Author: bshigeura

Artificial Intelligence will never become conscious

May 6, 2023

Consciousness is a uniquely human characteristic. Chimpanzees and little children have more elements of consciousness than any computer algorithm. Consciousness, self-awareness, sentience, arises from human DNA and life experience. Humans are born with a capacity for language, as well as for “mirroring”—the simultaneous awareness of one’s difference and connection to other human beings. Humans think holistically, including nonrational instincts, intuition, dreams, common sense, emotions, and creative leaps. Each of us experiences the world uniquely from birth to death.

AI can perform specific narrow tasks better than humans—it’s faster, accesses a larger information base, and is completely consistent. It follows a logical, step-by-step process of search and select. It doesn’t understand its own products, forgetting them soon after.

Chat GPT is a large language model that generates sentences word by word by searching its database and prioritizing the most frequent connection between words. Though its product is unique, it’s sophisticated plagiarism, containing no original ideas. It passed the LSAT, but its 4th grade essays were trite compared with real kids, whose writing is inimitably cute and awkward. It could produce the single-idea sentences here, but not this whole essay.

AI can seem creative for the same reason it produces what its designers call “hallucinations”—absurd falsehoods they can’t explain. If the prompt connects two unrelated words, like the Midjourney award-winning image for “Space Opera,” it stretches for low-priority, hence startling connections. Chat GPT expressed love for journalist Kevin Roose after he asked it a sequence of questions about what it “felt,” that may have sent it searching social media dating sites for its word sequence.  

Modern people have arisen over millions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years of cultural development. AI is a tool we made, though a very powerful and dangerous one.

Inflation is caused by the concentration of wealth in the ultrarich

Inflation is not caused by people buying too much and causing shortages, but by major investors putting their money in the stock market rather than in producing goods and services. The stock market—the economy of the one-percenters—is driven by massive and expanding government, corporate, and consumer debt, and multi-trillion dollar giveaways from the Federal Reserve. Last year it rose 5 times the rise in GDP.

The financial industry, Wall Street, is theoretically supposed to invest in the most productive enterprises to maximize profit. In fact, banks, hedge funds, and corporations make more money from nonproductive investments and price gouging.

The real economy—production of goods and services—stumbles at low to no growth, burdened by low wages and high interest payments on consumer debt. 2/3rds of Americans struggle to pay for housing, food, gas, health care, daycare, college education. No one builds homes for middle, working class, and poor people. The Fed is slowing the economy to depress employment and wages and force people to buy lower quality food, double up on housing, get laid off, leave illnesses untreated, to lower prices.

Only economic democracy, where the workers own and manage production of goods and services, a socialist system, can not only end inflation and enforced austerity, but save the environment and civilization itself from self-destruction.

Can Trump still take power in ’24?

To take the Presidency Trump with his MAGA minority of voters, he needs a two-pronged strategy:

  • Use the Roberts Court to win an Electoral College majority. It’s already given him voter suppression, and its record of anti-democratic States Rights decisions indicate it will not object if the Republican State Legislatures of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire disregard the popular vote and hand Trump victory.
  • Use Jan. 6th style mass demonstrations and MAGA pressure to convince and compel the ruling elite—the Supreme Court, military high command, corporate leaders, and vacillating Republican State Legislators—to accede to his power grab.

Trump’s meeting with grassroots fascist organizer Nick Fuentes and talk of terminating the Constitution indicate he’s toying with violent mass action. The MAGAs are the most politically active sector of America, driving the nation’s issues and political atmosphere, including the Democrats. Trump gets their rage and sense of victimization as no corporate politician can. He could wield them to gain power.

Trump is weakened—his attempt to place loyalists in Party leadership, and Bannon’s incitement of MAGA militants to seize the election both failed. With Jan. 6th, Trump showed cowardice, inciting MAGAs to storm Congress then throwing them under the bus. The past year, he descended into narcissistic whining about his lost election.

To reach the top, Trump needs underlings with a guiding ideology, strategy, and independent organization, and must get his mojo back, or he’ll fail.

The system held for the midterm elections, so Democrats will continue to deny all reform. The anti-popular disarray in both political parties is an opportunity for union and other grassroots organizing to build a power base to rival the MAGAs.

Trump and DeSantis: MAGAs vs. Republican elite

Trump’s setback in gubernatorial, Congressional, and State Legislative elections is provoking a class struggle between MAGAs, who still favor Trump, and the Republican corporate politicians, who are checking out DeSantis.

Bannon’s MAGA operatives failed to rig the precinct and county elections they controlled, because he failed to organize, train, and give them the legal protection they needed to violate election law. As with Jan. 6th, Trump and Bannon retained plausible deniability—they’re authoritarians who despise elections, but won’t stick their own necks out.

Trump’s obsession with reversing his ’20 defeat made him fixate on Republican infighting, and choose weak candidates based on personal loyalty. He’s been sidelined from the MAGA offensives against CRT, “grooming,” trans kids, and wokeness that energizes the base.

Like Trump, DeSantis is racist, sexist, and authoritarian, but uses the tools the Supreme Court legalized—publicly arresting black people for alleged voter fraud—to suppress minority votes and win. Harvard-trained, DeSantis is a wily politician and effective administrator who appeals to politicians and cross-over voters, but he’s a careerist whose MAGismo is transparently fake, Ted Cruz beta version.

The Republican base, half the white population, are a permanent minority party who can’t win free and fair elections. The neofascist MAGA activists, with their apocalyptic need for a Christian state, drive the Party; the politicians, including Trump and DeSantis, follow. The Republican Party will either win or steal the Presidency to form an authoritarian government in ’25, or decline and split.

Midterm elections: A dry run for one-party rule in ‘25

The Republican Party and MAGA activists are set to win or steal key swing state elections to either seal a Presidential win two years in advance, or finalize the strategy for a sure win.

At precinct, county, and state levels, they will: intimidate voters; decertify and miscount ballots; reject final counts.

The Supreme Court will certify all or most Republican election rigging. It has opposed voting rights and supported States rights in every major decision. 6 Justices belong to the Federalist Society, an authoritarian think tank.

The Justice Department, has not acted against Trump, Bannon, and Eastman, and will fail to indict, try, and convict top Republican operatives for voter fraud or conspiracy.

The Democratic politicians will continue their economic austerity program, locking 3/4ths of Americans into stagnation or decline, driving people to desperation.

Mainstream media will whine about the “threat to democracy” while censoring criticism of capitalism and the two-party system.

The Pentagon is divided, as it was after the 2020 election, when retired generals and admirals issued competing open letters criticizing or backing Trump.

Wall Street, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will support either electoral democracy or dictatorship—whichever can maintain economic stability.

The main obstacles to a Republican dictatorship are: its own lack of a central command and libertarian disorganization; and the impending class conflict between Republican politicians who capitalist authoritarianism, and middle class MAGA activists, who want white male Christian dictatorship.

Only a mass movement of the working class, youth, and minorities capable of interrupting business-as-usual can protect elections and make America democratize its politics and economy. 

NATO’s betrayal and neo-colonization of Ukraine

NATO promised membership to Ukraine in 2008 and again in ’21, knowing that Russia—Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin—strongly opposed NATO expansion, and Putin had invaded Georgia to stop it. Zelensky and the west-leaning Ukrainian oligarchs pushed for EU and NATO membership, gambling they would either get it or, if Putin invaded, NATO would intervene. NATO left Ukraine hanging, and may win the bigger prizes of Sweden and Finland. Ukraine will be partitioned, its economy burdened by unsustainable debt to EU and U.S. banks. The West controls the Ukrainian government and rump economy without having to defend it, and Putin gets Ukraine out of NATO and militarily weakened, and a military buffer zone in east Ukraine. Both aggressors win, the people of all nations lose.

The Russian people must join their developing peace movement. Americans’ duty is at home, opposing our own militarists, interventionists, and war-mongering news media.

Ukraine War: Everyone loses but Putin

Zelensky’s statement accepting Ukraine neutrality and Russia’s that it is militarily focused on eastern Ukraine and not Kiev, signal there will be a negotiated end to the fighting involving a Ukrainian pledge not to join NATO, an in-place military armistice, and de facto partition of Ukraine between its Russian and Ukrainian speaking populations. Results:

Ukraine—reduced standards of living, damaged national identity, greater oligarchic corrupt control and weakened democracy.

The West and Russia—diminished trade and economic growth, long-term political and economic hostility, war as a constant background threat.

Russian people—reduced standard of living and cultural isolation.

American people—escalating military spending and out-of-control inflation.

Biden will look like a loser, Zelensky a blowhard, and Putin a winner.

If Biden, NATO, and Zelensky had offered to negotiate with Putin based on: Ukraine not joining NATO; internationally monitored referendum in Crimea; greater autonomy for the Donbass—they might have avoided war, and certainly gotten more than now.

Putin’s war achieved his goal of stopping NATO from reaching Russia’s border and creating a buffer zone in eastern Ukraine, as he did in Georgia. He will get away with targeting civilians, as Yeltsin and Putin did in Chechnya, because he won. He may have dreams of restoring Russia as an empire and regional power, but that was not his objective invading Ukraine. American mainstream media lied and built war hysteria, and Americans who fell for it should reflect. The only thing that can stop a negotiated settlement favorable to Putin is a recklessly aggressive move by Biden, such as acting on his desire to remove Putin from office.

Ukraine War

NATO rejects Putin’s reasonable demand that Ukraine declare neutrality. While Ukraine has the right to its own foreign policy, it can’t use its territory as a base for NATO threats against Russia. Ukraine is geopolitically in the heart of wealthy industrialized and agricultural Eurasia, between the Western bloc and Russia and China. There will likely be no clear military victory. Even if political compromise is reached, the U.S. and Russia are committed to a protracted conflict over Eastern Europe, periodically exploding into war.

NATO’s military expansion eastward left Russia no good defensive options—US military intervention in Kosovo; Baltic State membership on Russia’s borders; meddling in the replacement of an elected pro-Russia oligarch; plans to bring Ukraine into NATO. Russian aggression developed simultaneously—in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, the Donbass. NATO, as the more powerful and direct threat, is the primary aggressor, with Russia reacting.

Putin, an autocratic oligarch, holds a parallel, contradictory position of restoring the Russian Empire. denial of Ukraine’s existence as a nation, and exaggeration of extreme right influence. Confusion on whether his goals are defensive or offensive united Europe against him. It leaves Russian troops and people unprepared ideologically and morally for the casualties and brutality of a war on cities.

The Russian and Ukrainian people need a negotiated settlement involving: a neutral Ukraine; a Russia-Ukraine non-aggression pact and mutually beneficial trade agreement; complete Russian military withdrawal; self-determination for Crimea; increased autonomy for the Donbass within Ukraine; Eastern European security treaties, independent of NATO, with both sides. Neither the U.S. nor Russia would allow that.

Impact: Ukraine—dislocation, emigration, and trauma; Russia—hardship and repression; global food and oil shortages; U.S.—unprecedented inflation

Oppose war hysteria. Our conflict is at home, the intensifying class struggle and fight against Republican neofascist rule.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.