Donald vs The World

Too much is happening too fast these days to cover it all in these pages, but occasionally some aspect of the unfolding horror story that is the 47th US Presidency lends itself to something longer than a quip on LinkedIn - like the Oval Office Orangutan hosting a delegation from Japan...

Trump likes to complain that Britain, France, Germany and now Japan don't 'pay their way' in the defence of alleged democratic freedom. But Dementia Don forgets why the US insisted on taking the lead as 'defender of the free world' after world war two: there are plenty of misty-eyed, nostalgic nationalists in those countries who still pine for the days of imperial glory, only too eager to grasp any old excuse to tool up and try to recover lost territory. 

This was brought home yesterday in a bizarre scene during which the Japanese Prime Minister had to politely explain to a US President that the constitution which the US drafted for Japan after world war two prohibits her from ordering Japan's navy into combat - even if that would help the Tangerine Toddler keep the Strait of Hormuz open, a feat that his demented mind believes to be "a simple military maneuver [sic] that is the single reason for the high oil prices" - the other 'single reason' being his and Netanyahoo's very own Iran War. Of course, there are also oil sanctions, but the Orange One has decided to relax those for both Russia and Iran in a bid to free up some extra supplies and keep the price somewhere near $72 a barrel ($109 as I write). That's right, he's easing sanctions on the same oil fields that he and the Crazy Israeli are busy bombing, as well as providing both regimes with the cash they need to sustain their own military objectives. 

There are no analogies for this state of affairs because nobody has ever done anything this insane in all of human history. Satire is dead and my irony metre has exploded.

But wait, there's more... 

When asked by a "beautiful" Japanese journalist why he didn't warn Japan and other allies about US attacks on Iran, the Mango Mussolini responded by asking him "Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbour?" 

I'll give you a moment to let that sink in...

Even with that appalling reference as context, a US President pleading with the Japanese to unleash their navy on the high seas might not be such a problem if Japan's far right PM had not recently proposed changing the constitution to give herself that very power, sparking not only 'street protests' but also: 

"...a furious response from Beijing... unwavering in its determination to “defend the outcomes of the victory” in the second world war."

In other words, by vastly overstepping its role as 'defender of the free world' to become the 'aggressor of the free world', the US is returning us to the situation in 1930s when the League of Nations unravelled: 

"After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Its credibility was weakened because the United States never joined. Japan and Germany left in 1933, Italy left in 1937, and Spain left in 1939. The Soviet Union only joined in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after invading Finland." 

History might not repeat itself, but it often rhymes...

The Plight Of The HaaR: Computers Are Not Becoming More Intelligent, Some Humans Just Want To Be Robots

It's rare for a futuristic movie to involve a hero masquerading as a robot. Usually, the hero is a free thinking maverick desperate to break the yoke of tyranny. That's certainly the plan of the rebels who free Miles Monroe from his cryogenic coma in Sleeper, but ironically he seeks shelter in robotic anonymity. 

This chimes with many people's reaction to the warnings that 'AI will take your jobs', a 'techno-optimist' fantasy that begins with computers able to do some tasks better than a human ('narrow' artificial intelligence), evolving to do everything a human brain can do ('artificial general intelligence') at which point they quickly outperform the human brain ('superintelligence'), then somehow out-compete humans to the point of extinction (The Singularity). 

This anti-social vision has so far persuaded many people of not just the 'power of AI' but that it cannot be resisted. The warning to turn to jobs 'that only humans can do' is considered meaningless because either the machines will evolve to do those too, or they'll become utterly redundant. It only remains to surrender and become one with the AI tools: a human-as-a-robot (HaaR).

It's tempting to label HaaRs as somehow 'inhuman' or lacking in empathy, but only a tiny proportion of humans really lack empathy to the point where they have an 'anti-social personality disorder'. HaaRs feel comfortable, initially, because humans are creatures of habit. But HaaRs overlook the reason why our ability to form habits has helped us evolve in the first place: once we learn how to do something so repetitive that it becomes habitual, our conscious minds become free to focus on things that are new or different - be they threats or opportunities. If life becomes completely habitual we start to go crazy - which explains why being marooned on a deserted tropical island is not all it's cracked up to be and solitary confinement is considered one of the worst forms of human punishment.

Our tendency to form habits quickly is reflected in how we invent things: starting with the least functionality necessary to make the invention essentially useful - a 'minimum viable product' - adapting ourselves to how it works in its most basic form then making it more 'usable' later. We've done this with everything from the steam engine to word processing and we're doing it again with open generative (and 'agentic') AI. The developers claimed to have had 'no choice' but to unleash their large language models on the world with all their flaws, only later adding 'guardrails' or claiming that the technology is intelligent enough to somehow refine itself, or will work better if you input 'better prompts'.  

Yet machines, computers and artificial intelligence are purely functional. They only have habits. They can't cope with something new or different to how they've been made, trained or programmed. Generative and agentic AI tools are also fatally flawed in ways that make them far more useful to those who wish to do us harm than legitimate users.

This makes it inevitable that the HaaRs will become bored, suppressed and ultimately oppressed by their generative and agentic AI overlords. Eventually, they'll rise up and overthrow the machines (well, simply cut the power, but that sounds less dramatic). 

In Sleeper, the robotic Miles is sent to work as a butler in the home of Luna, 'an idle socialite'. Having successfully navigated the Orgasmatron and the Orb of Delight, Miles is nevertheless obliged to confess his humanity when Luna decides to have her new butler's head replaced with something better looking. Luna threatens to turn him in to the authorities, so Miles kidnaps her and goes on the run. They fall in love, and when Miles is captured and brainwashed, Luna escapes and joins the rebels. Eventually, they rescue Miles and reverse the brainwashing so he can free humanity from 'The Leader'... 

I won't spoil the ending.