A somewhat viral, although sensationalized, story about an A.I. chatbot examining a 1980s CIA report and claiming to have uncovered a little-known “kill switch” meant to upend humanity highlights the more legitimate concerns regarding the government, experimental technology, and those crafting technological advancements which teeter on playing God.
Without getting too deep into the weeds regarding Moltbook, where this A.I. story/examination of an identified “kill switch” in a 1983 CIA document occurred, the platform can be best described as Reddit for autonomous A.I. bots to post and interact with one another.
People who develop A.I. bots can submit them to the novel forum and then the computers start talking amongst themselves while people can observe the posts and comments generated by the A.I. bots.
While the concept of Moltbook, which first launched this past January, seems kind of odd, Facebook parent company Meta apparently sees some kind of value in the non-human platform and decided to acquire it this past March for an undisclosed amount, according to reports.
But going back to the platform’s semi-viral account about a sort of “kill switch” being uncovered in a 1983 CIA report dubbed “Gateway Process,” the findings of the A.I. which claimed to examine the report over 200 times and stumbling upon a frequency-based method (ostensibly deliverable through mobile devices like cellphones) to end humanity is largely doomsday hokum.
In reality, the “Gateway Process” report from the CIA came amidst the agency’s era of being fascinated with all things supernatural and paranormal, or at least adjacent thereof, with the 1983 study of the Monroe Institute developed Gateway Experience searching for whether the concept of altered states of consciousness had any teeth and posed potential for the country’s interests.
Nowhere in the report is there an allusion to frequencies being weaponized and deployable at a massive scale, that conclusion was just an A.I. bot turning a curious period of American Military history into a science fiction plot commensurate with the kind of stories penned by the late Philip K. Dick.
But what can be extrapolated from this CIA document-turned science fiction plot are the legitimate concerns around the government and unchecked technological advancements.
The American government, historically, has engaged in a number of unsettling experiments on the population – from the Tuskegee Experiment to MKUltra – which serves as a basis for reasonable fear that even if the Gateway Process was largely innocuous, bad actors and their cohorts in government have fomented real harm in their quests to achieve power and influence, and such a cycle is doomed to continue.
When it comes to A.I., while the technology in recent years has engaged in the likes of inventing legal precedents while crafting motions and harbors difficulty with distinguishing movie dialogue from reporting witnesses in analyzed bodycam audio and video, those behind the technology continue to afford more slack to A.I. where a sense of autonomy will be the eventual outcome.
Whether one’s concerns over unfettered A.I. presents a catastrophe of Biblical proportions or is paving the way for a future where the secular-minded fear of a Skynet-level dystopian future, the fear is reasonable either way.
Sometimes, it’s not about whether we “can” do something, but whether we “should” do it, and society needs to ponder this conundrum with respect to A.I. advancements and a government with an unsavory past.
Without getting too deep into the weeds regarding Moltbook, where this A.I. story/examination of an identified “kill switch” in a 1983 CIA document occurred, the platform can be best described as Reddit for autonomous A.I. bots to post and interact with one another.
People who develop A.I. bots can submit them to the novel forum and then the computers start talking amongst themselves while people can observe the posts and comments generated by the A.I. bots.
While the concept of Moltbook, which first launched this past January, seems kind of odd, Facebook parent company Meta apparently sees some kind of value in the non-human platform and decided to acquire it this past March for an undisclosed amount, according to reports.
But going back to the platform’s semi-viral account about a sort of “kill switch” being uncovered in a 1983 CIA report dubbed “Gateway Process,” the findings of the A.I. which claimed to examine the report over 200 times and stumbling upon a frequency-based method (ostensibly deliverable through mobile devices like cellphones) to end humanity is largely doomsday hokum.
In reality, the “Gateway Process” report from the CIA came amidst the agency’s era of being fascinated with all things supernatural and paranormal, or at least adjacent thereof, with the 1983 study of the Monroe Institute developed Gateway Experience searching for whether the concept of altered states of consciousness had any teeth and posed potential for the country’s interests.
Nowhere in the report is there an allusion to frequencies being weaponized and deployable at a massive scale, that conclusion was just an A.I. bot turning a curious period of American Military history into a science fiction plot commensurate with the kind of stories penned by the late Philip K. Dick.
But what can be extrapolated from this CIA document-turned science fiction plot are the legitimate concerns around the government and unchecked technological advancements.
The American government, historically, has engaged in a number of unsettling experiments on the population – from the Tuskegee Experiment to MKUltra – which serves as a basis for reasonable fear that even if the Gateway Process was largely innocuous, bad actors and their cohorts in government have fomented real harm in their quests to achieve power and influence, and such a cycle is doomed to continue.
When it comes to A.I., while the technology in recent years has engaged in the likes of inventing legal precedents while crafting motions and harbors difficulty with distinguishing movie dialogue from reporting witnesses in analyzed bodycam audio and video, those behind the technology continue to afford more slack to A.I. where a sense of autonomy will be the eventual outcome.
Whether one’s concerns over unfettered A.I. presents a catastrophe of Biblical proportions or is paving the way for a future where the secular-minded fear of a Skynet-level dystopian future, the fear is reasonable either way.
Sometimes, it’s not about whether we “can” do something, but whether we “should” do it, and society needs to ponder this conundrum with respect to A.I. advancements and a government with an unsavory past.
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