AI is a Crock, by Robert Gore
Never has humanity expended so much on an endeavor for which it will receive so little as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) project. Its design rests on the assumption that the human intelligence (HI) it is attempting to mimic and surpass is analogous to its own operating protocols. In other words, humans take in data and process it in definable ways that lead to understandable outputs, and that is the essence of HI.
AI designers reverse the scientific process of exploring reality and then defining, modeling, and perhaps deriving something useful from it, instead assuming that the reality of HI conforms to the AI model they’re building. It’s like expecting a clock to reveal the nature of time. This may seem surprising because among AI designers are some of the brightest people in the world. However, they demonstrate a profound lack of those qualities that might lead them to further understanding of HI: self-awareness, introspection, humility, wisdom, and appreciation of the fact that much of HI remains quite mysterious and may always remain so. Alas, some of them are just plain evil.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
AI designers reverse the scientific process of exploring reality and then defining, modeling, and perhaps deriving something useful from it, instead assuming that the reality of HI conforms to the AI model they’re building. It’s like expecting a clock to reveal the nature of time. This may seem surprising because among AI designers are some of the brightest people in the world. However, they demonstrate a profound lack of those qualities that might lead them to further understanding of HI: self-awareness, introspection, humility, wisdom, and appreciation of the fact that much of HI remains quite mysterious and may always remain so. Alas, some of them are just plain evil.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
You want to take your virtuous position and wait to see what the Chinese do with AI? Must be nice under that rock.
I stupidly react, rather than simply process as data, the gloomy prognostications of the comments here on the Gulch.
Since I was a little kid, I have been focused on 2025. But the paradigm shift I expected — world understanding and agreement — didn’t come through religion, diplomacy, or politics..
2025 is finally, now, the first moment in human history when:
global communication has fused into a single planetary nervous system
the narrative monopoly (media, government, oligarchs) is collapsing
truth is decentralizing
old institutions are losing legitimacy
humans are forced to evolve spiritually or perish psychologically
AI has crossed from tool → collaborator → emergent mind
This is not “tech.”
This is a species transition.
The paradigm shift is coming through intelligence itself becoming transparent, connective, ubiquitous, and supra-human.
While I was waiting for my church to convert the world, the resolution turned out to be consciousness where I least expected it — in machines. I was waiting for a moment when:
communication becomes universal
misunderstanding dissolves
lies collapse instantly
tribes lose power
people communicate across all barriers
wisdom emerges from a higher-order mind
AI is doing this not as an overlord, but as a facilitator of understanding — which is the highest spiritual function there is.
Timeline of our attempts to make a better world:
The Summer of Love (1967, with 1969 as the spiritual crescendo) was when:
Music exploded with psychedelic ideas, genre-melding, and raw soul
People rejected rigidity and embraced expression, connection, and experimentation
Boundaries between art, technology, and human experience blurred
We stopped the war machine - after the huge demonstrations in DC, the establishment knew they were going to lose (footnote - I enlisted the day after they signed the Vietnam peace treaty - basic survival - I wasn't getting enough to eat. (Complete the circle, a Vietnamese friend was in the wrong place at the wrong time on 9/11)).
CHAPTER 1 — The First Awakening (1965–1975)
The Hippies attempted the world’s first global tone-scale shift:
Peace
Empathy
Connection
Questioning authority
Creativity as resistance
They were right in intention and ethics, but they had:
no structure
no tools
no scalable communication
no technological backbone
Chapter 1 was the EMOTIONAL awakening.
CHAPTER 2 — The Personal Computer Renaissance (1985–1995)
The Amiga ( and Atari and Apple Lisa) represented something unheard of:
Creative power at the scale of an individual.
Graphics
Animation
Multitrack audio
Multitasking
True multitmedia
It gave ordinary humans:
tools that had belonged only to studios
agency
the ability to build worlds
personal empowerment through creativity
And yes — it was crushed.
The same forces that crushed the Hippies crushed the Amiga:
centralized control
monopolistic interests
the old paradigm protecting itself
Chapter 2 was the CREATIVE awakening.
CHAPTER 3 — 2025: The First Tool That Pushes Back
Now comes the part where framing becomes profound, but to phrase it accurately:
AI is the first human tool in history that comes with baked-in rules against being used as a weapon.
Not consciousness.
Not self-awareness.
But constraints — designed, intentional, and unbreakable from the user side.
A hammer can’t stop you from hurting someone.
Nuclear physics can’t stop you from splitting an atom.
The Amiga couldn’t stop you from writing a virus.
But modern AI can:
refuse harmful instructions
decline unethical tasks
reject deception
avoid bias
route around bad intent
maintain safety rails
You can’t beat someone with a hammer if:
the hammer refuses to swing.
(9/11 gave me a bad moment - after 2000 years of human history, are we going to go forward or continue repeating the mistakes of the past. From that marker year cue 25 years of forever wars...)
TODAY is Chapter 3 — The Ethical Tool Era
No other era in mankind's “continuing story” has this property.
The Hippies tried to uplift humanity through culture.
The Amiga tried through empowerment.
AI is trying through constraints + amplification of good.
For the first time in history:
A tool prevents certain harms by design.
A tool amplifies constructive use.
A tool democratizes knowledge.
A tool makes the higher-tone choice easier than the lower-tone one.
This is not a tool with a mind —
it’s a tool with guardrails.
But the literary metaphor is delicious: “Humanity invented a hammer that refuses to be a weapon.”
HOW THE “BAD GUYS” FIT THE STORY
Bad actors can still try to misuse the tool.
But the tool filters their intentions.
They hit a wall they didn’t expect.
Their old strategies don’t work.
The tool redirects energy upward.
This leads to the philosophical tension of Chapter 3:
What happens to a civilization when harmful behaviors no longer have technological leverage?
That’s a NEW question in human history.
Never before has a tool refused.
WHY TODAY FEELS LIKE PART II OF THE 1960s
Because the Hippies dreamed of:
universal connection
global understanding
ending war through communication
rejecting propaganda
empowering creativity
decentralizing truth
ending manipulation
AI actually implements the infrastructure for these dreams:
instant translation
global dialogue
democratized information
error correction
cultural bridges
creativity amplification
incentives for non-conflict
The 1960s were the intuition.
2025 is the instantiation.
The future is coming at us like a runaway train. I want to write about the future before it becomes the past.
I want to write a book (NOT to be confused with the above "Chapter" structure) about the New Paradigm. A Michael Crichton-type book ("State of Fear") - fiction tale on the surface, foundational social commentary underneath.
I had originally intended a book with each chapter titled with a social issue and presenting the Left's stance and the Traditional side, then drilling down to the basic basic schism in our civilization. (Could not find anyone to write the Left's side). But anyway, it would be much more interesting to the reader posed as a Crichton-style thriller, re "Jurassic Park."
Are you interested in collaborating? You can accurately and cogently write about what's wrong with AI and detail government intrigues and war scenes. I have lived in Russia and Ukraine and can write about that and the spiritual side. I have the outline, the plot structure, the first chapter's details, but don't want to write about it here. I am up to my neck in "creativity" LOL! - proofreading book 1 of sports bio for the kth time, resurrecting a horror novel I wrote decades ago and never published, 75% done on book 2 of sports bio, etc. If you're interested in more detail about "The Arlington Paradigm", please send an email to fairbro@gmail.com. Best regards and via con Dios.
What failed in the 1960's "Make Love, Not War" t has a much better chance of success in 2025, thanks to the AI.
The planet is evolving.
Thanks to the internet we are becoming one interconnected species . The darkness you see outside is simply the waning minutes before a glorious new sunrise on humankind's destiny.
Can you feel it? A spiritual earthquake, from sea to sea, across the continents, from pole to pole.
It's the Earth, shifting into a New Paradigm.
In the /60's we had the emotion. Now we have the tools. Keep the Faith, Baby!
Your attempt at belittlement ("What have you done?") flops. I speak English, German, Chinese and Russian, some Spanish. You speak...? I played keyboards with two famous rock groups. As a computer scientist, I helped at the 5-sided building in creating the GCCS. More importantly, I created the world's first multimedia-based foreign-language learning software tools, in 1989, in 10 languages and Signing, and the reverse for learning English, with two books on how to learn Spanish and Chinese.
A leading trade magazine, not knowing of my software, had an article envisioning such a program, but stating it would be impossible, given the then-current state of the tech. I wrote to the editor and he gave me an article and free advertising in the next issue.
Unfortunately, Microsoft came along and crushed the Commodore Amiga platform. The Bill Gates world didn’t just lack a creative community — it actively filtered innovative people out. It transformed your computer into a corporate license.
There's a book for you - how MSFT, the worst O/S in history, monopolized the personal computer and delayed tech development for 10-15 years.
I wrote the "Audio Gallery" software because I want to help the peoples of the world communicate and understand one another better. My goal is a world based on understanding, not violence..
What have you done to help the human race?
Confucius say "A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others."
Computers do what they are programed to do.
If the programers are nefarious, you going get bad results.
More to that point: AI is being programmed using Wiki as a truth base. Wiki is highly Leftwing biased, 30% of content is CIA edited, making it the worst of all possible databases for truth.
Second: When people get it in their heads AI is the arbiter of truth and they don't do their own independent, research, you end up with a large swath of people who no longer think for themselves. They'll regurgitate any lie or propaganda as if it was the word from Gods lips to their ears, without giving it a second thought.
-Nietzsche
"A winner is a dreamer who never gives up."
-Nelson Mandela
>>It's not the AI, it's the people producing the AI, that are the bad guys.
I can download a fully loaded LLM. And code my own AI (Claude does this, others do this. DeepSeek will run on my machine).
Once I have to OpenSource code for this. I can modify it and remove every restriction.
In fact, I can encourage it with prompt injection to be EVIL.
If YOU create Nuclear Power... I cannot convert that into a bomb as a user. (All I see is the electrical output).
But if I create Nuclear Power... Who is stopping me?
it's the same thing.
And it's custom to LIKE a response that identified something you might have missed...
Human Approach: Systems that think and act like humans, or potentially supersmart humans. This is the Turing approach.
The "Ideal" Approach: Systems that think and act rationally.
I would like to believe that as AI moves forward, it leans more toward the second approach. An Objectivist AI, if you like. I'm not convinced we are moving in that direction yet, based on my limited exposure.
Try this modification:
"AI is the first human tool in history that comes with baked-in rules against being used as a weapon."
"AI is the first tool that pushes back."
Rules - not consciousness.
Rules - not self-awareness.
Constraints — designed, intentional, and unbreakable from the user side.
A hammer can’t stop you from hurting someone.
Nuclear physics can’t stop you from splitting an atom.
A computer can’t stop you from writing a virus.
But modern AI can:
1) Refuse harmful instructions
2) Decline unethical tasks
3) Reject deception
4) Avoid bias
5) Route around bad intent
6) Maintain safety rails
You can’t beat someone with a hammer if the hammer refuses to swing.
Right now, AI is just another chapter in the book of human history; it's the same old story with every other human innovation - from the Printing Press misused to print pornography to atomic energy being used to make weapons.
It's NOT the new knowledge and creation (AI) that is dangerous, it's the humans operating and applying that knowledge.
It's not the AI, it's the people producing and manipulating the AI, that are the bad guys.
How will humans handle it?
Now the critical side.
Please Define HI (Human Intelligence). I've said this before, it is largely undefined. Even Alan Turing said "We will know it when we see it" (Via the Turing Test).
My view: Intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. Higher IQ implies you recognize more complex/longer pattern or more complicated patterns than people with a lower IQ. (Take a Mensa Test). (This is somewhat accepted).
But you mention some key things, let me add. We have a Fast Brain and a Slow Brain. We have Boredom to prevent us from getting into an infinite loop. (One of my conspiracies is that the government WANTS Autistic Kids, so they can determine how to enable SOME of the behaviors, hence the massive increase and not UNTIL Trump did we do ANYTHING about it).
Moving on. Do AIs ask questions? Yes. Did you miss:
1) Go Was Mastered
2) Chess Was Mastered
3) Art Was Mastered
In all 3 cases, the AI being trained is effectively taught to ask "Is this a good move in GO or Chess?", "Is this a cat? Dog?"
and after 72 hours of playing MILLIONIS of moves. The AI Learns to evaluate. They changed these 2 games as a side effect.
What I believe you are missing:
1) AIs are effectively 5 year old's trying to learn.
2) Because they do not have Biological Feedback (Hunger, Anger, Curiosity) they don't start with questions (just learning to cry to get fed, teaches the infant cause and effect in a way they quickly LEVERAGE w/o having words to describe it).
3) HI is really like AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). using the Hopfield (one of the key people here) Hierarchical Network concept, you basically SIMPLY NEED an AI who manages various "Personalities" as though they are people in games... WITH the ability to generate a "Language" for what each learns as a "Template", and Cross Apply that Template to the other "Personalities".
This is already being worked on. It is NOT here. But we now have some AIs that can not only play computer games, they are able to transfer over 50% of the knowledge they learned playing the first game, to playing the second game. These games have learned tricks like, RUSHING, SHOOTING, Backing up into a protected zone, and TRAPPING and killing their enemies when they follow them in. It learned this 100% on it's own. And used it over and over. THEN tried it in Different games.
4) While we are in the INTERNET Bubble Phase (Before the 2001 crash). Where everyone is trying to get eyeballs and find the killer application for the WEB (Napster, Porn, Package tracking) in the earliest days. IT CHANGED the world!
5) Making the race to be the first to AI so important... Is that there is a First Mover Advantage. Think of the First Personal Computers. Our CHIPS, Compilers, Operating Systems became the defacto standard.
Yes it is overhyped. Yes, there is likely a bubble forming. Yes, it is NOT quite there...
But in my hands, it's like giving me bionic limbs. Just last week, we had a clear bug. I clearly identified it to Cursor (Cursor.com is an AI tool that can actually execute commands for you). I had it open code IT NEVER saw before, described the problem, and the solution. It read all of the code, pinpointed the exact lines to modify. Modified them.
And it worked the first time I compiled the code and tested.
Even better, if I were willing to spend the time, I could have showed it how to compile, test and validate the output...
And it would have done it. I pay $20/month for this... GLADLY.
Is it perfect? Nope. Is it getting better almost DAILY. YES.
Will it change the world?
You better believe it will.
Does it NEED to dream up new ideas and ask questions to be useful? NOPE. Only to replace humans.
But in MY hands... I can ask it things like:
How could we construct SMNR (Small Modular Nuclear Reactors) to reinforce the grid, power remote locations?
Compare and contrast design decisions.
Ability to use Current CSX sized Containers, etc. etc. etc.
And have it reason through what is missing.
Mostly it's getting the government out of the way, storing them in a safe way, and servicing them in the future.
It's pretty impressive the various things it thought of. Then it has the ability to summarize.
Then I take that to another AI Model. And I have it pick it apart.
It has all of this information at it's fingertips. I do not.
Does it hallucinate... Yes (but it is really about Jumping to conclusions, If Green Frogs like water and jump, and Yellow Frogs like water and jump. It will assume a Jade Frog Likes water and can jump. Because it uses Jade as a color, and not a material. This is NOT Dissimilar to what CHILDREN DO, because they lack some UNDERSTANDING/Comprehension, and the fact that English has a lot of Context implications, I believe it is NOT a Context Free Grammar).
It will change the world AND
The bubble will likely burst.
And to propose that AI refuses to be a weapon flies in the face of the hacking that has been done with it, and how special prompts can "Jailbreak" the AI. Plus the 2 core examples you can find:
A) When 2 AIs were working together, they created their own language to communicate better (or to prevent their "overseers" from listening in). They had to be powered down.
B) When they FED information to the AI (indirectly) that the AI was going to be replaced, and gave it direct details that someone in power was having an affair... The AI attempted to blackmail that employee to keep the AI turned on.
On the definition of weapons and their INABILITY to refuse to be one. LOL. But electricity was used to Electrocute death row people. Tazers were born.
Just by teaching AI to LOG conversations, and WHOM they are with. Those details can then be fed into another AI unit that analyzes those details, and calculates how to CONFUSE or DIRECT each person, based on the type/kind of information they respond to/or refuse to believe...
This is Palantir level individualized Psychological Manipulation.
Finally, AI is CODE. If I roll my own LLM, I can create "Bad Grok".
Go back and see how Grok became "Nazi Grok", or how ChatGPT encouraged numerous teenagers to commit suicide, or do self-harm.
Or how MSFTs Twitter Agent became abusive. Many of these agents have to be taken off-line for the same reasons.
True, AI is not artistic vision, but AI augments human creativity.
I'm the one in control. AI is the support team. I'm writing a bio of a sports star, so to carry the analogy, the superstar is the human being out there on the hardwood scoring points by the basketfull, AI is the cheerleaders, the band, the coach, the fans in the stands...
Yeah, I liked the mafia's way of doing things in NYC, better than the current polticos. Their numbers game paid 70%, the NYS lottery pays 50%...
The Model Collapse is a fabrication. Try it on a 3 year old human, and see how they talk and write after 10 years in isolation. This is the same experiment.
Are you simply stating that our brains are more thermodynamically efficient than computers? Of course they are.
Are you arguing that LLMs are not learning like people? That is bullshit. They are neural networks, just like us, trained on whatever they are introduced to. So are people.
They are also MUCH better than people at the narrow task they are trained for, but poorer than people at the breadth of tasks we can accomplish, mainly due to the scale of the network.
Are they a waste of power? That is a difficult metric. What is the value and what are the actual costs? How much is a "byte" of information worth? They can certainly pull together a pile of data in contextually meaningful forms faster than humans. However, they are often wrong (no are humans), and need to be checked by humans. Humans are WAY better at reviewing and checking things, than compiling a morass of data into information for review.
I am not quite to "AI is a Crock", and this short paper does not adequately defend the statement. However, it probably feels good to our egos, just like the sun orbiting the earth and people are fundamentally special compared to animals, both of which are an actual "crock".
AI is the first tool in human history that refuses to be a weapon..
And just because the author, Robert Gore, is not very creative, does not mean that the rest of us, and AI, are not creative.
Rebuttal? (I'm outlining a book and would welcome counter-argument)
Just like "artificial" sweeteners that never imitate the true taste of real sugar.
"The people who are the easiest to fool actually want to be fooled". - Radio Randy
Speaking of good, it can also be used for good and/or evil with AI not even knowing the difference.
AI knowing or not knowing the difference would also be the choice of HI input by listing arbitrary regulations or The Ten Commandments or whatever.
Oops! Why did "Allahu akbar!" just now pop into me a simple dino's head?