New AI ventures

Yesterday, I became a Perplexity AI user after listening to an interview with its co-founder. This morning, it sent information about Elon Musk’s latest AI venture. Will Musk become a giant in AI?

Behind the scenes, AI advances.

While average citizens go about their daily work, entertainment and social routines, anything-but-average men like Elon Musk and Aravind Srinivas quietly change the world through innovation and investments in technology.

Elon Musk’s xAI investment in Memphis Supercluster is described here at the Perplexity AI web site.

The race for AI dominance between China and the USA has been analyzed and reported elsewhere. The stakes are more impactful to mankind than perhaps any other race since the invention and deployment of nuclear weapons.

I feel helpless.

Everyone knows that AI is a two-edged sword.

In the “right” hands, it may well become the greatest boon to human prosperity in history.

In the “wrong” hands, who knows what devastating consequences may arise?

I, like every other average citizen, must sit on the sidelines as a helpless observer while the global titans “duke it out” over AI dominance.

I hope that “boon wins over bust” on the AI battlefield.

Bunkers anyone?

Following the horrific devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 at the hands of American nuclear weapons, people began to build underground bunkers. These were stocked with food and water, and prepared for immediate inhabitance in case the unimaginable happened.

Today, the “off grid homesteader” may be considered the equivalent of the 1950s bunker dweller.

However, everyone today is so heavily invested in modern electrical devices and their “creature comforts” that it is hard to imagine a “safe place” from potentially evil actors who can control every modern convenience and necessity.

A single, massive EMP event, for example, is one possible threat that is known, but AI introduces new possibilities that are yet to be identified.

Prayer?

I am not religious but billions of others are. I respect their choice.

My deceased mother was a devout Roman Catholic who prayed daily and relied heavily on her faith. I suspect that prayer offered her some peace-of-mind in the face of life’s risks and adversities.

Maybe all the collective prayers of the faithful throughout human history might explain at least some of the “good” in the world, but there has always been a great deal of “bad” coexisting with the “good”. Why has prayer not triumphed over evil once and for all?

If prayer has failed to eradicate evil, maybe AI will succeed?

Maybe the “better angels” of humanity will triumph in the AI race and usher in an age of peace and prosperity for everyone.

This is my (naive?) hope. Only time will tell if it succeeds.