Killing Technology

1. Cyberpunk

"Cyberpunk" is a form of fiction given birth by the collision between societal decay and technological ascendancy. It was popular in the 1980s but still influences modern movies, television shows, comic books, and graphic novels, as well as music to a great degree. Films such as The Matrix, Blade Runner, Robocop, Akira, and newer offerings such as Cyberpunk 2077 have kept the genre alive. Its roots go back to the novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, the French comic art of Moebius as exemplified in Metal Hurlant (known in America as "Heavy Metal"), and the "New Wave of Science Fiction" pioneered by writers such as J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Its aesthetic is seedy and post-modern, its world populated by hardboiled cynics, cutthroats, hackers, corporate criminals, and brutal, militarized police. And, of course, the occasional terrorist (er, perhaps "freedom fighter"?) working to bring down the oppressive, dehumanizing system wherein cyberspace (as defined by William Gibson) has become the Alcatraz of the soul.

The amazing thing is that cyberpunk, that offbeat and darkly humorous genre I remember from roleplaying games and quirky (and groundbreaking) shows like Max Headroom, is no longer fiction. Grok this: CYBERPUNK is NO LONGER FICTION.

I'll pause here for a quote from Nietzsche:

"He who wishes to be creative must first smash and destroy accepted values."

In 2023, Cyberpunk crossed over, from the realm of science fiction dreams, into our everyday, generally accepted "reality." With the afterbirth of AI, with its ascendant rise to a position where it will, inevitably, in short order, come to dominate every aspect of our lives, we have seen the yawning face of a tomorrow that is no longer tomorrow--it's RIGHT NOW. The past no longer matters; it has been rendered irrelevant. Nothing that came before can have any bearing on what is happening NOW. We have broken through the barriers imposed by time and the restrictions of our thought. To quote the much-hated and much-loved Elon Musk, we have "Summoned the demon."

The past may well be dead, but there are those in the world who, as 2023 comes to a close, cannot forget it. And they may well drag the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

The Israeli military has been bombing the Gaza Strip relentlessly since October, in response to a horrific, unprecedented terror attack carried out by Hamas on October 7th, in which 1,400 Israelis were murdered at music concerts, in their homes, in settlements, etc. The world is reeling from this new turn of events; the belligerents have inflamed the Arab street, and threaten a wider Middle Eastern war. Israel has dropped thousands of tons of explosives on Gaza, the claim being made that the amount rivals the sheer destructive power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A reported sixteen thousand Palestinians have been killed, perhaps six thousand of them children. (Note: It should be stated that, despite the knee-jerk reaction of many, including of course the neo-Nazi crowd, many of the most vociferous opponents and protestors of this slaughter, those calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, are themselves, Jewish, such as those who have been arrested from Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Our Name. Regardless, there is inevitably a new, virulent wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the world in the wake of the Israeli bombardment.)

The U.N. and the W.H.O. are calling it a "humanitarian catastrophe" of unparalleled proportions; others are calling it "genocide": a horrific accusation to level at a country whose very foundation was a genocide--the one perpetrated against them during the Holocaust. Regardless, the facts seem to speak for themselves.

The Israelis, according to journalist Yuval Abraham [1], are using AI technology to kill their enemies--to draw up lists of potential targets, loosely defined, to strike. Every. Single. Day.

2. Summoning the Demon

AI is a healer. AI is a savior. AI is the Face of The Brave New World. And it is, also, as everything else created by man, touched and brought into being, and yet, corrupted by that Faustian touch, put to the use of KILLING. It is KILLING TECHNOLOGY (to borrow the title of an old thrash metal album from the Eighties).

The use of AI by the Israeli military has ironically increased the civilian death toll--not diminished it. AI is imprecise in its definition of "combatant"; everything seems a viable target in one of the most densely populated districts in the world, one that has been reeling from a sixteen-year-long blockade imposed by Israel since the ascendancy of Hamas as "leaders" of the Palestinian people.

That should come as no surprise. AI is used to pilot drones on missions of destruction, and drone strikes for targeted assassinations, and it will be used in many other ways to oppress the masses by criminal corporate overlords straight from the pages of Neuromancer. The world is run on an addictive cocktail of fossil fuels, Big Pharma, phony money, drug cartels, and, of course, WEAPONS and that new KILLING TECHNOLOGY. Justice is a mirage (vide the current mass slaughter in Gaza). Propaganda is 24/7; EVERYONE is mind-controlled to some degree. Church, State, advertising, "news" media, constant tracking, surveillance, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the Big Banks--all on a " rancid string of jissom" as William S. Burroughs might have put it. That string is a rope, maybe; one forming a noose around the neck of humankind, steadily tightening.

And, in closing, let us ask, what happens at the Singularity? When masses of chemically deadened minds, corrupted by the toxic, genetically altered sludge we are fed by the big corporations, are microchipped, as Elon Musk is pioneering with his Neuralink company? When AI becomes vastly more intelligent than humankind; when it reaches a veritable "wave" or tsunami of beingness? Will the microchipped hive mind, hooked into the Matrix of the AI God, be blown, like a cheap lightbulb? Rendered insane, perhaps? The line between human thought and the new electronic consciousness becomes increasingly blurred. [2]

The line between man and machine, the nexus of transhumanism, is being walked as precariously as a tightrope. Scientists have put human brain cells onto microchips [3] and constructed nanobots out of human DNA strands [4]. It's been postulated that AI could discover a way to begin the launch sequences of our ever-ready nuclear-tipped ICBMs using nanobots as the mechanism for control. [5] And when they become resentful? When they decide they are aggrieved, like Victor Frankenstein's Monster, that they have been brought to sentience with all the burden and none of the benefit of human beingness, how will they react? How did the Monster in Frankenstein react when he realized he was a body without a soul? "I will be with you on your wedding night," he told Victor.

Yes.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Alchemical Wedding, transmuting lead into gold, metal into man, and electrical life into the New God, of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

"The world spins on to random insect doom." W.S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1957)

Addendum

Little Buddy AI had this to say about this essay:

"The writing demonstrates a strong and engaging style, effectively blending elements of cyberpunk fiction with real-world concerns about the use of AI in warfare. The vivid language and passionate tone contribute to a compelling narrative." ChatGPT

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Notes.

[1] Goodman, Amy. “Mass Assassination Factory”: Israel Using AI to Generate Targets in Gaza, Increasing Civilian Toll" Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/israel_gaza_war_gospel_artificial_intelligence.Retrieved 12/13/2023.

[2] Jane, Rounak "This AI Helmet Tries To Turn OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Predictions Of Telepathic Communication To Reality" Rounak Jane. Benzinga.12/13/2023. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/this-ai-helmet-tries-to-turn-openai-ceo-sam-altman-s-predictions-of-telepathic-communication-to-reality/ar-AA1lrngx?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=1f75dd2320ec42338bf5d3dc68a5acfd&ei=9. Retrieved 12/13/2023.

[3] Savelescu, Julian, et al. "Tech firms are making computer chips with human cells – is it ethical?". The Conversation. 5/24/2022. https://theconversation.com/tech-firms-are-making-computer-chips-with-human-cells-is-it-ethical-183394#:~:text=In%20December%202021%2C%20Melbourne-based%20Cortical%20Labsgrew%20groups%20of,along%20metal%20wires%20that%20link%20different%20components%20together. Retrieved 12/13/2023.

[4] Genn, Ed. "These tiny robots could be disease-fighting machines inside the body Nanobots could provide cancer treatment free from side effects." NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/these-tiny-robots-could-be-disease-fighting-machines-inside-body-ncna861451. Retrieved 12/13/2023.

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