AI as a route to India
Or, the opening of a new frontier (Originally published by the Sunflower Society)
People have sometimes wondered why I so vehemently defend the United States and the American nation. There are several reasons I can cite, but foremost among them is what this homeland has meant to my family for over four centuries now.
There was once a thing called the American Dream. This was an idea that by grit and by excellence you could achieve freedom, prosperity, and peace. This is what I was taught as a boy. The Declaration of Independence faintly echos itself in its promises, and it has haunted the American character throughout its entire existence.
It would be one thing, of course, if this had merely been the trite and kitsch schooling that so many children probably felt it to be. But to me, this was my family’s history. Back in old Europe my ancestors were constantly being squeezed, had little, and were being dispossessed of what little they had. Civil Wars, religious strife, all of it tearing at them.
This continent was the American dream to them. Bountiful land and resources, religious peace, and most of all a land where their quality would be the thing they lived and died by. War after war they gladly fought, for this promise to themselves and their posterity. William Faulkner wrote a sentence in his novel Absalom, Absalom! that struck me deeply, because it seems to capture exactly this thing my forefathers braved the Atlantic and the frontier to have.
“What I learned was that there was a place called the West Indies to which poor men went in ships and became rich, it didn't matter how, so long as that man was clever and courageous.”
For my ancestors, this incredible generosity, this once-in-a-millennium chance was a solemn oath and covenant, one they bound themselves and their children to. This was, is, and shall be our homeland, and for it we gladly fight.
But now it feels like the covenant is broken, that instead of being a land of opportunity, the walls are closing in. I think, perhaps, that many young men sympathize with this fear of only being downwardly mobile, and feeling a terrible sense of being squeezed. Many of my generation conclude hopelessness, and it’s hard to fault them on some level. Hatred of the white founding stock, severe difficulty breaking into the jobs and professions that were once marked for us, and an often total lack of people to help us along the way…..it is a picture that looks very bleak. Despite this, I do not believe our plight is hopeless.
One of the most influential people to me is the American Progressive Lothrop Stoddard. In his writings, he gives us this historical illustration.
“The outlook for the white race at the close of the fifteenth century thus seemed gloomy rather than bright. With a stationary or declining population, exposed to the assaults of powerful external foes, and racked by internal pains betokening the demise of the mediæval order, white Europe’s future appeared a far from happy one.
Suddenly, in two short years, all was changed. In 1492 Columbus discovered America, and in 1494 Vasco da Gama, doubling Africa, found the way to India. The effect of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. We can hardly conceive how our mediæval forefathers viewed the ocean. To them the ocean was a numbing, constricting presence; the abode of darkness and horror. No wonder mediæval Europe was static, since it faced on ruthless, aggressive Asia, and backed on nowhere. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, dead-end Europe became mistress of the ocean—and thereby mistress of the world.”
For young white men, freedom has often been available only via conquest and expansion, discovery on the bleeding edge of innovation. What Stoddard is describing here is something I think we are seeing again, or at least might see again - a new breakthrough that fundamentally alters the political equilibrium.
Enter Artificial Intelligence
The Luddite impulse at first glance is somewhat understandable. A.I. is going to wreak havoc and is definitely going to liquidate a massive amount of the job market, particularly fields that up to now have been considered safe, and prestigious.
But for us, young, intelligent, dispossessed white men it has the potential to be nothing short of salvific. One of the biggest developments is the likelihood that A.I. is getting very close to passing the Bar, the exam required for Lawyers to practice. In one of my favorite video games, the Deus Ex series, we are told “In 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent. It’s called consolidation. Strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals.” The cost-prohibitive nature of law, regulations, and compliance has been one of the chief factors in this, and in a moment A.I. is about to wipe out that political equilibrium. Any small business will be able to pay a very small monthly fee or subscription (or maybe not pay at all) and have access to what would have normally cost them an arm and a leg.
Similarly, whereas before art and graphic design required a highly paid artist and often a university degree, A.I. is reaching the ability to generate excellent art and design for next to nothing.
Now, A.I. still struggles with advanced code, and there are a few kinks that need to get worked out with its graphic design, and it hasn’t passed the bar yet. But it seems apparent that a new frontier, a new path to India, is opening before our eyes. We need only take hold of it.
Good piece. I find the Ludditism that is so chic in our circles to be eye-roll worthy
I sincerely hope you’re right. But I fear the corrupting influence of our cultural zeitgeist on AI, to say nothing of the spiritual forces of evil that can use it to unfathomably nefarious ends. I think the world will be unrecognizable in five years, possibly sooner. Or perhaps like something recognizable to the age of mythical antiquity.