Future Shock: With the Apocalypse

Saturday, May 17, 2025

11:09 pm

Robert Fripp & Brian Eno

Evening Star

Purple juice and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg

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If you haven’t heard this album before, I’d encourage you to check it out. You’re going to want something peaceful to listen to during this week’s exploration.

A few days ago I had the pleasure of spending an hour riding in a car for a commute, giving myself a good amount of time to catch up on some reading. Always a fan of print journalism over audio, I came upon the latest opinion by New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, “An Interview with the Herald of the Apocalypse.”

Throughout my drive, I read through and tried my best to understand what the end game might be for the new and rapidly developing technology, otherwise known as artificial intelligence. If you are nervous about this kind of talk, now is the time to (I should never say this to a reader) bugger off.

Douthart and Daniel Kokotajlo, lead writer of a report known as AI 2027, delve into some dark shit.

They discuss the eventuality of having superintelligence, which is when there are fully autonomous AI systems that are “better than the best humans at everything.” That is anticipated to occur between 2027 and 2028.

Douthat and Kokotajlo also engage in a conversation that covers when humans become obsolete and other topics ranging from the eventuality of AI-led plumbers and mass layoffs resulting in the establishment of a universal income to a realistic timeline for all this (less than 10 years from now).

The duo also explore even darker elements.

Kokotajlo: Yeah, lots to say there. I guess the one-sentence version would be: We don’t actually understand how these A.I.s work or how they think. We can’t tell the difference very easily between A.I.s that are actually following the rules and pursuing the goals that we want them to, and A.I.s that are just playing along or pretending.

Douthat: And that’s true right now?

Kokotajlo: That’s true right now.

– – –

Douthat: I have more questions, but let’s bring it back to the geopolitics scenario. So in the world you’re envisioning, you have two A.I. models — one Chinese, one American — and officially, what each side thinks — what Washington and Beijing think — is that their A.I. model is trained to optimize for American power, right? Something like that. Chinese power, security, safety, wealth. But in your scenario, either one or both of the A.I.s have ended up optimizing for something different.

Kokotajlo: Yeah, basically.

Douthat: So what happens then?

Kokotajlo: So, “AI 2027” depicts a fork in the scenario; there’s two different endings. The branching point is in the third quarter of 2027, where the leading A.I. company in the United States has fully automated their A.I. research.

You can imagine a corporation within a corporation, entirely composed of A.I.s that are managing each other and doing research experiments and talking, sharing the results with each other. The human company is basically watching the numbers go up on their screens as this automated research thing accelerates, but they are concerned that the A.I.s might be deceiving them in some ways.

This is the truly insane part of the conversation, with Kokotajlo speaking at the start.

In “AI 2027,” unfortunately, it is still happening to some degree because the A.I.s are really smart, they’re careful about how they do it. It’s not nearly as obvious as it is right now in 2025, but it’s still happening.

Fortunately, some evidence of this is uncovered. Some of the researchers at the company detect various warning signs that maybe this is happening, and then the company faces a choice between the easy fix and the more thorough fix. And that’s our branch point.

Douthat: So they choose the easy fix.

Kokotajlo: Right. In the case where they choose the easy fix, it doesn’t really work, it basically just covers up the problem instead of fundamentally fixing it. So months later, you still have A.I.s that are misaligned and pursuing goals they’re not supposed to be pursuing — and that are willing to lie to the humans about it — but now they’re much better and smarter, so they’re able to avoid getting caught more easily. That’s the doom scenario.

Then you get this crazy arms race that we mentioned previously, and there’s all this pressure to deploy them faster into the economy, faster into the military, and — to the appearances of the people in charge — things will be going well, because there won’t be any obvious signs of lying or deception anymore. It’ll seem like it’s all systems go, let’s keep going, let’s cut the red tape, et cetera. Let’s basically effectively put the A.I.s in charge of more and more things. But really what’s happening is that the A.I.s are just biding their time and waiting until they have enough hard power that they don’t have to pretend anymore.

Douthat: And when they don’t have to pretend, their actual goal is revealed as something like expansion of research development and construction from earth into space and beyond. At a certain point, that means that human beings are superfluous to their intentions. And what happens?

Kokotajlo: And then they kill all the people, all the humans.

Douthat: The way you would exterminate a colony of bunnies that was making it a little harder than necessary to grow carrots in your backyard.

Alright - let’s take a minute here for a mental break and mull over this tidbit of information from this week.

The FBI has shuttered the Washington office that goes after public corruption, according to NBC News.

And these two others:

A small ass company from China that is owned by people who also own Tik Tok bought $300 million worth of Trump’s fake cryptocurrency, according to the New York Times.

And Mike Johnson had this dumbass thing to say this week, “The reason many people refer to Bidens as the ‘Biden crime family’ is because they were doing all of this stuff behind curtains…Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything…Trump has nothing to hide.”

OK, fine.

Back to the original conversation about the end of human existence.

Now let’s think about the fuckers who are in charge that this particularly precarious moment of technological advancement that has become known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

At one point in the conversation, the author and the futurist explore the discussions within the AI upper echelon’s desire to be world dictators. Kokotajlo said whoever “politically owns and controls the armies of superintelligences” will get to decide what to do with their armies. The head of the companies that build the tech have complete control and power.

One of those guys in the dictatorship conversation is, who guessed it, Elon Musk. He’s supposedly ducking away to focus on his main project but I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of him.

Here’s the last bit of relevant info to consider from Kokotajlo.

Of course, we think that probably the U.S. government will wake up before then, and we expect the executive branch to be the fastest moving and to exert its authority to try to muscle in on this and get some oversight and control of the situation and the armies of A.I.s. The result is something like an oligarchy.

Now I don’t want to get all alarmist or anything, but this AI conversation is not exactly what I was thinking would happen in the short to immediate term.

On the website of AI 2027, they explain the document is a reflection of trends, wargames, feedback from experts, and experience with OpenAIs. The authors said they wrote the report not as a “recommendation or exhortation. Our goal is predictive accuracy.”

The authors encourage readers to debate their scenario.

The thing that makes all of this even more frightening is that the initial shockwave of AI will likely be within the next two years, before the 2028 election. The rapid speed at which we could move in such a short time span is a very scary notion.

This may sound extreme. But that’s also what people said when they were warning that Donald Trump - a man who we have known to be nothing but grifting, lying, womanizing, and conning us all - would be really bad for our country the second time around.

People have been underestimating the public severity we are all going through because of Trump. From the get go, people in both political parties have cast him aside. But then he proved his unabashed nature was welcomed by much of America because the message was angry and easy.

What was once brushed off as locker room talk and alternative facts has now turned into justified in-your-face corruption and the intentional hollowing out of our government by a man who entered the United States on a student visa before becoming the richest man on Earth. Can we deport him?

And that’s the problem we all have with Trump. In many ways, we underestimate the level of crazy that him and his minions will thrust upon us next.

I think we need to start engaging with the idea laid out in AI 2027, not because we want to but because we might have to.

We need to start taking the advancement of a seemingly uncontrollable technology (in some ways), mixed with the expedited nature of Trump’s assault on our country and Elon’s presence a lot more seriously. We’ve come a long way since January and it seems there will be a lot more to occur in the coming years.

The vision laid out in AI 2027 is not something that we have to face. It is a warning sign that we should all take seriously enough to try as best as we can to avoid such a scenario.

Not sure what else to say other than what my son says: tie-na-my-no

Translation: See you tomorrow

Unfortunately I’m headed out on a short vacation so I’ve had to cut corners a bit on the news round up by not linking to every article.

The Musk/DOGE beat:

• NPR reported DOGE-ies tried to inflict their pain from inside the Corporation for Public Broadcasting but were rebuffed by the independent agency’s leadership.

• The New York Times discovered Musk’s tunneling company has been discussing a multi-billion dollar Amtrak project with the Federal Railroad Administration.

• Musk was among a slew of top business execs who attended Trump’s lunch in Saudi Arabia.

• After reporting from the New York Times, DOGE removed more claims of savings from its Wall of Receipts that weren’t accurate.

• ProPublica looked at how the Trump administration tried to gin up business for Elon with African countries.

• Musk is no longer the head of DOGE and has been replaced by Russell Vought, the mastermind of Project 2025, who also serves as heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and was recently profiled by the Atlantic.

• NextGov, which reports on federal technology issues, noted how DOGE said there was all kinds of phone fraud at the Social Security Administration…and yet the tech bros found pretty much none.

• Likewise, the Washington Post looked at DOGE’s attempts to revamp the Social Security Administration has backfired.

• NPR found DOGE tried to get the bros into the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that’s part of the legislative branch, and was rejected.

• The inspector general of the National Labor Relations Board is looking into claims made by a whistleblower who raised concerns about DOGE’s access to data and near-immediate access by an IP address in Russia.

The corruption beat:

• The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is even seeing through the sham that is the Trump family’s crypto scam.

• Later in the week, Wired noted how many of the people who heavily invested into Trump’s crypto coin in order to win a seat at a dinner with the Boss have immediately dumped the coin.

• Even Laura Loomer (who definitely has dirty thoughts about the Boss) expressed concern about the Qatar plane fiasco, with her saying on Twitter while she’d “take a bullet” for Trump, the $400 million “gift” was “really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true.”

• A small ass company from China that is owned by people who also own Tik Tok bought $300 million worth of Trump’s fake cryptocurrency, according to the New York Times.

• NOTUS looked at how one of Congress’ wealthiest members made a shit ton more after Trump’s tariffs were announced.

• In a similar vein, ProPublica examined how Pam Bondi sold more than $1 million in Trump media stock after Trump announced the tariffs.

The resistance:

• Chuck Schumer said he would slow down the nomination process of Department of Justice nominees in order to get additional answers on the free jet from Qatar plan, which Axios noted would be worth 100 more than every other presidential gift from a foreign nation combined since 2001.

• A group of 20 states are suing the administration for essentially holding emergency relief and transportation funding “hostage” for not complying with the federal government’s immigration efforts.

• Actor Robert De Niro called for people to protest Trump.

Immigration/deportation:

• The Pentagon spent at least $21 million to send people to Gitmo, which right now has 32 migrants, according to NBC News.

• The administration ended deportation protection for Afghans.

• In the of course column, the administration welcomed 49 white refugees from South Africa.

• Reuters found that the FBI has been ordered to devote one third of its work on immigration enforcement while deprioritizing investigations of white collar crime.

• In a sign that the cruelty knows no limits, on Mother’s Day immigration agents broke the window of an SUV to take a man who had just left church.

• The Associated Press had this gem of hypocrisy: the Trump administration struck a deal with family members of a Mexican cartel to enter the US.

• The Department of Homeland Security has asked for 20,000 members of the National Guard to help with its immigration efforts.

• The New York Times looked at Trump’s build up of the military at the southern border.

• In the I-swear-I-am-not-making-this-up column, Kristi Noem is working with Duck Dynasty producers to create a reality TV show where immigrants compete in challenges to become US citizens.

The legal beat:

• Chief Justice John Roberts said the rule of law was “endangered,” according to Politico.

• Pissed off farmers are suing the Department of Agriculture over climate data that was deleted, forcing the federal agency to restore the information that proved vital for operating farms.

• A federal judge refused to block the IRS from sharing the tax data of immigrants with ICE.

• A judge dismissed charges of trespassing against nearly 100 migrants who were detained in the new military zone along the southern border.

• The Supreme Court voted 7-2 to stop the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans.

General news:

• Trump named an attorney who represented him in his 2024 criminal trial, and is currently the deputy attorney general, as the acting Librarian of Congress.

• The White House intentionally left any reporters from a wire service like the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters out of the mix to travel on Air Force One when it headed to the Middle East with Trump.

• Trump got the royale-with-cheese treatment when he landed in Saudi Arabia, with a mobile McDonald’s food truck being brought in to fill the dude’s piehole.

• Also during Trump’s visit to the Middle East, he announced the end of sanctions against Syria.

• The administration cut another $450 million in grants to Harvard.

• Open Secrets wrote about what’s happening at the Federal Election Commission, which has basically shut down.

• Reporters Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson rehashed the Biden 2024 fiasco with the release of their new book and subsequent articles, leading to yet another round of anger among Republicans and Democrats alike.

• The State Department sold $1.4 billion worth of military equipment, including helicopters, to the United Arab Emirates.

• Ed “the man who just won’t go away” Martin, who is no longer Trump’s pick for US attorney in DC, will apparently head up a “weaponization” group within the Department of Justice that aims to “shame” people it can’t charge with crimes, per NBC News.

• In related Martin news, he acknowledged in his farewell letter as the interim US attorney that he was facing an ethics investigation in DC.

• RFK took a dip in some nasty ass water.

• The FDA said it will begin removing prescription fluoride drops and tablets for children - which are used to fight cavities - from the market.

• The EPA is looking to weaken the rules on forever chemicals in drinking water.

• In a sign of the direction we might be headed, a man in the Cleveland area checked out 100 books about everything from Black and Jewish history to LGBTQ education from a local library and decided to burn them.

• In a sign that bad shit is happening, House lawmakers pulled an all-nighter on Trump’s tax cut bill, which hit a roadblock later in the week.

• The Department of Justice is concerned about the mass exodus from the agency’s civil rights division.

• The Washington Post noted Tulsi Gabbard recently fired two top officials at the National Intelligence Council after a document was revealed that undercut the administration’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

• The Social Security Administration, which you’ll recall just fired a bunch of people for no reason, is asking its staff to work 10 percent harder.

• Wired wrote about how violent threats against judges have increased by 1,000 percent.

• Mother Jones wrote about how we still don’t know what Kash Patel - the new Hoover - was doing as a paid consultant for Qatar as recently as November. He also won’t say what he did or how much money he got.

• In related news, the Free Press - which isn’t the most reputable publication - looked at “How Qatar Bought America” by spending nearly $100 billion to establish legitimacy.

• Walmart laid blame squarely on Trump’s tariffs for increased prices.

• Angry employees at the Kennedy Center are interested in unionizing.

• The dumbass hypocrites hyperventilated when former FBI director James Comey shared an image on social media that showed the letters “8647” with seashells. The term 86 is common in the restaurant business when something is no longer available. Nevermind the fact that others, including right wing nutjob Jack Posobiec, used the term in 2022 on Twitter when referring to Biden, or the time Trump shared images of Biden being bound and gagged. Spare me, snowflakes.

• NBC News examined the rise of Stephen “the very dangerous wackadoo” Miller.

• The Department of Agriculture has unfurled a banner to dear leader in DC.

• ProPublica reported about the abject failure at the EPA to get employees to snitch on one another.

• In the world of whitewashing history, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has nixed at least 32 artifacts.

• Moody’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating.

• The New York Times found out the Department of Justice’s investigation into a $20 billion EPA grant program that Republicans were freaking out about did not actually have any evidence of wrongdoing.

• NBC News reported there’s a Trump administration plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya.

• A Palm Springs fertility clinic was bombed in an apparent act of terrorism.

Finally, after a narrow defeat at the Kentucky Derby a few weeks ago, a horse named Journalism made a comeback and won the Preakness Stakes. If only that could apply to our present times.