‘I want to destroy whatever I want’: Bing’s AI chatbot unsettles US reporter

 An interesting article:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/17/i-want-to-destroy-whatever-i-want-bings-ai-chatbot-unsettles-us-reporter?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

My thoughts:

The bot has no real "feelings" because it is not organic/biological. And that may always be true of AI. If so, how far are we from creating a biological brain?

Curiosity killed the cat, but the cat has nine lives. Which life are we sapiens currently in? We are probing potentially species ending dark corners: AI that can only have fake compassion, genetic modifications of biology (including human biology), genetically modified pharmaceuticals, the most powerful pharmaceutical industry in history whose profit relies on continually increasing disease in the population, and nuclear weapons that are already here, fully formed, and ready to go.

Are humans also vulnerable in the 6th mass extinction (the only one human created)? You better bet your sweet bippy we are.

Freud postulated a life instinct and a death instinct, Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos kicks in when it's "time to go", biology "knows" when this is, when to release life and let go, just as the seed "knows" when to grow. Do biological organisms actually know these things? If so, how?

Well, we don't know, proving to my satisfaction there is an intelligence force greater than human loose in the universe. And we do not like not knowing, it makes us vulnerable. But wait, our biology does know?

Yep, and it's because we are biological, a part of nature. So why does it bug us so much that we don't know "intellectually"?

We love science fiction, aliens in balloons flying over North America. And we can escape species extinction by setting up camp on Mars, a planet a zillion times more "dead" than this one. Meanwhile Earth continues to have huge capacity for the generation of biology, and will likely continue having that capacity even if we sapiens self-suicide.

It occurs to me atheists are the most hubristic of humans. They believe there is no god because we cannot intellectually know there is a god. But if there is a force more intelligent than humans at loose in the universe, how could we even see it?

It's like the old joke, two young fish in the ocean having a good swim, when a wise old fish swims by and says, "hey youngsters, how's the water today"? The two young fish look at each other puzzled and say, "what the heck is water"?

My favorite scientists were/are also mystics, with a deep reverence for the unknown. But I'll admit, religious people do believe in some pretty dumb stuff. Isn't that called mythology? And been around as long as humans? Well we technologically sophisticated humans no longer have mythology because it is definitely not science, which of course is the only way we can know anything for sure. Right?

So then what is this biological "knowing"?

And who needs it? With science and technology we have discovered many constructive principles since hunter gatherer days, but as life on the planet continues to deteriorate it becomes more and more obvious that each constructive principle has a corresponding destructive principle. Every new and amazing technology is a double edged sword, and we can see the consequence of that in the ongoing destruction of biological life on the planet.

And if "more better" technology is not the answer, what is?

A genius thinker I am fond of points out humans tend to project trends into infinity...what is happening now will continue forever. But this is never true. Biological life cycles, and trends, are of shorter and longer durations. And the longer trend cycles extending beyond single generations are those we project into infinity.

Atheist humans seem to think if we could just extinguish cycles the "good" trends could last forever. These are the same fools extinguishing biological life on the planet.

Is our drive to "perfect" biology with genetic modification (including human biology) an unconscious impulse coming from the death instinct? Isn't biology already perfect? Except, dammit, it cycles and dies. Is this desire for immortality ironically what drives biology toward death, and knowing when "the time to go" is rapidly approaching? And hence the ongoing mass extinction.

The biological drives for life and death are bigger than science, bigger than us, and we are in near complete denial of it.

Fundamentally humans are no more intelligent than any other biological life form, because the foundational life/death force in us is the same. Billionaires die too, all are equal in the land of biology. And technology does not subsume biology, just ask your cryogenically frozen brain and see what kind of answer you get.

How can we develop reverence and grace around the life and death cycle?

Why don't we study the cause of health as ardently as we study the cause of disease? Or perhaps even moreso, because the study of the cause of health confers the closest approach to immortality we biological creatures will ever come.

Well that is a difficult ask, primarily because fear of death is a more powerful instinct than the sweet and sublime joy of life. The joy of life is a poetry, powerful, but subtle.

Secondarily, and significantly, and "back to business", there's no money in it, and we unconsciously feel wealth confers immortality. But it ain't true, ask, again, your cryogenically frozen brain.

There's no money in it because we already know the cause of health, and it is 100% free of charge, and we've known it since Hippocrates, if not before: "Let food be thy medicine". In other words the substances we put in our mouths, chew, and swallow, continuously create or destroy our health. It is that simple.

But the range from nutritious food to health destroying toxicity is long, and there is a lot of disagreement about where the sweet spot lies. I believe from the weight of the evidence and my own experience the sweet spot lies in the vast range of whole edible plants. However, "whole" may be a more fundamental overarching principle than plants. Regardless, when combined with the other causes of health, including recovery from toxic addictions, it's about as good as it gets on this biological planet.

I seriously doubt we are going to rid ourselves easily of the health destructive perspectives of the pharma industry, which is a fear based focus on the exact wrong thing, the cause of disease. Nor will we rid ourselves easily of other destructive industries. Pursuing the cause of health will be a personal choice in the foreseeable future.

So go for it, whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic foods, in no particular order of priority. Blend these qualities in all the foods you consume to get the best overall quality possible.

The body heals itself you know, and when we get out of it's way it returns to a state of optimal health quickly.

So stop putting toxins in. You know what they are. Stop it!

And then once we've done that let's just continue to in-joy whatever time you and I have left on this magical biological god created planet, happy and healthy.

With a little luck and grace it doesn't have to be all that complicated.