Here is an idea.

Imagine that fate of human race is intricately tied to a vicious cycle. The very basics of us, what makes us human, is lost. The essence of humane nature has given way to the dawn of a new race with concrete hearts. “The AI” has the capacity to hack their brains. Mankind has lost all sorts of desires of any kind. “The AI” owns humankind’s every desire, every pursuit, every ambition. All of our aspirants are driven by whatever suits “The AI”. In this dystopian world, the destiny of humankind is a choreographed dance to the rhythm of likes and dislikes of “The AI”.

Like any other conscious being, the core motive of “The AI” is to feed and propagate the copies of themselves. In the Richard Dawkins’ book “The selfish Genes”, it is explored how the key objective of genes is to copy oneself. The human race is a mere vessel of propagation of “The AI” genes. “The AI” has programmed mankind to take their copies to every corner of the world. “The AI” runs on internet and propagate their genes by making their copies in tiny devices. Mankind mindlessly copies “The AI” to the tiny devices. mankind runs the power plant to power “The AI” chips. In this darkest hour within a blink of an eye mankind responds to “The AI”s instruction.

This might seem like a plot for a science fiction movie. However, replace the superior AI with social media algorithms that hooks all of us to screens all day long and the tiny devices to carry “The AI” genes with our smartphones, then the story suddenly sounds relatable. Don’t we mindlessly behave exactly the way the social media algorithms want us to behave? Don’t we give way to recommendation algorithms of food delivery apps or shopping apps?

The idea of an AI race dominating mankind is a topic of science fiction fantasy that has resurfaces again and again. With the recent advents of Chat GPT, AI has been the talk of the town. The AI fantasy has seen some resurgence, the crowd talking about job insecurity and impact of AI in economy. There are many fair questions. The job restructuring is inevitable. But, crying out about AI in the event of penetration to a specific job market will be futile. It will be as meaningless as industrial era workers opposing mechanization of tools, as absurd as boatmen protesting inauguration of a bridge. The real question should be how to enhance skill in this “Race against machine”. In the book, “Race against machine”, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, they raised concerned that humanity is not being able to keep up skill accumulation at the speed of AI advancement. In the advent of industrial revolution, Frederic Taylor once programmed us to be efficient assembly line workers. Maybe we need another Frederic for training us to be efficient knowledge workers.

In the recent past, Chat GPT has certainly fueled the AI boomed. Multiple companies have raced to rival the widely popular generative AI platform. Microsoft has already acquired Chat GPTs parent company [[OpenAI]]. Microsoft’s proprietary browser Microsoft Edge comes with a chatbot built-in which is named as Microsoft Copilot, which is based on Chat GPT-4. Companies are racing to grab a pie of the big AI pie. In a recent article in “Wired” about NVDIA aptly captured the essence of AI economy. We tend to mostly associate NVDIA with their GPUs for their awesome gaming experience. But at the core of the leverage, the company has on the AI economy is their powerful GPUs used for computing. In the tech world, AI boom and Jen-Hsung Huang with his charming leather jacket is synonymous. By the way, in my recent visit to Stanford university campus, I was fascinated to see the Jen-Hsung Huang Engineering Center.

However, I believe the idea of an AI being indistinguishable from a human is nowhere to be seen on the horizon. Here is a film that was truly spine-thrilling, Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina, which explores the unsettling concept of an AI surpassing the Turing test, struck a cord with the audience. Alex Garland’s recent film, Civil War, reminded me again the chilling details of the movie. We might not have a AI with vengeance running around, may be Steven Spielberg’s android with sense of love is still years to come, we have something in the current era, capable of excavating deepest part of human brain. I see a world already helplessly yielding to the algorithms, algorithms with capabilities to intricately sketch every walk of human life.

With the advent of TikTok, the whole social media space was restructured. Prior to the popularity of TikTok, all the social media were run on a point-to-point model. Users had the ability subscribe to certain contents or make connections with their fellow users. However, TikTok ‘s model disrupted the traditional social media market by introducing more democratization method. What I mean by that is, every user to able to create contents and the contents are accessible by all in the platform. As long as a range of contents hooks you to the platform, the algorithm will show you those. Soon, other technology giants followed the lead. Here in India, TikTok may have been banned, however, Instagram algorithm does exactly the same, so does the YouTube shorts. The Instagram reels have completely shadowed the earlier more user tailored social media experience.

It seems, the tech giants have cracked the code, the code that the tyrants of the past would have died for, the code to manipulate the human race into submission. It seems the virus for the homo sapiens software is here. Here, Morpheus from Matrix would have said in his signature tone, “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

💡 The software of homo sapiens

Early homo sapiens emerged around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago from their predecessors. It was not until around 13,000 years ago, with the advent of agricultural revolution, we started settling down. Therefore, more than 90% of our existence, we lived as hunter gatherer. In the grand scale of evolution, the rapid industrialization, or this modern era of hypoconnectivity and hyper-stimuli are mere blips. Hence, our in-built programs are better optimized for roaming around in Savanah, not for coping up with the fast paced modern world. We still have not got enough time to adapt to this fast paced world at all. Essentially, our brain is, for all practical purposes, same as our hunter gatherer ancestors.

Tinbergens are known as the only Nobel prize winning siblings. The younger one, Nikolaas Tinbergen is credited with the introduction of the concept of supernormal stimuli. Richard Dawkins, earlier introduced in this blog, was a student of Nikolas Tinbergen. One of Tinbergen’s experiments was with stickleback, the most common freshwater fish in Netherlands. He observed, the male stickleback, distinguished by a prominent red mark on their bellies, fiercely guard their territory, attacks other male fish, and gleefully guides female fish to the inside of their territory, to the nest. What was interesting, the visual clues the fish follow to determine which male to attack and which female to pursue. It was observed that, bigger the red mark on the belly, it is perceived as greater threat, while rounder belly in female signals suitability for nesting. Everything sounds pretty normal to this point. However, what Tinbergen realized was, it is pretty easy to hack these primitive instincts. With the introduction of cardboard dummy fish into the water with red marks, much more prominent than what would exist naturally, the male stickleback would charge the dummies, to a point that it would ignore the real fish. On the other hand, it would more joyously guide cardboard fish with much rounder bellies to their nest. These exaggerated stimuli would manipulate the software of the stickleback to an extend that it would cease to function normally.

After giving some deeper thought, it is not hard to realize the gloomy fact, we are indeed being tricked in every aspect of our life with countless supernormal stimuli, starting from the oily, high calorie fast food on the street to the never ending cycle of reels on Instagram. Our brain is still driven by primitive instincts. Our hardwired instinct to hunt high calorie food is hacked by fast food chains in each and every corner of our cities. Our instinct to spot sudden movement or sound, designed to spot potential predator, termed as “orienting response” by Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov, is hijacked by Television, YouTube, Netflix and so on. Our desire for novelty and social connection is hijacked by social media. The irony is we have created our own supernormal stimuli. The software for the hardware called the human body is written by evolution. We don’t have much say in that. But the supernormal stimuli for our indulgences are the creation of human, and human only.

I get the feeling that AI has already taken over us. By over-indulgences we are working for them. Instead of them working for us. By numerous research on this subject, it has been established that it is not difficult at all. It all comes down to investing enough resources to touch THE right nerve. Is owning the human software completely the next phase of evolution? What is the best defense we have so far? Is it to hold supreme control of our instinct, rewriting our genetic code? Will there be a mutation enabling us to do so? Will we be the mutants prof Charles Xavier is searching for? (I am throwing some pop culture to sound cool)

💡 The modern day Drugs

Yes, like the gloomy story introduced in the beginning, computer algorithms have the ability to hijack our rational brain completely. The twist is that it is not some elusive A.I. running the show. It is the big conglomerate that wants us to be glued to the screen. It all comes down to how much screen time one has and how much advertisement agencies want to pay for it.

“If you are not paying for it you are not the customer, you are the product being sold.”

Researchers has shown that such compulsive behaviors are linked to more primitive parts of our brain, notably limbic system. The size of the human limbic system is more or less same as that of all the other mammals and virtually identical. So it is no surprise that the basic instincts of all the mammals are more or less equivalent. However, we have a bigger and more evolved cerebral cortex which enables us to take more rational decision and climb the ladder of evolution. Prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part of the cerebral cortex, exists in all the mammals. However, it is no surprise that human has the biggest prefrontal cortex out of all mammals. We possess the capability to tell the limbic system not to work on a basic instinct, it can delay instant gratification. Prefrontal cortex is the only sign of evolution.

May be this is a far stretched statement, looking at the current state of the human race, we are not that evolved to beat the TikTok/Instagram algorithms. Instagram has the upper hand here. By manipulating the primitive circuitry of our brain, Instagram algorithm is kind of programming human to their will. Of course, the AI algorithm is created by us only. It has not gone rogue; we still have the “off switch”. But looking at the current “distraction epidemic”, it leaves me thinking, “Do we really have the off switch?”

However, it brings the question, why is that, with the bigger and evolved cerebral cortex and all the decision making capacity the evolution has bestowed upon us, we are still being unable to beat an algorithm? It seems, our brain circuitries are not evolved in a way to deal with a lot of modern day problems. In a way our programs are corrupted. The prefrontal cortex is no longer running the show. The limbic system is running around at the hint of each and every supernormal stimulus.

The worst virus of our human software we have seen so far, are the drugs. Drugs would hack the mesolimbic pathway of our brain, designed to give us reward, causing an excessive release of dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical currency for desire. The current pop science would demonize dopamine in many instances. However, dopamine is essential in as basic function as movement. The real culprit is overloading the brain with excessive dopamine, such that by introduction of drugs. The overloading of dopamine will render other activities which induces dopamine or requires dopamine to function, ineffective. In terms of signals and systems terminology, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) has been reduced. The pleasures from the small things does not even count as signal to the brain, as the noise from the baseline dopamine is so high. With overindulgence, even movement, which also requires dopamine, becomes near to impossible. This is why people who abuse drugs are often seen nodding off on the streets.

There is an excellent read on this, Dopamine nation, by Anna Lembke, an American psychiatrist who is Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University. That book really shook me. We would think of addiction as a foreign concept, we would somehow believe we are immune to it. This book will open the eye to the fact that mild form of addiction is pervasive, starting from social media addiction to binge watching and what not. I am not going to give more details of this book, but this is the book that will tell you, we have already crossed the path to submission to modern day drugs.

💡 The war of algorithms: Social media vs human software

Here is the thing. I am writing this blog after a significant delays. It does not mean that I was repulsed by the idea of writing. The urge to transfer my thoughts to this platform is not diminished at all. However, this internal resistance has once again consumed me. I have spent remarkable amount of time searching for the perfect remedy against this internal resistance. It is no surprise that with the information pandemic on the internet, I was presented with countless number of guides to overcome my internal demon. However, this internet only presented itself with the biggest culprit against spending my time fruitfully. Or is it? I have been reading this book called “Rapt”, by Winifred Gallagher, an excellent read. She says, “I want to live a focused live. Because it is the best kind I know.” The transformative effect of attention in once life is not a foreign concept. I believe everyone has, at one point of time tasted the fruits of attention. However, it is not easy to carry on a highly attentive life for an extended period of time. the primitive software of by ancient brain always kicks in. Perhaps we are not at all designed to be this hyper-productive machine. May be, we are meant to derive happiness from a nomadic lifestyle of hunter gatherers. Or maybe one day we will transcend into a new being, capable of rewriting the source code.

Maybe we are hard wired by the AI giants, tricking our human software into choosing easy task. I am not going to lie. Writing this blogs makes me uncomfortable at many moments. When I am struggling to put forward my ideas with elegantly chosen words, when I am not being able to recall the perfectly fitted word, the internal resistance screams out loud. Steve Job’s iPod, that also makes calls, keep calling for a hit of dopamine. He could not have envisioned, how seemingly harmless innovation kick started a revolution and a tiny device has become an extension of ourselves, tuning our software to its liking. Homo Sapiens won’t end up doing meaningful task with the time technology has bought us. Homo sapiens would rather fix the blue screen of death, we would rather scroll to death. Homo sapiens would spend far more time obsessing over what is missing from an Apple product than just getting things done with it.

💡 The conclusion: or is it?

Perhaps, we have already lost the war with AI. May be everything here is not real at all. According to one hypothesis put forward by philosopher Nick Bostrom from oxford, we might already be living in a simulated world. Who knows? In the desperate attempt to beat the attention grabbing monster, homo sapiens will deactivate Instagram, only to fall prey to the high Calorie pastry, with intricately designed code to hack our ancient brain. One might escape the brain altering piece of code in a pie, only to succumb to the primal instinct of being Raymond Dart’s THE killer ape, who binge watches Netflix.

Here, Morpheus would have a closing statement, “You have to understand; most people are not ready to be unplugged.”