ETHICS, RISKS AND PERSPECTIVES
By: Richard BurryFans of the classic Coast to Coast With Art Bell radio program were a curious lot, with interests that ranged from time travel to the grassy knoll.
A favorite topic was “remote viewing,” a dark art supposedly perfected by the Pentagon that allowed a trained operative to peer into the future and see what were invariably the horrors of coming decades.
Art Bell himself signed off from planet Earth in 2018, with a final life episode that could have been jointly simulcast on Coast to Coast and Forensic Files. But his conspiracies and wild fictions live on, including the topic of remote viewing.
One memorable Coast to Coast broadcast focused on the possibility that people might someday be able to upload themselves to the Internet, living forever in cyberspace.
The technology seemed to be accelerating in that direction. Prominent billionaires such as Elon Musk spoke about their desire to upload their neural patterns, taking on the trappings of the divine.
But Art Bell’s most gifted remote viewers saw a problem. They had seen the future, and it was indeed filled with people who had uploaded their souls, the essence of what made them unique, to the Internet. There, they were living immortal lives, with the knowledge of the ages and the unbounded imagination of billions unfurled before them.
It sounded like a paradise, or was it?
One of the remote viewers reported that he had received a message from that eternal plane, a desperate warning to anyone who was planning a future of unending Internet existence. It was: “Kill us.”
For these disembodied minds, online eternity turned out to be a digital hell. In a fate worthy of a Twilight Zone screenplay, they had unlimited access to every virtual experience an algorithm could create. But that infinity of choices was itself an unquenchable fire. There was no end, no way out.
Whether Art Bell’s remote viewers really saw such a Dante-esque future, the downsides of online freedom and imagination are obvious, even now. The Internet makes possible the best in human creativity, while bringing out the worst in society’s character.
A simple search on Google proves the point. Even the most innocent search terms can take you down a rabbit hole to a dark Wonderland. You came to bask in the reflection of social media, but found yourself falling through the looking glass.
It’s not the Jabberwock that frightens you, but the sudden appearance of a Bianca Censori photo or Octomom video. Up ahead is a menagerie of trolls, bullies, propagandists, scammers and defamers. And that’s just the guest list for one tea party.
Those of us who helped found and shape the early Internet realize that we cannot be neutral when it comes to guiding the technology’s unfolding evolution in a positive direction. As we apply AI, we must also apply ethics. As we create apps, we must also help create a healthy community that aspires to Google’s original tagline: Don’t be evil.
It’s still good advice for every online user and entity.
