AI Is Here

I read briefly yesterday (7/24/26) that Elon Musk had some interesting predictions to lay out in his recent interview with Zanny Beddoes from the Economist. I found a synopsis of that interview online which I copy and paste part of it below and comment on. Here it is. Economist: “

BeInCrypto

Lockridge Okoth

UpdatedThu, July 23, 2026 at 4:12 PM CDT

Elon Musk says it is too late to stop AI. Even he could not halt it, the xAI founder told The Economist.

Musk spoke to The Economist's Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes in an interview recorded on Monday, before OpenAI disclosed that one of its frontier models went rogue.

Why Musk Thinks It's Too Late to Stop AI””

My response: It likely is too late to stop AI If we do not develop it as benevolently as possible than Iran, Russia, China or North Korea will develop it, and weaponize it against the West.

Besides once a dangerous or lethal technology is developed, the genie is out of the bottle, and cannot be put back in it.

Economist: “This is a reversal. In March 2023, Musk signed the Future of Life Institute's open letter urging a six-month pause on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. Months later, he launched his own AI company, xAI. Today he sees no brakes at all.

"I mean honestly, there seems to be just inexorable progress here in AI and in robots that even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn't."

The danger has not shrunk in his eyes. Musk stood by his earlier estimate of a 10% to 20% chance that killer robots would wipe out humanity.

"I still think there's risk associated with AI and robots. It's not zero."”

My response: It is very possible that AI robots could turn on humanity being our masters and exterminators. Any technology can serve the Good Sprits or the Evil Spirits. Killer robots massacring humanity, New technology can always be used for evil as well as for good application.

Ben Dorr, Executive Director of Minnesota Gun Rights, Facebooked recently—I am paraphrasing him--that why should we trust state or federal police who believe in mass surveillance, flock cameras and these same feds, sheriffs and chiefs of police are pushing gun control too.

Benn also had this Facebook entry today (7/25/26): "It's not difficult to understand your phone already tracks you like a flock camera. Accepting one form of voluntary data collection doesn’t logically commit you to accepting all forms of involuntary data collection."

My response: We should start by outlawing, at all levels of government the use of traffic cameras to write speeding tickets etc. The loss of privacy and use of camera/computers to police people need to stop right now.

We need privacy protections against voluntary and involuntary collection of personal data from both our pones and flock cameras. It is a privacy and liberty issue. AI can serve fascists and tyrants as well as the people, or AI might become the new Mao.

Economist: “Still, he argued against pulling the plug. Even if a stop button existed, he said, "we probably shouldn't press it" because the most likely outcome is abundance for all. His new philosophy fits in one line.”

My response: Musk sees abundance as a net positive for humanity which it is that AI will become smarter than the some of all human intelligence within 5 years, and take over the world within 10 years. And all of this is possible.

He also notes that AI and robots will son be smarter, stronger, faster, quicker, cheaper and do better work than humans, so all humans will be laid off and be unemployed, requiring billionaires and trillionaires like him to pay willingly higher taxes to fund a guaranteed annual income for all workers.

My hunch is that these changes would be nightmarish. Humans cannot thrive and be civilized individually or collectively without self-esteem as individuals, merited, earned self-esteem or love, gained by working, praying being moral and self-actualizing.

To have a leisured class of billions of adults around the world never working and yet being supported by the government is a disastrous plan. People without work become frustrated and lose self-esteem, and they will be filled with hate, and civilization and civil society cannot survive this hit.

Even if people are millionaires they still need to work to enjoy fulfilling ives.

If most humans become individuating anarchist supercitizens they will individually and as a majority be smart enough, strong enough, quick enough and productive enough to compete with Ai.

With God in their lives as praying individuators and ling angels, they will be creative enough to keep up with AI, the super-intelligent, computer deity, but will it be a benevolent deity or a demon—hard to say.

As organized individuators, we can coexist with or live apart from smart robots, an intelligent life form which we invented, but we must not allow them to keep us from working, running our government democratically and living our private lives in liberty as we work to support ourselves. As individuators we are smart enough, versatile enough, quick enough and creative enough to withstand AI and smart robots from dominating us tyrannically as our masters, or killing us off.

My Thoughts On Dialetheia

 

If the dialetheists are correct, and true contradictions exist logically and metaphysically, then it could well be that this could serve as my definition of what moderation is and means. Ayn Rand and the Objectivists, with whom I share many common views, seem to deny that there are true contradictions logically, let alone existing in the world. I agree with them more than I disagree with them about the possibility of true contradictions being actual and correct, but somewhat I go against the Objectivists and admit with Graham Priest that some true contradictions exist and exert powerful influence in our lives.

As a kind of moderate who is self-styled, moderate, my stance on dialetheia is about their being less real and true than than as always real and true. Another way of stating this as a moderate is that backers of the Principle of Non-Contradiction mostly are accurate as they propose that the world is good, logical, true and metaphysically actual if contradictions are denied as false, wrong, bad, unreal and absurd. Some of the times the proponents of PNC are incorrect and mistaken: sometimes some contradictions are true, real and good, but most of the time consistency and logical coherence are reality, true and of immense value, a logical way of thinking both smart and morally noble.

God made humans, perhaps the most fantastic and startling living true contradiction imaginable. We are part beast and part angel. We are part animal and part rational angel. We are part devil and part virtuous noble angel. We are biological and animal, yet idealistic and rational. We are born selfless or selfish, but can learn to become morally reborn as unselfish, rational egoists who pursue our enlightened self-interest.

Our nature is dualistic: part animal and brain, and part soul and spirit. Each human is a flesh-and-blood living, breathing true contradiction, a false contradiction, a true consistency, a false consistence an evil contradiction, a good contradiction, an evil consistency and a nonevent consistency

We are a mess, but as individuals, we can be a glorious mess if we determine to self-realize and serve God. Think what thinkers and philosophers will do with this take of mine on human nature—both its flaws and potential--in future generations.

Only This Modest Social Expectation Is Achievable

 

If an individual really gets serious about self-realizing, that individual will soon transcend whatever familial, neighborhood, ethnic, religious and social groups to which he belonged and enjoyed as much as he was able to with whatever degree of unpopularity he experienced, and that was the apex of his social status, his social esteem, his popularity.

Once the individual evolves into being a living angel, an anarchist individuating supercitizen, a great soul still alive, at that point he is permanently an outcast, an excommunicated rejected misfit, an ex-member of whatever group he use to belong to, how ever modest his social status was there, he had some modest, some sense of belonging.

No more. He is now a social freak, a renegade, an enemy, an outlier without possibility of redeeming, from the point of the view of the nonindividuating, groupist, selfless, mob-members of the various cliques to which he used to belong.

What can the great soul hope to achieve socially from this point on? My experience as a living great soul informs me that there is no going back, that there is no social future for one unless the world changes, or all humans develop themselves into being living great souls, which is the job which the Good Spirits and the great deities gave to each human even while a fetus in her mother’s womb.

For the living great soul, his social status will not exist, and his social expectation is that it is a victory and the best which he can achieve if friends, neighbors, family members and government officials allow him to live without being constantly harassed, beaten up, murdered, surveilled by federal police, or sent to prison or a mental institution.

Being left alone to live his best life in peace would be a great social victory, and as good as he can hope for in this world. It is more possible if he resides in America or England (or the England 50 years ago which tolerated eccentrics as a cultural tradition), he could find peace and coexistence, but the mob is always angry that a free spirit in their midst is alive, unbroken and not-conforming so these discriminators keep harassing him, just as the anti-Semitics have been harassing, pogromming and murdering Jews without cause for millennia.

Truth Too Is Moderate

 

I have long felt the middle is the way, that the smart, the beautiful, the actual, the spiritual, the moral, the loving and the true are something like perfect Platonic Ideals, while literally, typically falling short of being Immortal Forms, while remaining elusive, unattainable and not existent as perfected Forms. So to promise that our truth claims are just such accomplished, final answers to everything, that they are perfect, flawless, unchanging and immortal concepts is to lie or be mistaken, and the zealous pursuit of certain truth becomes a moral and political nightmare if practiced. God does not at all exhort us feverishly to chase after absolute truth or moral perfection. To do so is both unwise, irrational and wicked.

For it is literally impossible to make some proposition perfect and incomparable, something which is definable at best as a version of perfect truth, with the real deal remaining an ineffable and unattainable truthful statement. What is proffered by humans can only be what their intellects can produce, not more than what their limited consciousness is capable of constructing and producing. Our definitions can never be utterly precise, totally comprehensive and expressive, exact and complete. Rather a very well crafted, clear human proposition at best is approximately so or true—and that is an impressive accomplishment to come so far—as far as one can go rationally and verbally, and that laudable success should be our modest, sensible, achievable ideal and objective to settle for attainable moderate truth, to make as perfect, clear and concise as possible what is at bottom ineffable, not totally definable, for all true statements are mottled, approximations.

In this blog entry, my point is that what is true is also influenced, shaped and revealed through the metaphysical reality and input called moderation.

It seems to me that what is true is much or mostly governed by the correspondence theory of truth, how things are in the natural world. But, truth pluralism and the coherence theory of truth must be included in our pantheon of illuminative truth theories. This is required so that we may arrive at or come near to the truth through also by traveling along other truth corridors, recording what we observe there and learn, by seeing the world through the lenses of other, competing theories of truth, including those more imbued with skepticism, relativism, antirealism and subjectivism that are rejected by realists loyal to the correspondence theory of truth, still the most fruitful and promising of the theories of truth.

Truth should no longer be pursued and sought after as done by those that insist upon all statements meet a standard of being absolutely and necessarily true in all places and at all times, with no viable, contending, substantive or contradictory examples or scientific counterexamples to cast doubt upon these statements.

If we insist upon absolute truth as our measure, then we will have to reject moderate, approximate truth (So we will not be productive at working towards ultimate truth, a goal likely infinitely vast, complex, with its goal post ever retreating. Moderate truth is enough for humans to search for. Its treasure is well worth seeking, accumulating and growing in our efforts to grow our understanding.) or truths which are inductively derived through experimentation, which are probably true, but the knower does not know 100% for sure if he is correct forever in all places at all times.

It seems that lying or being deluded or in great error are all intimately connected to what is on the other side of this epistemological coin, an unrealistic devotion to an absolute standard of truth being met with each presented statement, or that statement unless so asserting infallible, inerrant, complete certainty is to be disregarded by an audience of critics out of hand, even before the merits are logically, linguistically, semantically and empirically tested. To demand from the presenter statements of infallible certainty guarantees we cannot grow our knowledge, for the standard not only does not exist or likely does not exist in reality, but we cannot provide statements of such magnificent excellent, description or accuracy. For that is not how the world works, and such truth statements cannot be discovered or made by humans of limited intelligence.

Somehow seeking absolute truth often becomes a corrupt enterprise. In part it is linked to fanaticism, groupism, true believers and mass movements, with their bogus but absolutist assertions. They claim to possess absolute truth which they don’t but they act as if they do possess it. They believe what they say also.

To seek perfection and absolute truth is to lie to be irrational and evil. To lie is to be evil.

To a great extent, it is a legitimate enterprise to seek absolute truth and get as close as possible, knowing humbly that even omniscient or near omniscient God does not know, may not know, nor even desires to seek absolute truth because it does not exist, or if it does, it is not moral or liberating, and to seek too ardently after it is to corrode the self, and to turn evil, bitter, resentful and hateful.

If God cannot ascertain absolute truth or could but refuses to pursue it, then why should of humans of much more modest intelligence seek epistemological, absolute, pure certainty or truth. Seeking after or making claims for absolute truth is an illegitimate enterprise for humans to undertake, for they so invested must necessarily fail and turn corrupt and fell.

A Contemporary Luddite

 

As a congenital and habitual loner, I do not socialize much, nor go out very much. Still, my wife wanted me to accompany her on Memorial Day (5/25/26) to go see the movie Pressure at an AMC movie theater showing in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and I said yes. Great movie, by the way.

My wife ordered the tickets online, and concessions too.

I have not been to a movie theater for perhaps 15 years, so this digital experience without paper ticket stubs for the gatekeeper to tear up, and paying cash for concessions was shockingly new to me. I felt overwhelmed and unable to function.

I had this strange feeling of being a Luddite—not opposed to the advances and changes per se—but feeling completely lost and unable to function in this drastically changed movie-going world.

I did not fit into this world, nor know how to act. I could not have succeeded in that world without my wife’s intervention.

Eric Hoffer has written in detail about how adults feel misfitted when they encountered a changed world, one which they are ill-trained and ill-equipped to function.

I suspect the world will change even faster going forward, and coping and adapting will be an ever greater challenge, perhaps a game at which only the young and the adult individuator is versatile and flexible enough to keep pace.

The Positive Mode Of Power

 

My contention is that there are two essential modes of power functioning in society, and likely somehow are also operating in nature and supernature too, pointing to the existence of objective morality out there beyond individual or collective moral codes.

When a virtuous person is a person of integrity and love, generally in thought, word and deed, regardless of believing God, or what moral code which she proclaims that guides her living, the positive mode of power, or the power of powerfulness, is the power model she exhibits and displays as she conducts herself daily in the world. This mode of power, which she adheres too in practice, is the power love and loving, abusing none and allow none to abuse her; tyrannizing none and allowing none to tyrannize her, self-realizing and working for a good divinity, all whilst esteeming and loving herself, the origin of her inclination and tendency to esteem and love others.

She may sacrifice her happiness out of the duty to provide care for others, but mostly, she does her duty and seek her personal happiness, all the while teaching the young that if they emulate her, they should be able to flourish and be self-sufficient, growing cosmos, and the kingdom of God in this world.

                *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *

         

Evil, be it social, personal, natural or supernatural, is really all about hating the self, hating others, hating God, hating the world, and wishing ill, destruction, pain, death and unhappiness upon all. The evil man operates and wields his negative mode of power, the power of powerlessness, a satanic model of power relations at work in the world.

Under this power model, he tyrannizes, victimizes and abuses those below in the various hierarchical structures (governmental, businesses, social, academic) permeating society those below him and is tyrannized, victimized and abused by those above him.

Under such a wicked personal, social and political dispensation, all are fiercely loyal to the system which owns them, to which they are addicted. They do not individuate as commanded and exhorted to do their their individualistic good deity.

He is a joiner, a pack-dweller who lives second-handedly. He seeks to grow the power of his sick arrangement for Satan and Lera, who above all else tirelessly seek and scheme to grow their way of life, or I should say death, and this useful fool, their flying monkey either unintentionally or militantly strive to grow their malevolent kingdom.

Do We Learn?

 

I do not wish to harrow poor Jordan Peterson when is he is ailing and suffering so grievously, but though suffering is indeed much of what human existing is about, it is not the whole story, and I am not sure it ennobles most sufferers, unless they were high-minded, virtuous Stoics before the onset of whatever sickness, affliction, loss or tragedy which now troubles them.

Suffering can humble, educate, enlighten, deepen, and exalt the foolish, the rationalizer, the proud, if he is open to change, open to seeing his failures and flaws as they are now revealed, without crowd affirmation, without surrounding noise, with disguises shorn and tossed off.

My observation is that suffering is painful for all sufferers, but garbage in, garbage out. If the sufferer, before his affliction occurred, was not seeking the painful truth about himself and his flaws, working assiduously, repeatedly to improve himself intellectually, morally and spiritually, then suffering likely will not make him smarter, reformed, or more compassionate. It might make him instead more resentful, bitter and out to revenge himself upon the world and people that have made it hard for him.

However, for most people, nonindividuating mediocrities stumbling along on an even keel until their Maker calls them home, suffering will not much lift them up or tear them down farther. After or deep into the experienced crisis, they will be about the same as they were, for suffering for them is just a thing that happened, not a poignant opportunity to reflect, be reborn, to lead an elevated life going forward.