The Present is as torturous as it is boring, no wonder then so many people clamor for the flame of Prometheus to be given to us from above, for humanity to grasp it and burn the old world into ashes, But what about the hand that grasps the flame? Are they ready to create a field of ashes worth playing around in?
Introduction – The A.I of futures past, now and the future
A.I has been a thing for almost seventy years now, since its conception it’s been in the forefront of the public imagination when it comes to the future and the changes it may bring, certainly the stories created around A.I are as much of a part of the public conception of it as its material reality, yet even so after those seventy years such a revolution still seems to be only in the dreams of those fans of technology. There have been two A.I winters in the past (periods in which advances in A.I technology greatly diminished compared to previous years), both of them preceded by an enormous pouring of resources and hope into the project of A.I only for the material realities of its possibilities to show themselves and for the project to be abandoned until another spring, for all of its existence the “revolution” of A.I has been closely tied to the reactionary status quo of business and the bourgeois society and thus unable to develop itself once the financial system loses interest for it as was the case for the two previous winters. Once again the talk of A.I has breached the sphere of those dedicated to technology and into common knowledge, another spring for A.I has come and with it yet more promises of the great future it can deliver us, however even if ready-made essays might be the peak of technology for some us, for the real dreamers, the Prometheans among us, the present in which A.I exists is one without life or creation, and entirely unable to complete the promises of true revolution and end the dominance of meat intelligence.
While some might ignorantly argue that this is simply a matter of time, that we just do not have the technology to reach the dreams of the futurists, those people fail completely in analyzing why we are at the condition that we are now, and why it’s a direction of lifelessness and sterility. And some others might recognize that the control of the market over A.I is the reason for such a sterility but still argue that such conditions will be naturally dealt with and that as the technology evolves A.I will take its place as another great revolutionary tool of individual creation and progress, able to bring mutual existence into next levels simply by the nature of its processes, those people however might as well await for the Messiah to return or for World Revolution to take hold. The ways in which technology functions and the purpose it serves will forever be tied to the social structure, culture and ideological framework of the space it finds itself in no matter its revolutionary nature, and taking Prometheus’ flame is what’s necessary to decide what it burns.
And so, while A.I holds immense potential to uproot many of the existing systems of our world and a capacity for the expansion of individual reach it is doomed to become a tool of alienation should it fail to be seen as a tool for each to grasp and instead be seen as a novelty. As novelty A.I loses its revolutionary potential since it becomes tied to the capitalist system of production, it is seen not as a tool from which an individual may create its value but as an objective in of itself, A.I is given value as “A.I” and it is used to replace existing creativity for the sake of its consumerist value, turning the mutual interaction and communication of individuals into lifeless and sterile in the process.
Promethean Flame – Technology and Tools
If there’s something that enamors us as a species in the realm of zoology, even as laymen, it’s the numerous moments in which animals are shown to be able something that we view as human, understanding language being an example of it, but one of more particular interest to this text is tool use, despite tool use being seen in many animals and not therefore not a particularity of the human condition the showcase of these abilities by animals almost anthropomorphizes them, it is not seen as another skill but a thing that makes them closer to us, definitely because it shows them as closer in intelligence, but as something deeper too, almost as if being able to utilize technology ascends them beyond just “parts of nature” and more independent actors, which makes sense, as it is what it did to us.
Our ability to utilize tools and create technology is what -alongside and in mutuality with sociability- made us beyond nature in at least our own vision of ourselves, being able to interact and change the environment, become something aside from only itself by having our sphere of being is what defined the human species as people, specially as we created society and lived in our own world, but further than that the transformation of nature is the appropriation of it by humanity, that is, the moment we utilize technology, create a tool and take it for ourselves it becomes very much “us”, an extension of us and our property and in that why humanizing that piece of nature into a piece of Man. From this basis does technology gain its individual and revolutionary power, as it becomes intrinsically tied to ourselves, we attach ourselves to our tools by making them ours and by making them ours we make them part of our individual manifestation, an extension of creative and destructive power of the unique itself, in such a process man betters itself, breaks its previous limits and is able to conquer and take even more, technology is something that actively breaks alienation by allowing the individual to surpass the material barriers to its wants, and in such a process does it attain its desirable and revolutionary character, such a fact is true for every technology, from the stone lance to the cybernetic body.
Noticeable however is that the exclusivity of its revolutionary character portrays exactly why technology finds itself to be alienating at times, specially in our present society, tool as extension of the human being only extends the individual, not the “Human Being” -As such thing does not exist-, as such the idea of technology as an advancement of humanity is revealed as a fraud, for what it advances are individual interests, by the will of the individuals who hold such technology, for other cases, for those devoid of tools and technology they are deprived of the revolutionary power of it, impoverished of a tool and made lesser in their capacity for creation and destruction, though in most cases only by the ideology that prevents them from taking those tools for themselves.
The ideology of private property is the greatest destructor of technology, for it uses them for nothing but sheer alienation, utilizing them not for individual creation and advancement but for the purpose of exchange and production which exists only in phantasm, not only that but by creating the sacredness of private property these tools are kept away by those who don’t find themselves given the permission to obtain them, instead utilizing those as tools for those tools to serve the tools of capitals to obtain more tools, leaving no place for the individual as any taking of technology for themselves is reject in favor of the abstraction of product, today technology serves not for aristocratic or democratic means, but for bourgeois means and as such are incapable of creation that breaks through meaningless capital and survival, something the other two means just might.
From this poverty came the calls for democratization, for technology to not be so exclusive and how advancements in technology could not just “democratize” technology itself but also every other means of creation that technology can touch, which is all of them of course. The ideology of democratization of technology faces the pitfall of democracy itself however, in that it inevitably surrenders itself to the uncreative and unmoving masses, when creativity is something belonging only to the individualist aristocracy, even should the reach of all of the world’s technology extend to every person such democratization cannot come about at the same time as individual ascendency, if the tools belong to “all” then they still fail to provide themselves to the individual, as they are with “all”, the problem given to us by the bourgeois method of production continues but in a further form, the revolutionary capacity of technology comes when its for each, and not all, that every person has the capacity to utilize their tools for the advancements, that’s the capacity tools imbue us with.
The revolutionary power of technology rests not in its democratization nor in its vanguard, but in its anarchist avant-garde.
Novelty – Ideology and Product
At the end state of the appropriation of tools and technology by consumerist society is its reduction to simple product, the material reality of tools as tools is contorted by consumerist society in order to give those tools a value in of themselves as product that they would not have had if it wasn’t for its specific designation as such top-down by society itself. Such a process is omnipresent and has taken hold of most technologies, where they are not sought after for usefulness or entertainment value but for social signaling in-of-themselves, for being valuable as something that you hold and that you sacrificed yourself for, it becomes a sign of your alienation within society and a priority above any individual realization.
The product destroys individual creativity because it places the objective of life into products that only have value in the system it finds itself in, tools such a cellphone or a computer can be valuable under most circumstances, and are a tool for individual realization and the expansion of its creativity just as much as they are commodities that you are meant to consume in order to find your value in society under said consumption. Therefore they exist in a point of either tools of creativity or sterile commodities, sterile because they are ends in of themselves, the individual is meant to sacrifice itself to obtain the tool, which places such a process contrary to the revolutionary potential of technology which is not a foreign sacred to be sacrificed to but an extension of individual power and reach.
Under the context of this consumerist comes a new product as well as a new ideology to defend it, novelty. Novelty is the specialty of our fast-paced consumerist society, the coup de grâce for the assimilation of tools into products, novelty is the mere fetishization of technology as product, or more specifically, the propaganda for new products for the sake of its newness, it places technology’s purpose as to not produce tools but to produce novelty, which is the highest of all products by its mere being, while basics are forgotten and depreciated -most of the time justifiably so- the simple touch of new enlightens any product to a supposed stage of revolutionary. Such a thing is easily identifiable as a fake futurism, a fake technology, for even if their defenders -Elon Musk and his cult the most obvious example- claim their revolutionary ability they fail to change as any technology changes, because it fails as a tool and instead becomes novelty.
Novelty fetishism is inherently alienating as it seeks to place all value in the breaking-off of things instead, without regard for any individual use of it, in which novelty becomes more important than the individual and a sacred objective by itself, “we must innovate!”, the word “innovation”, a religious mantra as there have ever been, because after all it places itself in dogma, -rather than individual destruction, chaotic destruction of all that stand in its way by the way of developing tools and technology- novelty places a strict path for its use, which is its value as a social signifier, as a better product. As such innovation isn’t done for the sake of moving forward into a preferred position but in the creation of a better more “novel” product to obtain status in society, forcibly putting all who seek social relevance in front of a conveyor belt were they must keep rotating their goods as to maintain their social status, climbing forever into more novelty for the sake of it.
In this sense it can also be said that novelty is inherently reactionary, for when a new technology, a new tool is placed under novelty it loses its individual potential as its definition, a technology passing from Prometheus into becoming a novelty is its transformation into individual tool for creation into the food of the masses, to be gobbled up in the system of consumerism that is ever present in our current society, at that point it becomes novelty monetary value rather than usefulness becomes its motivator, that defines whether it will continue on or not, reducing its game breaking potential as its limbs are sewn by the strings of the bourgeois puppeteers and made to dance to their tune, such will be the fate for the current A.I boom i imagine, as it stands now its novelty for the mindless masses to entertain themselves, independent creators will evolve it surely but once this unthinking mass tires of this novel toy it will be discarded and what made it get so far, money, will seize to be, as was the case for the previous winters.
A.I as Novelty – The Death of Creation
Finally with this we reach the state of A.I and its surrounding ideology today, From its sudden boom in interest we see for the most part in the ways it is distributed and fought for the attempt at the establishment of a novelty, not a tool but a merchandise of its own, though due to the nature of A.I’s current use this distinction may not be as clear as other technology it is definitely there, both in its material use and current propaganda, despite the benefit of A.I being what it produces it still finds itself as the novelty to be consumed. The end result of this, specific to A.I’s own properties, is a reach in of automation and tyranny that it is distinguishable and more damning than previous alienating innovations, as it is one that deeply strikes creativity itself, the very soul of human communication is turned into product, sterility and death permeating every intelligent interaction from them on as the very basis of the song of individuality is substituted by industrial and commercial noise.
From the sites which hosts A.I programs today to the popular mouthpieces that spread its gospel we see the propaganda as something beyond current methods of, for the most part, artistic production, that thanks to A.I’s ability to navigate and produce in the digital space the ability to create media is greatly expanded, this however is deeply drenched in the alienation of capital, as such created media is displaced from its humane creative value, not because it utilizes a tool, A.I can definitely be used to expand human creativity -And i will talk more about this in the next section-, But because it is used for its sake as an A.I, its a novel product and as such its prioritized simply for its value as something new and something to be more easily consumed, more specifically current A.I programs serve to either facilitate or remove completely the human process of art creation for the sake of convenience and more easily creating a product to be consumed, of course it is for this exact reason that such things aren’t art, as they completely remove human communication from the equation, leaving instead a product that finds its value in capitalist consumption rather than human intercourse, built upon not by the abilities, will and desire of the artist at hand but on simple tags meant to create a desired product, this doesn’t apply only to A.I art however as it still holds true to writing, both in cases of A.I “communication of information” and A.I “essay writing”, in either case the use of it in human life is the intercourse of humanity, something that gets destroyed by the application of senseless and purposeless data that ultimately serves only to make a show for the eyes, as the value of both those things are found in human communication, not in the eternally distant “digital alien”.
The end result of such a process is the automatization of human thought itself, for long did artists and creatives contend themselves with the idea that they could not be replaced by the machine, for the ability of social communication is something that only social beings can achieve, however the gray steamroller of consumerism treads over that as well, i say consumerism and not automation, for automation facilitates creativity, but it’s consumerism that destroys. The current defense of A.I products is the consequence of capitalist denigration of individual creation itself, as the human ability to communicate socially is disregarded for the sake of consuming more and more, for long this was the case without A.I, as artistic products of genuine authorial intent kept being more and more disregarded by the capitalist drive to create more and more profit, as well the capitalist need to obtain profit to be able to create, individual creation lost to “fanism”; the constant, lifeless and formulaic factory construction of pieces of media for the sake of appeasing its mindless consumers, throwing any individuality or authenticity for the sake of creating the spectacle that creates the most revenue possible, choking art to death. A.I is simply the most powerful weapon in this process, where even labourial activity itself is disregarded and thrown out for completely fabricated spectacles of no actual meaning, atomizing individuals as social communication is disregarded for simple production.
A.I as it is now will be the death of art, not as a force in of itself, but as the final blow given by consumerism, as production of media rests only in those who can fabricate the most ready to sell product possible, will and purpose is choked by a miasma of digitized consumerism as creativity itself is taken from the individual by capitalism.
The Flame in my Possession – A.I as a Liberatory Tool
Of all the ideologues that are doomed to be defeated for all eternity it is the luddite -and i apply this term with extreme prejudice to refer to all those idiots who seek to stop the unstoppable march of progress, doomed to get devoured by the darwinian reality that technology is- who faces the largest and stupidest challenge, for the advance of technology is something endemic to the upward drilling will of life itself, and in this process does technology become a nightmare. For as long as there are the anti-life forces of the state, religion and the economy, advanced technology will become a tool for the tyranny and destruction of the individual, the very bodies of people contorted more than they have before to serve society. Only one path shines a bright light into such a future, only one method can actually bring technology to its heel back as a tool for individual fulfillment, Anarcho-Transhumanism.
A.I is not just a important tool for expanded creative power, but the very torch into digital transhumanism itself, Artificial Intelligence is our most in depth system of meat interaction with the digital world as it is its own scout and creator in it, or when used as a tool, our ability to get in reach to the digital. With A.I the individual ability to interact and create around the digital world is expanded to its greatest possibilities, a hyper powerful computing system to be added to our own as another part of individual existence, another sense of sorts. This isn’t very far fetched even, A.I is already used improve human creation within a digital space, such as when it is used to smooth out edges of already made and planned individual creation, reaching where our meat brains could not, should A.I be freed from it’s glass prison of novelty the speeds in which we can reach even beyond that is immeasurable.
A.I in its theoretical nature can be the great destroyer of modern society, its function can in every way fundamentally change the structure of mutual organization of individuals and render sections of tyrannical society completely without material sense, expanding the abilities in which individuals can explore existence, create and express themselves. All of this only if we are willing to grab A.I as ours, not as product but as our property, part of us, an extension of individual will, if we let it out of grasp, than a digital barrier of inexistence is all that there will be between mindless and broken slaves in a dead society.
I can see it, Prometheus is coming down with the Gods’ divine flame, and it is about time we extend our reach to grab it once and for all.
Shall we expropriate the flame and burn civilization to its ashes?