Artificial Intelligence: Nostradamus, Oppenheimer, or Speer?

In the few weeks that have passed since we gave our presentation “Pluto in Aquarius: 2025 and Beyond,” tremendous advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been announced. Naturally, I have been asked questions about those announcements from both those who participated in the presentation and those who have heard me on other forums. To be able to answer reliably, I have spent a fair amount of time listening to others who have more experience with AI than I do – namely, the men who designed it. I share those interviews below for your consideration. I also went online and experimented with various free versions of several of the programs available. I found them to be of limited use at this time, but surprisingly useful for someone who might know nothing of the subject matter. That said, critical information was missing, and some minor but important errors were present. Thus, AI can only give us the information that it has access to at any given time. The inner human experience, the spiritual dimension, is not one of those things it can access. However, it can create an impressive simulacrum or imitation of it, and that is the critical point in understanding the impact AI can have on human relations.

What is important here is that in general, the creators of AI are atheists, and by that I mean either materialists or non-theists with an apparent but uncertain bend towards some of the more mental and intellectual aspects of Buddhism. That should be no surprise given the environment they live and work in, as nothing says Buddhism like a “mindfulness app” on your smart phone. They are all exceedingly smart and work in an environment with exceedingly smart people, but apparently have little wisdom. Or rather, they appear to have come to the wisdom phase of life too little and too late.

Now, that last point is critical .

We have several of the foundational human developers of AI stating that research and development needs to be slowed down, that greater controls need to be put on it, even – now pay attention here – that it needs to be made human friendly.

Yes, make sure that AI is friendly to humans. Read that again and think about it for a few minutes.

Often these revelations, which sound like a modern day Nostradamus, are called the “Oppenheimer Moment” or that moment when each of these AI designers had the profound realization that they had help create something that could destroy civilization (their own words). However, let me be exceedingly clear here: these men are lying, or at least self-serving, in this comparison. Oppenheimer was part of a team that built the first atomic bombs during a war that itself was threatening civilization. Yes, research had gone on before the war and we have told you of Fulcanelli’s famous warning. But, it was during a war and was used to assist in bringing that war to an end. The same cannot be said of AI. In fact one developer stated that AI would be the force the brings humanity together under one government.

These men have made their names, careers, and fortunes creating a super-human data sorting system that, because of its speed of access and processing is “more intelligent” – and that means potentially more powerful – than the people that made it. It is also more than a “tool” but an acting entity. Oppenheimer’s bomb could not act on its own any more than my hammer can. The same is not true for AI. Now, does this mean we are heading towards Skynet and a war with the robots? Yes and no. The reality is that this increasingly autonomous tool was released into the “wild” without safe guards. Bad actors can use it too, and use it they will. Human use is more a problem at the moment than autonomy of the system.

But back to our geniuses and their mea culpa, come to Jesus, moments. These profound realizations of what they have created and are still creating have nothing in common with Oppenheimer but a great deal with Albert Speer. Their choice of analogy betrays their lack of historical knowledge as well as wisdom. Albert Speer was Adolph Hitler’s architect. During his twenty year sentence in Spandau prison he wrote his memoirs in which he recounted his efforts to assassinate Hitler. The problem was, it was too little too late. The war was lost and Russian troops were already attacking Berlin. Nothing significant came of his plan or its lame execution, and it can be seen as little more than a passing effort to say, “I tried.”

No, these men are not Oppenheimer, but Speer. They made their fortunes, fortunes they still keep, and now want to warn us all that the golem they created, a golem that was to usher in a Golden Age, may easily become Frankenstein’s monster. They are hypocrites – brilliant, but hypocrites – trying to find a way to save themselves. What I find interesting about the interviews is that none of them ever mention anything that we can remotely consider metaphysical or spiritual. This is an important point. They are fundamentally materialists and clearly either unaware of karma in the philosophical sense or are coming to an understanding of it late in life. That is, they may be beginning to suspect that they will be held accountable for their creations – although I doubt they really think that way as “mechanical immortality” via robots seems to always be lurking in the background. As one said, “We have created a being that is immortal.” There are a lot of assumptions in that statement, but I leave that for another time.

Just as each of these men is pleading for “humanity” to do the “right thing” when they themselves have not, I also encourage you to do the “right thing.” They have the money, time, and skills, and while they go on podcasts and conferences warning about the Beast they have created, it is stunning how little Wisdom seems to be present, only an awareness after the fact.

Over the years many of you have heard me say, “The internet is the exteriorization of Yesod, the astral, into the material world.” This is now a reality. The astral forces Eliphas Levi illustrated as “The Devil”, or the great challenge we must face on path to adepthood, are expressed in clear terms through these recent technological advances. These “agents of Ahriman” or materialism have a bias towards destroying human relationships, consciousness, and connection to the spiritual dimensions simply because of their technological nature. This does not make them evil or bad, only biased towards “non-social/human engaging” activities. They make real humans redundant, even obsolete in many instances. This can only be offset by pro-human choices, choices that are fundamentally life enhancing and consciousness embracing. Then you can have the best of both, but it takes tremendous effort – sacrifice even – for that to happen. The paths leading to Tiphareth are of course paths of sacrifice, and that is what it will take.

Humanity is going to suffer tremendously over the next ten years (or more) as a result of this technological intrusion of the lower levels of the astral into our daily lives. Thus, it is up to you, to each of you, to decide what kind of world you want to live in –what kind of world you want your children and grandchildren to live in — and then to make the sacrifices to make that a reality.

There is no pleasant, easy, out of the box answer to this. These technologies will concentrate an unprecedented amount of power into the hands of a very few and it will transcend national boundaries. Those who are creating these new technologies tell us in their own words that they come with promises of a Heaven on earth, without God, or a Hell without purpose of redemption.

To be clear, this power is derived from the speed with which they can access unimaginable amount of information and then act on it. It is that simple. They will be smarter on all practical levels, and therefore, more powerful, simply because of privileged access and speed and for no other reason. Wisdom is not required, only access.

All there is for us to do is to practice, to assist each other and others in practice, and to lead by example. That is in fact the prime message of these AI warnings, “be a good teacher, a good example, for the AI to learn from.” Nothing could be more clear. But being a good example is an idea that is put into ACTION. It is an ACT. You must ACT for the benefit of others if you care about the future that is being built for your children and grandchildren to live in.

This is the Season of the Apocalypse, the time of the revealing. What it reveals is the real you. Be wise, have courage, act.

Do yourself a favor and watch the videos that follow. As usual, ignore the click-bait titles and listen to what is presented. For context, keep in mind that these interviews are between one and two years old.

There are others, of course, but what is important is not that we listen to second and third party interpretations, but to the words of the very people who are building this information architecture. In the words of one of these techno-prophets, “Information is power, but only if you use it.” These people will use it.

Will you?

Geoffrey Hinton – Godfather of AI

This is a short version of a longer interview. I suggest you listen to one of his most recent interviews that is longer in length for more details.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyegCeCcbA&t=1012s

Mo Gawdat, former Google AI Executive

Mustafa Suleyman, Google AI Executive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTxnLsYHWuI&t=7s

Ilya Sutskever, Need to Make AI Friendly Towards Humanity

In 1937 Fulcanelli warned us about the development of nuclear weapons, and eighty years after their first use we are still dealing with the effects of those decisions. In the early 2000s Jean Dubuis warned us that the greatest threat to human awakening –was not churches, corporations, or countries, but indifference. Don’t be indifferent, and don’t leave it to geniuses or the machines they love to figure it out. Listen closely to the videos listed and pay attention to a great deal of the naivete and lack of detailed historical perspective they contain. Be it nuclear weapons, climate change, or now AI, the drive for one-world government is relentless. The responsibility for the future lies in each of your hands and not in those of unelected bureaucrats, backroom power brokers, or inside the depths of a computer program whose intentions can never be fully known, even by the people who created it.

I am tempted to write more on this from an esoteric point of view. We have the predictions of Frater Albertus, Sybil Leek, Jean Dubuis, and Fulcanelli. There are also the predictions by Alice Bailey, the Kalachakra prophecies, and a host of Christian statements that lend possible insights into what is happening. But I do not believe those are necessary as the situation we are facing is clear and unambiguous as described by its creators: there own words are descriptive and predictive enough. What is missing in their solutions, as weak as they are, is the one thing each of us can bring: the spiritual dimension.

Let me know that this matters to you, that I am not simply a “voice crying in the wilderness,” that you understand what is being said here and that it matters to you. The future depends on you.

Sincerely,

Mark Stavish, M.A.
Director of Studies
Institute for Hermetic Studies