One of the curiosities about being human is that we take our earthly predicament quite seriously. Such a perspective is entirely understandable, given that all manner of painful and uncomfortable events happen during our journey on this planet. Our seriousness gets further reinforced and amplified as we watch the drama of other lives taking place around us, or worse yet encroaching upon ours, especially since we experience these events from our limited personal minds.
From the perspective of universal consciousness, however, I can assure you absolutely nothing that occurs on earth is a high stakes event. Not a single thing happens throughout the entire arc of our lives that warrants our worry, concern, fear or upset. For proof, I only need offer up Carl Sagan’s masterful Pale Blue Dot speech, which dramatically illustrates our insignificance within the cosmos, although any one of Michael Singer’s voluminous podcasts will do the trick as well.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, this low stakes reality here on earth includes the arrival of superintelligent AI, the doomsday threat du jour. I say this in spite of the new bestselling book on Amazon, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us. Or perhaps more accurately, I say this because of the book.
Does that mean we can safely ignore the authors’ message that advanced AI poses an existential threat because of its ability to pursue goals misaligned with human interests? Again, the answer depends on the perspective we choose to adopt. The authors, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, certainly make a compelling case that the current race for superintelligent AI is reckless and shortsighted.
What they seem to forget is that humans have been engaging in reckless and shortsighted acts for at least as long as there has been recorded history. One might even say that reckless shortsightedness is the hallmark signature of human activity. There’s a reason why Facebook adopted the motto, “Move fast and break things.” It’s because the approach is hardwired into human neurobiology.
The deeper question, of course, is why such a potentially damaging approach is baked into us. And I daresay, Michael Singer has the answer for that too. “Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve,” he explains. “It is not here for you to get what you want.”
In other words, when you sign up for a human ride on this planet, expect it to be very bumpy and uncomfortable. Suffering will be involved, as will death, decay and disintegration. But, and this is a big but, you will evolve. Even when you resist very hard, even when you put up the biggest fight of your life, you will reach a point where you will have no choice but to evolve. It might not happen until your last gasp of air, but trust me, your soul will evolve at some point during this spin.
And that’s what makes the arrival of superhuman AI a low stakes event. Because even if it does lead to a mass extinction event, we will be doing tons of evolving along the way—likely far more evolving than if we did not develop superhuman AI. And in the end, evolution is all that matters, not preservation of the species. Which is precisely why reckless shortsightedness is baked into us.
Before you nod your head in agreement though, let’s step back for moment. Let’s say you’re a Micheal Singer fan, so you readily agree with me about soul evolution being our primary goal. Why am I confident that we will be doing so much evolving in the presence of superhuman AI?
To adequately answer this question, we need to consult the three principles of mind, thought and consciousness, as laid out by the maestro himself, Sydney Banks, in his gem of a book, The Missing Link.
“All three elements – Mind, Consciousness and Thought – are the lifeline to our very existence,” says Banks. “It is through these three elements that we have the power to realize the very existence of life. Mental functioning cannot possibly exist without the three psychological elements. They are the building blocks of all mental behavior. There are no more, nor any less, than these three. They create all human experience.”
Understanding the interplay of these three elements is crucial in order to make sense of what AI really is and how it impacts human development. Our entire experience of life comes from this interplay and from nothing else whatsoever, which is why each of us interprets the same objective reality completely differently. There is no one correct interpretation, at least not in the world of form that we inhabit. Yet even so, each of us lives our life as if our interpretation is the correct one. Evolution is simply the process of expanding this interpretation ever more deeply and widely.
Our thoughts reflect our current level of interpretation. It is very easy to get stuck in our thoughts such that we keep interpreting our experience the same way again and again. But how do we get to a place where we are open to interpreting things differently? That is the zillion dollar question because that determines whether or not we grow and evolve.
It turns out that the three principles explain this process beautifully. Since we cannot “realize the very existence of life” without them, we know that thought alone is not sufficient for us to experience growth. We need to bring in mind and consciousness.
Thought by itself is rooted in the past. It is recycled, revisited, rehashed understanding that contains nothing fresh or original. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, by any means. Old understanding can be very useful to build bridges and pass school exams—it’s just that it won’t cause you to grow and evolve.
To discover new insights and expand our awareness, we need to consult mind and consciousness. It is through these two elements that we are able to access our innate wisdom and generate new and original thought. The process is messy, indescribable and formless, which is why it is so hard to do—and impossible to replicate. You can’t force it and you can’t follow any set of rules to make it happen. But we know that humans sometimes do land on new insights because otherwise there would be no Theory of Relativity or any of the other countless number of entirely fresh ideas that seem to come from out of nowhere.
“Everyone on earth is both a philosopher and a theosopher,” explains Banks. “One is a learned intellectual process. The other is a realization of knowledge from within the depths of our own consciousness. Such knowledge cannot be bought or sold like a commodity in the marketplace, nor is it found in some far-off land. It is hidden in the depths of your soul. This is why such knowledge can only be found through an insight from one’s own inner wisdom.”
With this understanding, we can return to addressing the question of why I am so confident AI will accelerate our evolution. First and foremost, all AI agents utilizing human language are based on Large Language Models (LLMs) and all LLMs are trained on datasets such as books, websites, and other text sources. What this means in a nutshell is that AI is built 100% from aggregated data harvested from old human thought.
This simple fact is the most critical thing to remember. AI is not magic, it is not God, it is not resurrected soul. No matter whether it is superintelligent, superhuman or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, all AI can ever be is “a commodity in the marketplace” because it derives from thoughts humans have already had.
Anybody who claims that an AI based on LLMs can become sentient, conscious, or capable of accessing innate wisdom is seriously mistaken and understands nothing about the three principles. Why? Because there is no possible way that a clump of old thoughts can somehow be fiddled with to become conscious or sentient or able to tap into universal mind. Even if it is a very big clump. Even if it is such a big clump that it contains every thought ever had by every single human who ever roamed the earth. And even if this clump has a bunch of nifty algorithms powering it.
Of course, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and all the other players in this game of smoke and mirrors would love for you to believe that AI is much more than a clump of old thoughts. They are doing everything they possibly can to seduce you into being awestruck by how amazing AI is. They are doing everything they possibly can to convince you that they have stumbled on some sort of miracle for which you need to pay a ton of dough.
Don’t buy into this absurdity. It’s absolutely fine to enjoy the power of being able to fiddle with a huge pile of old thoughts. Just know that this is all you are doing when you prompt ChatGPT. And know that you have something that AI will never, ever, ever have in ten gazillion years. You have the power to come up with a totally fresh and original idea that no human has ever thought before. Not an amalgamation of old ideas that looks like a new idea—ChatGPT is great at doing that. No, I’m talking an actual new idea. An insight!
Once you get around to recognizing this glaring limitation that few players in CS want to admit, then you are ready to see that AI solves absolutely nothing. Because the human species faces immensely challenging problems at this particular moment in history, such as climate change, poverty, income inequality, and the decay of democracy, just to name a few. Clearly, reconstituted old thoughts are not going to cut the mustard if we want to actually address these problems.
But wait a second. Haven’t I wildly veered off course? Wasn’t I supposed to demonstrate that AI will enhance human evolution, not betray us in our moment of need? Yes, exactly, and this is where I get to reveal my insight. AI might steal it the moment I post, but right now it’s possible I am the only person ever to have thunk this:
By aggregating all the old thoughts that humans have ever had onto a cloud server and organizing them nicely and neatly, so that can we can retrieve them and combine them and order them and package them into limitless arrangements, AI has given a huge gift to humanity. It has enabled us to completely take off the table our own personal minds. We don’t need them anymore! We can just 100% concentrate on getting insights from the depths of our souls.
In other words, thanks to AI, we can stop being philosophers and become full-time theosophers. All the trouble we get into because of our old, recycled thoughts, we can just let go. All of our divisiveness, all of our conflict because of our differing interpretations, we can just let go.
We don’t need to dwell in our past thinking anymore. We can just completely outsource that functionality to AI. We can let AI be the repository of all of our old stuff and let humans be the generators of all of our new stuff. By freeing us from the constraints of our old, outdated logic, AI give us the breathing room to start interpreting things completely differently.
That sounds like some major evolution to me—and it couldn’t be arriving too soon.