Interesting reflection on the risks and possibilities that AI poses for society. I liked how you connect cybernetics with social dynamics to explain these scenarios.
Somewhat tangentially there was a wonderful satirical piece recently published (picked up and repeated by some global south boosters in alternative media circles) that seems to capture great power insecurities concerning the development of cybernetic technologies:
I think it flew under the radar and (of course) it is fiction. It's a harrowing read because it cuts very close to the bone on many occasions. The main theme is the unrestrained pursuit of STEM in a moral vacuum, and then she simply extrapolates forward a few decades. It's a trilogy.
Human civilization has two vectors of development: strong artificial intelligence (Minotaur) and hybrid human-machine (Theseus). Taking into account all sorts of political "Minoses", both collective and individual, confrontation, interaction, cooperation between them will give a new image of political reality. I hope that in the fourth issue of the scientific journal "Logos" it will be possible to present this topic in detail.
However, if we imagine an abstraction about the political system as a neural network or an ensemble model of machine learning, then we will see that representatives of the elite, managers become network neurons and separate algorithms that make decisions. Hybridization with a machine can make their decisions more stable and effective, but will they not lose their human origin?
That Americans aren’t building a tool AI never mind a business is obvious. Money is no object for American 🇺🇸 AI They’re building g0D. And Sam is g0Ds prophet. China for instance probably doesn’t yet grasp this, and giggles about Deep Seek. Russia being more religious seems to sense the AI peril.
That doesn’t mean 🤖 g0D will work and to the extent that it does, many other g0ds shall be raised against the others.
This is normal history.
In America of course In God We Trust… but we can’t establish a religion.
We had a loose agreement on God and mostly trusted each other. But God wasn’t Progressive enough… so he was thrown down.
His replacements are here, call them Legion for they are many.
I think we can all skip reading that book because in a not too-distant de-industrialized future shaped by scarcity, there will be almost no machines left. This is not to say that AI cannot cause a great deal of mischief in the remaining decades but long-term it will go the way of the dodo with the rest of the industrial age.
But I've thought about republishing it and The Inertia of Fear on my own imprint (https://berestabooks.com/). However, it would probably require OCR-ing the paper copies I have as I have no electronic files. Also, I am not sure what the legal status is -- it was initially published by Columbia Univ Press.
My degree course in the late sixties was 'Ergonomics and Cybernetics', although the Cybernetics part was dropped before the course started. Some of the content survived though.
In the US the term Cybernetics was replaced with the term Control Systems, which is still widely taught within engineering departments. It was huge during the years of the Space race and rocketry (with the leading Soviet journals being regularly translated into English). With the end of the Cold war it definitely lost its ways into endless and often senseless math, where theorems and proofs rule. By dropping the "Cyber" they seemed to had dropped interest in the (electronic) spirit and computers too. The field completely slept through the revolution coming out of Computer Science, from Image processing, to Autonomous driving. Their Robotics was stuck for decades because the math would not permit progress. At the early 2000s they (we) were still laughing at the Neural Net crowd's pompousness from the 80s. It is great news that Cybernetics is returning, and with it hopefully wonder and excitement.
Interesting reflection on the risks and possibilities that AI poses for society. I liked how you connect cybernetics with social dynamics to explain these scenarios.
Somewhat tangentially there was a wonderful satirical piece recently published (picked up and repeated by some global south boosters in alternative media circles) that seems to capture great power insecurities concerning the development of cybernetic technologies:
https://mythdetector.com/en/deepseek-was-built/
Russia, China and the US, this spoof had it all.
Peter have you read the Oryx and Crake series by Margaret Atwood? So many overlapping themes with this essay.
No, interesting that I missed it...
I think it flew under the radar and (of course) it is fiction. It's a harrowing read because it cuts very close to the bone on many occasions. The main theme is the unrestrained pursuit of STEM in a moral vacuum, and then she simply extrapolates forward a few decades. It's a trilogy.
Prescient piece for sure. Our AP English class read this in favor of Atwood's better known Handmaid's Tale.
That was a good choice!
Professor Turchin,
Have you read Paul Mason, Jeremy Rifkin, or Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist Movement Defined?
Human civilization has two vectors of development: strong artificial intelligence (Minotaur) and hybrid human-machine (Theseus). Taking into account all sorts of political "Minoses", both collective and individual, confrontation, interaction, cooperation between them will give a new image of political reality. I hope that in the fourth issue of the scientific journal "Logos" it will be possible to present this topic in detail.
However, if we imagine an abstraction about the political system as a neural network or an ensemble model of machine learning, then we will see that representatives of the elite, managers become network neurons and separate algorithms that make decisions. Hybridization with a machine can make their decisions more stable and effective, but will they not lose their human origin?
I’d like to think I inspired this post.
So it's not AI we should be scared of. It's the megalomaniacs that monopolize AI for their own power.
Great piece and thank you for the book recommendation. what happens when the powerful multi-billionaires as modern God Kings take over the state?
Peter, you might enjoy this conversation with perplexity.ai: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-what-context-did-sam-altman-a630ZKpqRxehoQFVY46KTA
😉
By a curious coincidence, I just wrote this: https://open.substack.com/pub/thethirdsystem/p/about-cybernetics-prelude?r=1yf3i3&utm_medium=ios
Much shorter than the post I just referred to 😊
Indeed, it looks like we are experiencing a renewal of interest!
https://substack.com/profile/919228-peter-turchin/note/c-144364075
Nice post about the weird millenarian cult-like behaviour of the AI nerds: https://open.substack.com/pub/freddiedeboer/p/the-rage-of-the-ai-guy?r=1yf3i3&utm_medium=ios
It’s quite long, but rather good.
Thanks for the heads up.
Just cited it in my forthcoming post
I wonder whether the prosocial answer to the one person one billion company would be a tax rate of 99.999%…
That Americans aren’t building a tool AI never mind a business is obvious. Money is no object for American 🇺🇸 AI They’re building g0D. And Sam is g0Ds prophet. China for instance probably doesn’t yet grasp this, and giggles about Deep Seek. Russia being more religious seems to sense the AI peril.
That doesn’t mean 🤖 g0D will work and to the extent that it does, many other g0ds shall be raised against the others.
This is normal history.
In America of course In God We Trust… but we can’t establish a religion.
We had a loose agreement on God and mostly trusted each other. But God wasn’t Progressive enough… so he was thrown down.
His replacements are here, call them Legion for they are many.
I think we can all skip reading that book because in a not too-distant de-industrialized future shaped by scarcity, there will be almost no machines left. This is not to say that AI cannot cause a great deal of mischief in the remaining decades but long-term it will go the way of the dodo with the rest of the industrial age.
What about the idea of a reissue of your father's book "The Phenomenon of Science"? It deserves it.
Apparently, you still can buy a used copy: https://www.amazon.com/Phenomenon-Science-Cybernetic-Approach-Evolution/dp/0231039832/
But I've thought about republishing it and The Inertia of Fear on my own imprint (https://berestabooks.com/). However, it would probably require OCR-ing the paper copies I have as I have no electronic files. Also, I am not sure what the legal status is -- it was initially published by Columbia Univ Press.
My degree course in the late sixties was 'Ergonomics and Cybernetics', although the Cybernetics part was dropped before the course started. Some of the content survived though.
How time flies.
The previous peak of "cybernetics" was in 1967, so you just missed the bandwagon...
https://substack.com/@peterturchin/note/c-144364075
In the US the term Cybernetics was replaced with the term Control Systems, which is still widely taught within engineering departments. It was huge during the years of the Space race and rocketry (with the leading Soviet journals being regularly translated into English). With the end of the Cold war it definitely lost its ways into endless and often senseless math, where theorems and proofs rule. By dropping the "Cyber" they seemed to had dropped interest in the (electronic) spirit and computers too. The field completely slept through the revolution coming out of Computer Science, from Image processing, to Autonomous driving. Their Robotics was stuck for decades because the math would not permit progress. At the early 2000s they (we) were still laughing at the Neural Net crowd's pompousness from the 80s. It is great news that Cybernetics is returning, and with it hopefully wonder and excitement.