AI, Ayahuasca and the History of Revolutions

I have a confession to make...

In this article I am going to share the good, bad and ugly of AI. And how its application could both enlighten or cripple humanity based upon who programs it.

There is some level of uncertainty on how this article will be received. As in a previous post I made it very clear that I had no intention of using AI. But while that is still contextually true for some application, there has been a shift in my understanding of how it can also be applied in a positive way.

This is not AI edited

Before we go further, I would like to share that the article you are reading is not edited by AI. It is 100% me, combined with about 8 hours of time.

A confession… My last article was, I wrote it in a stream of consciousness and then pasted the whole thing into ChatGPT and asked for it to be edited. I then lightly edited what it gave me, and posted.

It was an experiment, and I did not have the intent to deceive anyone (hence me writing this follow up article). I did this under the guidance of my soul which then sparked a general curiosity to know if (1 Anyone noticed? Please let me know in the comments if you did. (2 If the AI content would outperform mine. The latter is hard to gauge off a single post, but it was about average compared to my other posts.

Perfection and flow, but a little less me

There is a perfection that comes with an AI edit, I thought it had a really good flow to it, but I could also feel that a part of myself disappeared from the work, with some sentences being structured in ways I would never write. On the positive side it reminded me of the importance of breaking up the content into more manageable chunks with headlines, and introduced me to 🎨 a 🌍 far 🌟 more 🖌️ comprehensive 🎭 artistic 🎨 use 📲 of 🤖 emojis. 😊Once I figure out how to use em dashes—I will be adding them into my work. They often break up sentences better than commas, but also break my flow when writing as there is no key to type them.

Ayahuasca and AI

What hugely amplified my resistance to AI was an Ayahuasca ceremony I had a few years back. It was one of the most horrific nights of my life. All related to the negative application of AI. I won’t go into too many details as some seeds are best left unplanted, but here is something to think on. Imagine you are God, and you can create anything you want. Some would rush to create a utopia that serves the collective, some may sit on the fence and not change all that much. However, those who are in a lot of pain may want to be the God figure in their own version of reality and rule.

If you follow Mythological thinking, you will know this never works out well!

Even with the best of intentions things get out of control pretty quickly if someone gets their hands on a magical lamp with 3 wishes. It’s like the movie the Butterfly Effect. You make one edit and everything changes.

If humming a tune can travel across oceans in minutes passing through zoom rooms, facetimes and coffee shops, imagine what shouting at our children can ripple into?

This moment is the sum total of all time, cause and effect. One small change, changes everything.

After my ceremony the whole AI thing freaked me out a bit. I questioned if we were moving into a Black Mirror style culture, doomed to our AI overlords. But a few weeks back when connecting to my soul, I got a clear message that I should explore AI, and I have changed my mind.

The history of revolutions

Maybe I am slow to the party, but I am now convinced that this is the next revolutionary wave of technology and it is going to change the way we live and fast.

I share this short history with the invitation to try to place yourself in the times I am speaking about. Imagine the culture and world views of the time, and how world shattering some of these ideas would have been to the people. AI is new, but revolutionary technology is not, and things are always evolving.

The printing press

If we go back to 1450 most people were farmers in small villages connected to the cycles and seasons. They would provide for themselves and their families. Bartering and trading a little. This was a time when income tax was yet to be introduced.

Almost everyone was a believer in God or Gods, and circles were small. Just think there were hardly any roads, and many probably never left their small area they cared for. Then we had the invention of the printing press. This revolutionised the way information was shared, and while it was controlled by small groups of people who had specific agendas, it made the world bigger, and inspired people to leave their small circles in search of something more.

Da Vinci and the Renaissance

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452 shortly after the printing press was invented, and he became one of the leading voices of the renaissance. This is when humans shifted from a God first world to the potential of human greatness. Art, philosophy and culture boomed. Hugely shifting the way human beings behaved.

Nicolaus Copernicus proposed heliocentric theory which placed the sun at the centre of the solar system, not the Earth as previously thought. A heretical idea that threatened the dominance of the Catholic church and the life of Copernicus and those who shared his ideas.

[To draw a comparison; the way peer reviewed science is seen in modern day, this would be similar to how the word of the Roman Catholic church was viewed.]

The Scientific Revolution

While the Renaissance brought rise to the human being, the Scientific revolution started to usher God out all together. Inventions like the telescope and microscope allowed us to dissect creation and understand a more mechanical side to nature and the cosmos.

This is a time when reason and rationale started to become means of understanding the world. Forefathers of scientific materialism Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon strongly advocated observation and creating replicable results. While Isaac Newton, observed the theory of universal gravitation. It is important to note that Isaac Newton was not only a scientist, but an Alchemist:

He wrote more than a million words on alchemy over his lifetime, conducting decades’ worth of alchemical experiments. But he did it all in secret. For centuries after his death in 1727, few people knew the extent of Newton’s alchemical work.

The Industrial Revolution

This ushered in the Industrial Revolution, in which humans started to commodify the Earth on a far deeper level. Places untouched by Western culture such as Indigenous America (now the USA) were invaded and commodified, eventually leading to mass extractions of Gold, Metals, Wood and anything that could be used commercially.

This was powered by the steam engine, railroads and more complex road systems that were built to transport goods. Before this we did not have such a vast system of commerce, there would have been masses of untouched land, and prior to this many would not have dreamed of cutting down all the old sacred groves of trees. [Compare this to 1450, people were connected to their land, so to destroy it would be to destroy their own eco-system and economy.]

This was the birth of capitalism. Making the world ever smaller in the process. Land once only accessible to explorers and adventurers was now a cargo ship trip away, and people began to migrate farther and with more ease. People moved from farming being the driving force to working in factories and mines.

Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and Electricity

In 1882 Thomas Edison developed the first power station, some say his work was taken from the genius of Nikola Tesla who was instrumental in the development of alternating current (A/C) a few years later. By the mid twenties electricity was commonplace in most modern homes.

This revolutionised the way we communicated with each other. Prior to this we would write letters to speak at long distance, now the telephone made this possible. Also, having constant access to light changed the way we socialise and sleep cycles were less related to the sun. Washing machines freed up time. Radio gave us real time access to events as they unfolded, then TV enhanced this to visual updates. Movies, new forms of entertainment and advertising changed the narrative of the world.

The Internet and Smart Devices

In recent years the internet revolutionised the flow of information. Social media allowed us not only to connect, but see an ongoing snapshot of people's lives. Even those we do not know. This was then placed in our pockets with smartphones and devices.

Think of the quantum leap - In just 575 years we have gone from God fearing farmers to scientific materialists sitting at desks watching the world from a screen.

We now live in an age where we have more access to information in a day than those before the printing press would have in a lifetime.

Now it is the AI era

AI is already taking the world by storm, with many industries being born from its inception. I believe this will very quickly make many jobs obsolete, and remove the financial incentives to learn certain things. For example, will companies continue to pay copywriters or editors, when AI can do it in seconds for free?

AI can code computer programs, something that once took skilled programmers. News in general, meaning reporting on things that others have already reported on no longer need teams of writers scrawling the internet to write. It is only really breaking news and reporting that would need human input for now.

A lot of manual labour, web/graphic design, consultation and anything that has a pattern will soon be able to be replaced. I am not advocating this, but as AI is combined with technology farmers will be replaceable.

Factory workers, drivers, even jobs like chefs and waiting staff could be replaced. Just think a few years back you needed someone in a shop to buy things, now you can walk in and pay yourself, and if you want to use the gym you only need a pin code to access it 24/7.

Complete control or a new system?

If jobs go, salaries will too. So large companies will have no one to sell products to unless a universal income is given. This could go one of two ways - complete control by a few people, with resources even more unevenly distributed than they are now. Or an evening out of the playing field, and a move away from such financial inequality. Perhaps a completely different system of resource sharing altogether.

I am praying for the latter, and if we hold a collective prayer and a willingness, then this timeline becomes more likely.

Another potential split could be those who choose to unplug off grid and live together communally, and those who choose to plug in and go deeper into the technological rabbit hole. Two highly polarised worlds existing side by side, potentially with some standing between the two.

Ultimately it may not be the technology we need to worry about, but it’s programmers. A lot of this tech is open source and replicable. It’s like a knife. You can use it to chop a birthday cake or someone's head off. The knife is never the problem.

There is also the potential of a complete artificial world being created. The Steven Spielberg movie Ready Player One shows this well in a world were everyone is effectively living in run down communities stacked on top of one another, with a virtual world called the Oasis being where everyone plugs in. They have their real lives, and another completely digital one online. I know Meta are working on this type of artificial reality.

This is what I saw in my Ayahuasca ceremony, something so sophisticated that it is hard to distinguish it from reality. And the more disconnected people become from nature, spirit and soul, the harder it will be to distinguish real from artificial.

I often see videos online now which my intuition tells me are artificial, but they look very real.

Human evolution

I would argue that we need to evolve quickly as a species to be able to handle the power of what we have created. Maybe we need divine intervention or a more evolved species from another world to drop in and give us a pep talk.

My personal faith in humanity has varied from complete optimist with full faith in our capacity to alchemise our dangerous flaws, to pessimistic, without a bean of hope for our faltering species. Currently I feel blessed to have reoriented myself to be optimistic and faithful, because deep down I know that we can make changes.

It may just take a collective visit from the divine to help with the process.

A Positive Note On AI

For me using Chatgtp has been like having a team of the smartest individuals I know advising me on things I used to have to spend a considerable amount of time and money to learn. It does make mistakes, and I have noticed this on many occasions, but when you give it good questions, it often gives really good answers, and its not just the answers, it is the way the information is presented.

This has allowed me to do less of what I don’t enjoy and more of what I do. I do not need AI to write, I love it, find it therapeutic and the whole process allows me to grow as a person. It is not just the finished product I am looking for, but the whole process is my medicine. If I outsourced this it would be a loss to me.

However, the time it takes to research has been cut significantly, and the capacity to organise information has been significantly increased. I have a mind that can jump from task to task if I do not run a tight ship. But Chatgpt has helped me in a calm and concise way to break things down in a step by step, logical way.

It is like having a genius assistant who knows nearly everything, never needs to go to the bathroom and doesn’t take holidays.

The Human Touch

One thing AI cannot replace is the human touch. Again this is an interesting area, because AI could replace, and do a better job than a bad therapist. But it could never replace a good one. This is because AI cannot experience real empathy, only mimic it. Sometimes you need to be in the presence of someone masterful to move through your challenges, and a computer screen will not cut it. It may be able to give you a good path to work through your challenges, but does not have a soul energetically invested in your growth.

What this means is anyone who is in any kind of service work will need to be good at what they do, and actually give a shit. If not, a robot will be coming for your job soon! This has the potential to raise the bar for what people offer, and could work as a good motivator.

Conclusion

I won't pretend I know what will happen with AI. It will not be able to replace sitting under a tree or watching the sun rise. But it will try its best to replicate it. The genie is out of the lamp now and we cannot put it back. My thoughts are to try our best to use what we have to benefit ourselves, families, communities and the planet as much as we can.

There is something strong in the intentions we hold, and if enough of us can hold a strong intention for the healing and thriving of our planet it will ripple into the collective. This is what I am holding in my prayers, and I invite you to do the same.

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