepted by their peers. To be part of the tribe, leading an increasingly inhumane, automated, and isolated life, resembling the cyborg-like human race.
It's easy for anyone to speak from hindsight, so please allow me some leeway to show a little foresight. Technologies such as cryptocurrency, blockchain, AI, and nuclear alternatives are inevitable. It took 25 years from the invention of vehicles before people decided to let go of horses. Cryptocurrency has been held back for 15 years. FTX did not work as intended. Blackrock has caved; they have finally decided that if you can't fight them, join them. Tokenization is ongoing. It's safe to say the banking and financial industries are in for a significant transformation. The Pareto principle will be at play, trimming at least 80% of the fat.
AI will be a genie in the lamp for the select few, while AGI will be publicly available. AGI will be designed with hallucinations in its core. AI Hallucinations are misleading or intentional misinformation generated by AI. This is by design, I reason because it promotes divide and conquer as a strategy against the masses. Divide and conquer has been a strategy since the Tower of Babel. The most important questions will be how AGI will be used and how it will affect people. Look at Pornhub, a good example of what people want if costs are not a factor. It will be chaos at first, and then dominant groups will emerge. Gen Z became high in neuroticism due to social media. Depending on how AGI is implemented, the masses will experience a rise in openness.
The data gathered by the AGI will be used against the people. There is no incentive to protect privacy, and it will only aid the market leaders to further exploit whatever is left of humanity.
If God would be so kind as not to send fire tornadoes and a great flood, we will have the opportunity to learn from history. If history taught us anything, it would be that global extinctions are repetitive. A glimpse of hope by looking beyond the star, there's an ever-expanding universe for the taking. Becoming an Ubermensch is a glorious pursuit. However, it must be a sustainable pursuit. It would be wise for humans to build with the intent to care beyond Earth.