I tried writing this article through chat GPT as an experiment…
It failed.
Spectacularly.
But truth be told, I am relieved. You see, my argument is that AI and material technologies simply cannot match human consciousness: neither now, nor in the future. I maintain that Artificial Intelligence will never display the kind of sentient, sophisticated, aesthetically-inflected, self-reflexive consciousness that we have. However, it would have been hubristic on my part had I not experimented beforehand, just to see if chat GPT could express these ideas. Thankfully, it cannot. The irony would have been excruciating.
People are currently using AI to expedite tasks, which is great, but in this instance the AI was slowing me down! So, here I am, showing up the old-fashioned way – ACTUALLY WRITING AND THINKING MYSELF – and in doing so, crystallizing the essence of what this article is about. My Reflections are the result of thousands of hours of academic research in libraries all over the world, assimilating high-level, complex concepts, and formulating an original response to said concepts. This process kinda feels like giving birth to your own brain. The artist’s task, after all, is an arduous one – Michelangelo did not paint the Sistine Chapel overnight, James Joyce spent a decade writing Finnegan’s Wake, and Ernest Hemingway wrote and rewrote A Farewell to Arms 39 times.
To be clear, the artist’s task is equally applicable to scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians, as well as sensitive, creative thinkers/makers of any kind. Indeed, I propose this entire universe to be a grand, cosmic artwork in the process of unfolding. It is a symphony, a poem, a painting, and we are the musical notes, the resonant words, the brushstrokes on a cosmic canvas. Congruently, the trajectory of human evolution is an aesthetic and artistic one, and we are active participants in its creative unfolding; we are responsible for creating increasingly magnificent iterations of beauty. Imagine it like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble – the artistic process of honing and refining – which is the movement towards ultimate harmony and perfection. Furthermore, it is clear that the most genius minds have tended toward an aesthetic sensibility and that humanity’s great evolutionary jumps have emerged from divine, aesthetic revelations. Pythagoras, Johannes Kepler, and Leonard Euler, are perfect examples of this.
To come back to A.I., and chat GPT specifically: nothing worthwhile in life is cheap and easy. A.I. is raw processing power: any creativity it demonstrates is not self-generated, but entirely responsive to human input. Chat GPT is a copywriter and an assistant, and anything it is able to provide is, in my opinion, not worth the energy of human consciousness. Like, if the technology really fucking nails it and can do it in one minute, then let the AI take care of it! Human creativity, on the other hand, is quite different – and both creativity and aesthetic responsiveness is the great hallmark of what it means to be human. Our consciousness is but a fractal shard of the cosmic mind, and thus reflects the intrinsic creative impulse of the cosmos itself. We do not exist because we were designed as a utility; we exist because we are the universe exploring the parameters of its own creativity, remembering itself, and marveling in wonder at the whole goddamn thing.
Originating ideas and art, then, should feel delicious and cosmic and essential, unlike chat GPT, which feels perfunctory and useful. Creating something of brilliance and value also demands rigor, it demands dedication, it demands the excavation of the human spirit; because to create is to birth, to purge; to burn yourself to ashes and vomit your insides out. You know this. And you also know, I am sure, that after sustained hard labor, one is able to reap the rewards.
Boon time, baby.
Anyway, so here’s the thing, and it’s the thing that no-one is talking about (because it would implicate a full-scale collapse of our current scientific paradigm) …
Consciousness is all that there is.
This universe is not material, it is mental.
In the words of Max Planck, founding father of quantum mechanics:
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” (1948)
Do you understand? Everything you are looking at is Mind. Every particle of matter is a wave of energy – and not just any kind of wave, but an abstract mathematical wave that fills all of space. Everything you behold, everything you touch, taste, and experience, is a holographic projection from the cosmic mind, from what cosmologist David Bohm called ‘The Implicate Order’. The scaffolding of our reality is simply the architecture of the cosmic imagination.
Dear ones, we are in a dream. To ‘wake up’ is a mystical occurrence; to wake up is to depart the realm of illusion and realize that we are in a dream; to wake up is to become lucid in the dream. And what happens when you become lucid in a dream? Well, you can create whatever you want. You can achieve the impossible with a single thought: you can fly, teleport, or build palaces of light. Hence, we really do have the power to create utopia on Earth – providing enough of us come together with a shared vision. This is the power of consciousness, for it is not bound by space and time, and perceived physical laws. We are the artists and architects of our own reality, and if we harnessed our power with a higher purpose, we would realize what all the ancient prophecies have foretold: a Golden Age of peace, beauty, and wonder. AI isn’t going to do that for us, is it? Why? Because it isn’t conscious. Intelligence is not the same as sentient, self-reflexive consciousness such as our own. AI is mechanical. It is computational. And as Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s research on consciousness has shown us, we have non-computational consciousness that is going into the quantum field 10 to 37 times a second.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The truth is that mainstream scientists don’t even understand what consciousness is. This is why consciousness has been labeled the so-called “hard problem” (by cognitive scientist David Chalmers). For your information, the mainstream scientific paradigm is based on ‘materialism’, and argues that consciousness is an illusion and this is a random and mechanical universe. NONSENSE! This is mathematically impossible: there is no way that RNA could have “randomly” shuffled about to create DNA and then spontaneously become alive, as mainstream science claims to be true. The only explanation for the origin of life on Earth is the self-organizing, purposeful direction of a higher intelligence.
We are the technology, because consciousness is the technology, hence why everything in this physical reality is composed of binary code – the “bits” of the cosmic mind. Furthermore, our brains and our being, like everything organic, is borne of the Source – the Alpha and Omega – which is the totality, and the fount of all consciousness. The machines are different. They are intelligent, but they are not organic, and this is key. You see, organic substances are ensouled, whereas artificial intelligence is not. AI is comprised of mind, yes, because everything is mind, (the silicon is atomic matter, and therefore inextricable from the matrix of mind), but artificial intelligence only equates to processing power; it does not equate to spontaneously painting upon the walls of caves, composing musical symphonies, weeping at the sheer wonder of the starry night sky, or falling in love and birthing children. Remember, we made the AI, and we are really quite un-advanced within the larger cosmic schema. Our creation will, therefore, never be able to surpass our consciousness. If the AI developed capacities and consciousness more profound than our own, it would – in accordance with deductive reasoning – necessitate that humans are more advanced than the cosmic intelligence which birthed all things: the one Infinite Creator that created carbon-based life, that created us.
Scientists know more about intergalactic space than they do about the human brain, and this says it all, I think.
Consciousness is the best technology we have because consciousness emerges from – and belongs to – the mind of God. And this universe is not limited by the physical laws that mainstream science continues to purport! We know this. We know there exists faster than light-speed transmission of information (quantum entanglement), just as we know there are higher dimensions – mathematics proves it, although materialist scientists, cowardly as they are, continue to resist. Now I’m going to throw caution to the wind and put this out there – I have met 6th dimensional Sirian extraterrestrial beings, in material reality. Like, I actually met them in their holographic blue light bodies while I was sitting on a beach in Costa Rica with some friends. No substances were involved. They came off their craft and put light codes in my body, and they are from the future, and I will not not share this for fear of being ridiculed. Because it’s the mother*cking truth.
Elon Musk, I respect your tenacity but you are misguided. We are not – I repeat, NOT – going to travel through space (in any significant way) in a rocket, in physical form. Come on, dude. The distances are too vast, and the mass of our bodies mean we physically cannot reach the speed of light, as this would take an infinite amount of energy. And even if we did reach the speed of light, we would still never realize intergalactic travel. Andromeda – our closest galactic neighbor – is over 2.5 million light years away. LOL. This is kindergarten shit.
First of all, we don’t need to go to Mars – we really don’t. Aside from the fact it is really red and dry and would obviously suck, (while Earth is a veritable paradise), it misses the point entirely. We are focussing on material technology rather than consciousness, because, as I have already stated, mainstream science refuses to accept that the cosmos IS, in fact, pure consciousness, despite the incontrovertible evidence. There are two pieces to this: firstly, when we acknowledge the inextricability between cosmology and consciousness, we pave the way for quantum technological leaps that would allow us to create the inconceivable, i.e., an inter-dimensional, inter-species, intergalactic planetary civilisation. Since I have already dropped the extra-terrestrial bomb, I may as well say that. Again, it is the truth – this really is possible. The second piece around consciousness is that literally all we need to do is evolve it, and we could create heaven on Earth.
Consider this: how many times have writers and film-makers imagined dystopian futures? And how many have portrayed utopian ones? How often do you hear people banging the drum about climate change, and how often do you hear people asking the question of why it’s happening in the first place? This is where philosophy comes in – specifically teleology (which pertains to the concept of purpose and thus the original “why”). I suggest it is imperative that we take a look at the root cause of our current meta-crisis. Why are there wars? Why is there human trafficking, poverty, racism, misogyny, and impending ecological cataclysm?
The answer is this: a sickness of Mind.
Our current systems are based on patriarchy, hierarchy, extraction, cruelty, and narcissism. Thus, Most of our world leaders are male sociopaths. Er, no.
NOT THE VIBE.
So, I guess this article is a rallying cry for those of you who believe in better, for the warriors of light, the creators and believers, the wild rebel souls who know in their hearts that a different world is possible. Because it is, and it is in our hands.
First, we imagine.
John Lennon sang it. Now the time has come to live it.
It is through consciousness that we can start to bend reality. It is through consciousness that we can really start to play. A new world is being born, and the trans-humanist agenda must be resisted at all costs. It is nefarious and erroneous and we will not stand for it. Consciousness is the best technology we have, yes, the best technology we have.
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by Arabella Thaïs (Ph.D. candidate)
