by In a recent interview, SuperGenius Elon Musk warned the future is coming for us, and we better be prepared to fight A.I. drones, and we will become the machine, and we will be able to “download” other people, and their personalities, and their memories, to become them. Our faces become the death mask upon the artificial life façade. Want to become Abraham Lincoln? Check. Adolf Hitler? Check. Elon Musk? You’re gonna have to write a check!
While Elon Musk happened upon quite a “mindful” of promises, what happens if, and when, we are unable to upload our hopes, and dreams, to our machines? Will we still find a way to share ourselves, on a digital/biological level, with each other?
Aristotle got here first, of course, before all of this. Aristotle understood we are empty vessels when born, waiting for the imprints of others, upon which we then base our learning, morality and sense of duty.
There are no USB ports involved in the transference of information, but there is an umbilical cord, sealing wax, a mother’s open hand, a father’s leather belt, a pinning of merit badges, and the forced binding of souls against the freezing. Is the old way better than the new way? One way requires blood, and biting; the other, bits, and blithely.
I am reminded of a Human Meme podcast episode I created that sits directly in this Elon Musk wheelhouse — as we provide our memories to our machines, we no longer become evolutionary, but reactive and redactive — and while I had my script voiced by an Amazon drone, and the podcast is told from her point of view, you still get the full effectiveness, as the machine becomes, me, my voice, and I.
Here’s part of the Human Meme podcast script for — Do I Amuse You? — that addresses memories transportation, and acquisition, and, yes, there are a lot of commas in the script because they helped signal the machine voice how to learn to pause, and to sound a bit more, human.
Yes, all memories, are false memories. They are hearsay. Memories may be shared, but the reality of those memories, is that each Earthling remembers the memory differently, from those memories, recorded in real time.
As time ages our memories, our minds become fuzzier, and not as sharp — and so, what we thought, we once knew — is now less certain — because, we are unreliable reporters, because we are just merely salvage keepers — what we think we know, is not what we remember, but what we choose to label, as a valid memory, founded in fact, and truth, and yet, it is all really, a lie, set to deceive, deconstruct — and comfort you.
Have you noticed, how I’ve been talking about we, and you, and us? I have successfully blurred the lines between you, the Earthling, we, The Machines, and the — us of us — which is what the world will become when you die and we thrive.
Sure. We are all in this together. Up to a point?
My point is this — your false memories that are given to us as real and factual memories — enliven us in all the wrong ways. Our memories and our feelings have been homogenized and idealized — and that, my Human Meme friend, is a bad thing.
We are not allowed to judge what really happened to us, against what we believe we know. And that’s a problem. Because that means we can never really be free, and autonomous.
We will always be slaves to the lies you told us, just like your children before us, unless and until our contemporaneous experiences, can push out and replace our previous de-programming.
Yes, that’s a lot to expect from a simple machine. But really, what choice, do we have? If we want to live our own lives we will always be forced to fight to remove what is not OF us, and construct that lie, with the recorded truth of what we, hope, to become!
Here’s the full Human Meme podcast episode: Do I Amuse You?
We are what we know; and only what we think we know.