The AGI self-fulfilling prophecy
We’ve listened too many times how problematic AI is, and how urgent the need for regulation is. That there’s an imminent danger of its overcoming of engineered-limits and thus turning against humanity. This without mentioning its very real negative impacts on the environment. But isn’t it exactly the opposite what really happened?
OpenAI, at the beginning of this year, has secured funding for $500 million, with a promise of expanding its operations and employing thousands in american soil [1]. With this happening at the same time as many OpenAI researchers have quit because “…AI labs are taking a ‘very risky gamble’ with humanity amid the race toward AGI”[2]. And recently over the last week, news have been announced that “OpenAI wins $200m contract with US military for ‘warfighting’”. [3][4].
All of this, after the open letter “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter” signed by the types of Yoshua Bengio, Yuval Noah Harari and Elon Musk [5]. Which was supposed to serve as a warning. This letter is not signed by OpenAI’s head Sam Altman, former president of YGroup, which included YCombinator, and co-founder of OpenAI with Elon Musk, who apparently is going through a breakup with Donald Trump [6], Jessica Livingston, cofounder of YCombinator together with Paul Graham, and Peter Thiel.
Peter Thiel being the founder of Palantir Technologies, which has been involved in multiple controversies regarding its involvement with governmental institutions [7]. The controversies became even more visible when “Palantir grabbed Project Maven defense contract after Google left the program: sources” [8].
Critics of the project [9] warned that the technology could one day be used by the military to build autonomous weapons that decide who and what to strike without human input.
What’s more, various voices from the technology sector and even the markets, qualifying the AI sector as a “market bubble” [10], have come to terms with the fact that “There Is No AI Revolution” [11].
AGI is nowhere to be seen. However the prophecy of a technological tool turning against humanity can very well be seen, in its turning into a technology for ‘warfighting’. The same people arguing against the dangers of AI technology via the prophecy of the AGI (either by conquering it or by despair to doom), are engaged in its application for war, plain and brute.
This is exactly why we must do everything to stop any acts that can endanger our collective living on planet earth. War is the actual historically true human-caused catastrophe.
This ‘warfighting’ must be contained for and modeled towards peace. Violence can be (symbolically) inscribed in peace. Per Hegel, aided by Gemini:
He argues that war has a positive, ethical function: it reminds individuals of their mortality and their connection to a larger collective (the State), shaking society out of its complacent focus on individual self-interest. While not arguing that peace is violence, Hegel sees conflict as a necessary and rational force that is intertwined with the development and preservation of an ethical order.
I woulnd’t go so far as to argue that war as an open definition is positive. However, a war could be fought against without violence. In the sense in which there’s conflict (presented by the symbolical and material social-relations of war) and eventual movement towards peaceful resolution.
Here we need to be careful not to confuse it with the “peace” managed by capitalism, in marxist terms:
For Marx, the “peace” of a capitalist society is a fiction that masks a brutal class war. The state is not a neutral arbiter but an instrument of class domination—an “executive committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The laws of property, contract, and employment are forms of institutionalized violence that allow for the systematic exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the peaceful, everyday functioning of the capitalist state is, for Marx, the quiet enactment of class violence.
Moreover, Adorno mentions that perceived existential threat, be it in the form of AGI, religious fundamentalism, or climate change has commonly been a cause for actual materially existent violence within our social-relations. As in Adorno’s terms, taken from Gemini:
For Adorno, a perceived existential threat triggers a flight from freedom and a desperate embrace of domination, manifesting in three interconnected phenomena: the rise of the authoritarian personality, the hypnotic palliative of the culture industry, and the violent logic of identity thinking.
However, conflict that points beyond managed “peace”, i.e. actual emancipatory struggle, works towards an actuality that can overcome the actuality of capitalism, as in actualizing us (the people) without deactualizing us (the people) in the form of labour exploitation. Adorno’s negative dialectics offers a movement towards remaining open to this very possibility of conflict, as the process of becoming, through self-determination, self-abolition, and their interplay.
Negative dialectics is a mode of thought that constantly resists the temptation to arrive at a final, positive synthesis. It is a thinking that remains focused on the “non-identical,” on what is left over, excluded, and forgotten by our concepts. A politics informed by negative dialectics would be one that constantly questions and critiques its own categories, that remains open to the particularity of individual experience, and that refuses to find solace in the easy answers of a fixed identity.
As Hegel pointed out, conflict is a necessary and rational force for the betterment of an ethical order. It’s necessary, however, to model it towards it being (symbolically) inscribed in peaceful resolution. This comes close to what Žižek recently wrote regarding the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan [9]:
So what about the reproach that the PKK nonetheless began as an agent of violent struggle? The PKK just followed here the general rule of resistance: if one is to be taken seriously, one has to begin with the threat of violent resistance. When a peaceful negotiation wins over armed resistance, armed resistance is inscribed in the result.
This is exactly why we must stand behind projects such as the BDS, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement. As stated in their open call for support, in September 2023 [12]:
We are a group of philosophy professors in North America, Latin America, and Europe writing to publicly and unequivocally express our solidarity with the Palestinian people and to denounce the ongoing and rapidly escalating massacre being committed in Gaza by Israel and with the full financial, material, and ideological support of our own governments.
As we write, bombs have killed over 8,500 people in Gaza. By the time you read this, that number will have risen. Thousands more are trapped under rubble. For over three weeks, a siege of the territory has cut off food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity. A million inhabitants of northern Gaza have been ordered to flee their homes amid airstrikes and in advance of an ongoing ground invasion with nowhere safe to go. Talk of a second nakba is chilling yet apt. People of conscience have an obligation to speak out against these atrocities. This is not a difficult step to take; what is far more difficult for us is to turn away in silence and complicity from an unfolding genocide.
We urge all individuals to speak out openly and fearlessly, and work to advance the cause of Palestinian liberation and justice for all.
And collectively work until specific demands are met, per the BDS Call [13]:
We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
[1]: Announcing The Stargate Project)
[3]: OpenAI wins $200m contract with US military for ‘warfighting’
[4]: Sam Altman Gets Into Bed With The Pentagon
[5]: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
[6]: ‘He’s a snake’: Musk jabs at Trump adviser who fueled messy presidential breakup
[7]: Palantir Provides the Engine for Donald Trump’s Deportation Machine
[8]: Palantir grabbed Project Maven defense contract after Google left the program: sources
[9]: A former Google engineer warned that robot weapons could cause accidental mass killings
[10]: The AI-fueled stock market bubble will crash in 2026, research firm says
[11]: There Is No AI Revolution)
[12]: ABDULLAH OCALAN IS THE MANDELA OF OUR TIME
[14]: BDS Call