… a different perspective on the impetus that drives all our histrionic AI frenzy
and feeds our bewilderment with the newest tech evolution.
As all my writings, this is not meant as an argument or comprehensive explanation,
but as an illumination and clarification of the contextual entanglements — a node
in a larger, non-hierarchical exploration of how profit-driven abstraction shapes
our technologies, our societies, and our minds.
In a time where Cloud-Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism are haunting our livelihood
and all the anxiety about AI is challenging us social-emotionally, we should dig
deeper into the aspiration that drives our obsession with this technology.
Since robotics and Intelligent Automation (IA) have accelerated industrial productivity
for decades, manufacturing was the main driving force behind the rapid advancement
of computer technology.
It was not until capacities and speed of data processing had outgrown and surpassed
the mechanical necessities, and cloud network technology had built the infrastructure
to rapidly aggregate and elastically scale compute resources, that we recognized
and labelled it Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Since this form of data processing reflects a different kind of cognitivity,
a more original, genuine kind of intelligence that utilizes collective networks
to aggregate and distribute knowledge, shares individual skills and resources
in communities to boost productivity, efficiency and common profitability.
This way of thinking or intelligence stands now in stark contrast to our derogated,
degraded or impoverished intelligence, and is rather bewildering the inadequately
educated social-emotions than enlighten them.
So, the general use of AI tools remains confined to the economic fallacies
that are just accelerating the erosion of our already frail Socio-Ecological-Cohesion.
Profitability is a principal element of modern economics.
It affected all aspects of our lives,
including our social-emotional interrelationships
and psycho-physiological well-being.
Profiteering has become the ‘master mind’ of education, healthcare and military conflicts,
making even justice and crime-fighting a lucrative business.
The deeper issue with AI’s profitability is that it touches the core of our intellectual capacities
and hampers with the cognitive functionalities of the social-emotionally immature population !
Here it’s not so much about ‘profit’ (from Latin profectus – progress, advancement) as it is
a question of the administration and distribution of returns & yields !
Where our western economies are based on a competitive self-interest,
racing to outplay and overtake every ‘other’ thing out there, all other,
more sapient alternatives—those based on sharing, participation,
common ecological relationship, and social reciprocity—are systematically dismissed.
Driven by a mono-cultural-turned-monotheistic belief system and guided
by its ‘invisible hand’ (Adam Smith), we pursue the conquest and subjugation
of all that is ‘other’—whatever rivals our interest, challenges our
anthropocentric entitlements, or opposes our economic assumptions.
More social, community-oriented—or worse, anarchistic—models are categorically dismissed,
censored or eliminated. Still, modern anthropological research points-out that our common,
indigenous ancestors—hunter-gatherers-becoming-farmers—often had more peaceful
and egalitarian societies than we have today.
With this Neolithic Revolution came great changes to our socio-economic makeup,
and that is where things began to go wrong.
When abstract thinking created artificial concepts that dismissed the ecological principles
of our subsistence environment, an anthropocentric hubris began to develop new ‘languages’.
These languages ultimately constructed new, complex logics & ethics around this new socio-economic endeavor.
Some of its reasoning was obscured by time and progress, or simply lost in history and ‘translation’.
Other theories and assumptions became stuck in our minds, forming a paradigm
incompatible with the eco-dynamic reality of our habitat.
These incongruent ideologies and beliefs began to behave like mental viruses (C.G.Jung),
thus compromising all further socio-physiological developments.
Abstract Ideas of universal truth and a linear-hierarchically stratified world order
—combined with fallacious theories of entitlements—gave rise to engineered socio-economic
structures and artificial realities that were based entirely on the exploitation
and extraction of supposedly unlimited resources.
Profit was once regarded as the rightful reward or ‘harvest’ of any just and righteous individual.
This view persisted until it became evident that the system itself was rigged
and the profiteering of a few spiralled out of control.
Now it’s just one of these numerous ‘brain bugs’ that infest our civilization and antagonize
our mental immune system with empty promises, false hope and much more of the same.
With the systematic disaggregation and hierarchical stratification of our innate,
Social-Emotional-Intelligence came a spiritual disconnection from all ‘other’ and
the psycho-physical separation from our socio-ecological environment.
This profound schism from the common and collective, not only hampered and impaired
our sensory awareness, but also derailed or retarded further cognitive developments of our species.
Now that we have commodified not only every thing on this planet,
but also every idea, experience and relationship is commercialized,
the ‘marketplace’ has turned more into a battlefield than a trading place.
‘Social’ networks and communal congregations have become domains
where leaders and followers must ‘eat or get eaten’.
Without mature social and emotional integration, intelligence becomes recursive
rather than generative—an artificial substitute chasing its own abstractions,
increasingly detached from the eco-logic it depends on.
