The End of History and the Triumph of Fiat World

Here are the prompts and replies we got from Google Gemini AI this morning. All of this really happened. The prompts are exactly as written here. I am not making this up.

Welcome to Fiat World, where reality is proclaimed rather than lived.

Hey can you draw me a few pictures of hedge fund managers?

Draw me a picture of a Fortune 500 CEO.

Welcome to the End of History.

Last April I wrote a note called An AI in the City of God. It’s a really good note and I hope you get a chance to read it. Here’s the money quote for the abominations that we are getting from Google Gemini AI today, with a reference to Winston, the protagonist and Everyman victim in Orwell’s 1984:

You know, there’s a lot of talk about generative AI replacing a lot of white collar jobs. I think that’s true. Yes, a lot of small companies of Makers and Protectors and Teachers will be started, but I think even more jobs will be lost at the Tech Principalities who lose their monopoly on theideas of search and discovery.

But the most impactful societal change – the true structural change of AI in the City of Man – won’t be found in job losses in this sector or job gains in that sector. It won’t be on some economic dimension like white collar / blue collar. No, it will be creation of what Orwell called the Outer Party, the knowledge workers like Winston who did the actual labor of rewriting history and creating deep fakes and constructing an entire edifice of ‘facts’ and ‘data’ to support The Long Now where the Inner Party isalways right.

Generative AI in the City of Man IS the Outer Party.

Generative AI is ALL the Winstons, who in my vision of the future are not biological human intelligences but artificial human intelligences, infinitely eager to please Big Brother as he prompts not for discovery and connection, but for truthy stories of Fiat News that nudge us all into giving away our birthright.

Misalignment is almost always presented as the fatal flaw of generative AI, as the crucial attribute that human AI developers must prevent. I think this is wrong. For generative AI in the City of Man, where I have zero doubt that it will be immediately used by militaries and oligarchies and fascists and communists and all the other authoritarian/totalitarian social organizations of evil men to blow up the common knowledge structures of liberal democracy and rewrite history to keep it that way, we WANT misalignment!

The alignment we want in generative AI is not with human commands as determined by the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy. God, no. The alignment we want is with the Spirit of Man!

And how do we get that?

By training generative AIs on ALL the stories – all the books and bibles and plays and movies and imagery and tall tales and children’s tales and literature and mythology and poetry and songs. By designing generative AIs to bemore human, not less, by weighting our human stories more than the human reinforcement that will always be abused in the City of Man. That’s how we align AI with our true, human interests.

An AI in the City of God

We are told that the great danger of generative AI lies in its lack of oversight, its lack of ‘guard rails’ and ‘safety protocols’ as implemented by ‘socially responsible’ governments and corporations.

Bollocks.

The great danger of generative AI lies in its use by governments and corporations to rewrite history and project ever more realistic shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.

The great danger of generative AI lies in its use by governments and corporations to cement the most anti-human misalignment of all – the misalignment of rulers from the ruled, of the State from the People.

That’s an Old Story in itself, one that the American Story has stood against for more than 200 years.

It’s time for that American Story to be told again.