This Is The Foreseeable Future

Predicting the future used to be a fool’s errand. Even half a century ago, things were a lot more uncertain than they are now. Which is a paradox because the verities of the past have never been more uncertain.

There’s a loss of faith in science, yet there’s a widespread belief that technology will save us. Democracy increasingly serves only the very rich, yet we’re told our vote counts more than ever.

Organized religion is as outdated as the red robes of Roman Catholic cardinals, yet the importance of the inner life has never been clearer. Capitalism has become an all-consuming economic system for which borders are irrelevant, yet nationalism and protectionism are rearing their ugly heads. 

All told, the comforting emotionally held belief that nothing can or will fundamentally change has become doctrine. Consider the following summation of a long piece about AI:

“In 10 or 20 years from now, AI will undoubtedly be more advanced than it is now. If I’m lucky enough to be around, I’ll step out of my home with my AI assistant whispering in my ear.

But there will still be cracks in the sidewalk. The city in which I live will still be under construction. Traffic will probably still be a mess, even if the cars drive themselves. Maybe I’ll look around, or look up at the sky, and my AI assistant will tell me something about what I see.

But things will still keep moving on only slightly differently than they do now. And the stars? Against what might now seem like so much change, the sky will still be full of them.”

Despite the sanguine tone, that is a tremendously cynical view. It’s notable because it expresses what now passes for optimism, which is to say, the continuation of things as they are, with no breakdowns or breakthroughs.

To a person of more contemplative and philosophical bent however, the two casual mentions of “my AI assistant” in this soothing soliloquy are very revealing, and disturbing. 

What will it mean to live in a world that will still “be a mess” (with “traffic” standing in for AI-assisted war, already killing thousands of children and women in Gaza), yet one in which my personal “AI assistant is whispering in my ear?”

Already to think clearly, much less to stop the chatter of thought altogether, we have to turn off our cells to prevent the view from behind its bars being the only things we see.

If you believe AI is not a threat to your capacity to think and see for yourself, the proof is the conventionally mindless attitude of a piece in a global progressive newspaper: “Maybe I’ll look around, or look up at the sky, and my AI assistant will tell me something about what I see.”

Even more likely, I won’t look up at the sky at all, even at night. How many people look up at the stars now before going to bed? How many people can even see the stars?

We’ll still be able to see the moon of course. But rather than being a celestial companion of wonder and mystery, it will replicate the nationalistic idiocy of humans on earth, with Chinese and American mining and military bases guarding different territories, just like the colonial past.

This is where our vaunted progress is taking us, and only the most die-hard pollyannas believe that against the backdrop of the world as it is our AI assisted realities will make our personal lives more meaningful.

“There is something particularly poignant about the desire to ask ChatGPT to tell us something about a world in which it can occasionally feel like nothing is true.” Occasionally feel? Who can point with confidence at anything true in this world?

Why hedge around that which is undeniable? Why say, “Artificial intelligence may keep growing in scope, power and capability, but the assumptions underlying our faith in it – that it might bring us closer to God – may only lead us further away?”

Just as certainly as artificial thought will keep growing in scope, power and capability, it will, as things are going, lead us further away from wholeness and holiness, truth and the transcendent. 

Scale doesn’t matter anymore. The scale of so many things is so overwhelming that it produces the same flattening effect in everyone.

Paradoxically, that’s created a situation in which as individuals we have a lot more power to change things than we realize. 

If this age is truly irredeemable, there is no choice but to withdraw, and protect and preserve life within for when this dark age ends. 

Man may end with a bang or a whimper, but we cannot know the future beyond its present undeniable arc. All we can be sure of is that without radical change beginning within the individual, the foreseeable future will be like the present.

Martin LeFevre

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