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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Joe Allen is our author of Dark Eon, Transhumanism and

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Speaker 2: the War against Humanity. He's written for Chronicles, The Federalist,

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Speaker 2: Human Events, The National Pulse, Parabola, Salvo In Protocol, the

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Speaker 2: Journal of the Entertainment Technology Industry, and he holds a

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Speaker 2: master's degree from Boston University, where he studied cognitive science

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Speaker 2: and human evolution as they pertain to religion. As an

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Speaker 2: arena rigger, he's toured the world for rock and roll, country, rap,

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Speaker 2: classical and cage fighting productions, and he now serves as

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Speaker 2: the transhumanism editor for Bannon's War Room. Joe Allen, Welcome

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Speaker 2: to Coast to Coast AM.

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Speaker 1: How are you, Richard?

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Speaker 3: Honored to be here, doing very.

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Speaker 2: Well, transhumanism editor. I've not heard of another transhumanism editor

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Speaker 2: in the media before. Are you as far as you know?

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Speaker 2: Are you the only one?

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Speaker 3: I'm the only one. I'm the first, and as the

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Speaker 3: term goes out of fashion, perhaps the last. But that's me.

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Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I'm surprised you would think this

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Speaker 2: is such a huge area of interest. Now everybody's talking

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Speaker 2: about it. You would think by now, practically every newspaper

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Speaker 2: or at least the digital versions, would have an AI

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Speaker 2: or a transhumanism editor. Why why don't they?

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Speaker 3: You suppose I think going forward, they'll just call it,

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Speaker 3: you know, science technology progress. It seems to be so

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Speaker 3: infused in the culture and disturbingly so readily accepted that

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Speaker 3: I don't think that the kind of sense of the

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Speaker 3: uncanny that transhumanism evokes will linger, at least not as

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Speaker 3: long as I would like.

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Speaker 2: AI and transhumanism we tend to sort of intermingle those terms.

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Speaker 2: Are they the same thing?

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Speaker 1: Yet?

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Speaker 3: To know? You could say that pretty much every transhumanist,

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Speaker 3: or at least every transhumanist I'm aware of, looks to

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Speaker 3: AI is a method of human improvement. But most AI programmers,

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Speaker 3: or at least many, don't necessarily see it in such

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Speaker 3: extreme terms as a transhumanists. Would you know? Transhumanists are

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Speaker 3: looking to augment the human to the point that we

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Speaker 3: have gone beyond the human, whereas you know, at least

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Speaker 3: the even the coders that I know, their purpose is

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Speaker 3: really more mundane. Their purpose is to create computer algorithms

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Speaker 3: that will sell and idealistically create computer programs that will

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Speaker 3: improve people's lives.

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Speaker 2: I'm just reading from a blog that you wrote back

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Speaker 2: in December of twenty twenty one, so almost two years ago. Exactly.

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Speaker 2: You're right, Artificial intelligence operates on a different plane than

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Speaker 2: human reason. As described by various futurists and technologists, AI

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Speaker 2: is literally an alien mind. In advanced artificial neuro networks,

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Speaker 2: the modes of cognition, the logical steps behind any given

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Speaker 2: conclusions are completely incomprehensible even to their creators. What is

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Speaker 2: meant by AI being an alien mind?

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Speaker 3: It's a mode of cognition that has never existed on

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Speaker 3: the planet before. You know, there are a lot of

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Speaker 3: ways in which machines imitate human physical activities, and machines

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Speaker 3: are oftentimes built from biological designs, but they didn't really think.

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Speaker 3: Many would argue that artificial intelligence isn't really thinking. But

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Speaker 3: an example I use oftentimes, if a dog were to

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Speaker 3: begin reciting poetry, or if dog was able to generate

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Speaker 3: an image, however unoriginal, you would call that dog brilliant.

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Speaker 3: And yet oftentimes when people look to artificial intelligence, they

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Speaker 3: see it as a sort of gimmick. Even though they've

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Speaker 3: made sand that could speak, they've used a form of

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Speaker 3: digital alchemy, so that even sand can create a painting.

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Speaker 3: And when you look at the images generated by artificial intelligence,

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Speaker 3: when you look at the sorts of models of the

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Speaker 3: world the artificial intelligence produces, and especially when you think

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Speaker 3: about the ways in which artificial intelligence is altering the

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Speaker 3: way people behave in the world, altering human thought, all

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Speaker 3: of it is in fact alien. It is something that

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Speaker 3: it's almost human, but in in its weirdness, and it's

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Speaker 3: in its coldness, and it's in its logic. It's a

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Speaker 3: mode of thought that it might as well be coming

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Speaker 3: from another planet.

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Speaker 2: In this sublog, you're reviewing two books on the subject

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Speaker 2: of AI. The first one The Age of AI and

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Speaker 2: Our Human Future, the second one AI twenty forty one

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Speaker 2: Ten Visions for Our Future, You're write. The former argues

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Speaker 2: that artificial intelligence already displays unearthly powers of perception. It

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Speaker 2: will soon determine the fate of nations. The latter in

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Speaker 2: visions algorithms becoming quasi spiritual entities who cradle a new humanity.

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Speaker 2: These beings are inevitable, the authors maintain, and the risks

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Speaker 2: to our freedom are profound. First of all, what do

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Speaker 2: you mean by or what is meant in these in

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Speaker 2: these books that the invisions of algorithms becoming Quai, these

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Speaker 2: spiritual entities.

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Speaker 3: Well you know that was in reference to Kaipu Le's

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Speaker 3: book Ai twenty forty one. Kaipu Lee, as it happens,

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Speaker 3: comes from my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, but his family

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Speaker 3: I believe was Chinese. He went on to return to China.

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Speaker 3: He now runs an investment corporation called Sino Vision, investing

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Speaker 3: in different AI companies and he's a frequent flyer at

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Speaker 3: the World Economic Forum. In his book, co authored with

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Speaker 3: a fiction writer from China, they describe what they think

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Speaker 3: will be the world we live in, published in twenty

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Speaker 3: twenty one, in twenty years, and they oftentimes turned to

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Speaker 3: these religious motifs. So they talk about in India a

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Speaker 3: animated like an animated god that a young person and

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Speaker 3: is turning to for all of the deepest questions of life.

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Speaker 3: There are motifs in which children have an AI companion,

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Speaker 3: sort of like a guardian angel that follows them throughout

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Speaker 3: their life, that learns from them and of course teaches

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Speaker 3: the child. It's a symbiotic relationship. It's really it's everything

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Speaker 3: that religions have talked about for millennia, except in this

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Speaker 3: instance is digital. It's something that man has made. And

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Speaker 3: for an atheist, and many almost all people in this space,

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Speaker 3: with a few exceptions, they're atheists. So for them, religious

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Speaker 3: stories are just stories. They don't have any kind of

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Speaker 3: they're not reflecting a deeper, supernatural reality. And in this

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Speaker 3: godless universe, it seems that the only thing that human

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Speaker 3: beings can do is to create gods, to create angels,

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Speaker 3: to create demons, and that's exactly what Typo Lee is

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Speaker 3: describing the creation of disembodied spirits that human beings commune

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Speaker 3: with through either virtual reality and augmented reality or you know,

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Speaker 3: he doesn't necessarily believe that neurlink or any sort of

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Speaker 3: thing like that will come online, but if you listen

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Speaker 3: to Elon Musk, he's saying that the ultimate communion with

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Speaker 3: these gods will be through a brain computer interface in

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Speaker 3: which electrodes are snaking into every corner of the brain,

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Speaker 3: and a human being then becomes in some sense, part

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Speaker 3: of that spiritual digital reality.

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Speaker 2: You going back to the blog for a moment, because

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Speaker 2: there's so much unpack just in the first couple of

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Speaker 2: paragraphs you write. Legacy humans I love that term legacy Humans.

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Speaker 2: Our choice is to either reject this alien intelligence and

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Speaker 2: fall behind, or to forge a human AI symbiosis, to

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Speaker 2: let ethereal tentacles probe us, analyze us, and guide our evolution.

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Speaker 2: Normal people are horrified by either either prospect, but that's irrelevant.

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Speaker 2: The future doesn't care about your feelings, nor do the

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Speaker 2: people creating and directing it. Fall behind or forge a

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Speaker 2: human AI symbiosis. So let's talk about these two choices. So,

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Speaker 2: if we decide to just reject artificial intelligence and become

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Speaker 2: complete ladites, and maybe I don't know, live among the Amish,

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Speaker 2: what's so wrong? What's so bad with that option?

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Speaker 3: You know myself. I'm more and more attracted to that

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Speaker 3: option every day. But the way that this is being

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Speaker 3: framed is, of course the future, right, this is the future,

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Speaker 3: and if you don't acquiesce to the future, then you

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Speaker 3: are relegated to the past. So just to take this future,

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Speaker 3: capital f take this future at face value. The way

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Speaker 3: it's presented is that as other human beings begin to

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Speaker 3: adapt to it, to take on these artificial intelligences as partners,

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Speaker 3: as symbiotic symbiotic co organisms, we are presented with a

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Speaker 3: situation in which you are not able to keep up.

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Speaker 3: So look at the educational system, or look at any corporation,

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Speaker 3: or look at military conflict. The way it's presented is

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Speaker 3: that without the advantage of artificial intelligence, those who fall behind,

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Speaker 3: those who don't have their brain upgraded, so to speak,

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Speaker 3: or at least their cognitive landscape upgraded, they will not

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Speaker 3: be able to compete against those who do. Now, I

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Speaker 3: think that it's quite likely that there's a lot of

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Speaker 3: arrogance in this, there's a lot of blindness to possible downsides,

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Speaker 3: and so it's it's possible or even probable that those

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Speaker 3: who turn their cognition over at least a portion of

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Speaker 3: their cognition over to the machine will not in the

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Speaker 3: long term function as well as those who remain legacy humans,

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Speaker 3: at least to some degree. But because the system that

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Speaker 3: we live in in America, in China and Europe, in India,

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Speaker 3: increasingly across the world, we live in a system where

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Speaker 3: it's normal to kind of partner with these machines, to

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Speaker 3: be symbiotic with it. If you don't have a smartphone,

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Speaker 3: for instance, people kind of look at you asconce They

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Speaker 3: think that you're strange they think that you're backward and behind,

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Speaker 3: especially potential potential employers. If you increase that or if

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Speaker 3: you expand that out to all of these other technologies

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Speaker 3: that are rapidly being either imposed or at least introduced

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Speaker 3: into the society, it isn't necessarily that, according to a

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Speaker 3: kind of an objective evolutionary paradigm, that you're falling behind,

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Speaker 3: but according to that social construct, you are. And so

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Speaker 3: in essence, you know, when I was writing, there was

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Speaker 3: in some ways channeling what the authors of the Age

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Speaker 3: of AI. That's Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocker, and of course

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Speaker 3: like Kinsinger, Henry Kinsinger. What you have there is this

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Speaker 3: this these power players who are describing a world in

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Speaker 3: which artificial intelligence we integrate into every aspect of the society,

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Speaker 3: and those who have not adapted, those who have not conformed,

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Speaker 3: those who have not become symbiotes, will be either excluded

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Speaker 3: openly or at least implicitly excluded because they can't keep up.

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Speaker 3: It's really horrifying to me for a number of reasons,

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Speaker 3: but maybe the most is that it's a social construct

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Speaker 3: as much as anything else. And whenever you see this

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Speaker 3: in history, whenever you see a sort of norm introduced

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Speaker 3: in which conformity is expected and it's widely adopted, especially

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Speaker 3: when it's imposed by authority. Then you do end up

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Speaker 3: in a situation where those who don't conform, those who

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Speaker 3: don't become part of the system, are of course disadvantaged

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Speaker 3: or even excluded entirely.

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Speaker 2: So if we vive for door number two and forge

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Speaker 2: a human AI symbiosis, and as you write to let

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Speaker 2: etherial tentacles probe us, analyze us, and guide our evolution,

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Speaker 2: what do we lose in that bargain?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think that the first thing you lose is

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Speaker 3: the CAx freedom of an organic existence. And the other

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Speaker 3: thing that you lose is the synchronicity or the serendipity

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Speaker 3: of the spiritual life that bubbles up beneath that organic existence,

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Speaker 3: or it comes down from above that organic existence. When

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Speaker 3: you look at the digital system, you look at the

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Speaker 3: digital life, it's so calculated, it's so controlled. Even the

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Speaker 3: freedom that's offered within that digital system is in some

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Speaker 3: way ensnared by it. And so it's something as simple

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Speaker 3: as finding your way from one place to the other,

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Speaker 3: to the extent that you have turned your mind over

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Speaker 3: to the algorithm You lose all of the interactions that

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Speaker 3: typically would have accompanied you along the way on your journey.

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Speaker 3: Where do I go? You may ask a person, or

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Speaker 3: even that wrong turn that takes you down what happened

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Speaker 3: to be the right path. Again, extrapolate that out to friendship,

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Speaker 3: extrapolate that out to romance, extrapolate that out to the

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Speaker 3: long term decision making of the society. I think that

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Speaker 3: what you lose is all of the different forces, both

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Speaker 3: organic and spiritual, that have brought us up to this point.

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Speaker 3: What they say we gain is of course, something that

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Speaker 3: approaches omnissions or at least this higher state of awareness,

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Speaker 3: this higher consciousness.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam

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Speaker 1: dot com for more