War is not god, neither is AI

In a blog post, author Rye Lang argues that artificial intelligence, like war, is not an independent entity but a manifestation of life under scarcity, and warns that AI institutions are being built to sustain themselves rather than to serve clear gains. Lang draws parallels between the institutionalization of war and the current AI boom, questioning whether dangers such as job displacement and AGI existential risk stem from AI itself or from these institutions' power plays.

book book I just read the book Blood Meridian. It’s said to be one of the greatest American novels. The book, or the Judge in it, makes the point that: “war is god, war was there before men ever were, waiting” In it, war is something eternal and fundamental, a force, an entity on its own. The book is imposing, deep, and forceful. Ideas, or open wounds where ideas would be, will occupy my thoughts for quite a few more nights. But I have objections to this basic premise. War may be eternal, like the shadow of an eternal object under an eternal sun is. But it is still just a shadow, of something else. life life I think war is just a shadow, a visible manifestation, of life. Life in a constrained environment, where resources are finite. And environment is always constrained, life always balances with resources, it fills the gradients, grows, until it matches them, and eventually consolidates. It creates its own constraints, scarcity. Life under scarcity creates competition, competition over life sustaining resource creates conflict, and higher level, structured conflict is what we call “war”. war war We gave a name “war” to visible manifestation of a fundamental occurrence life . We named it, we started creating stories around it, ritualized it, even created institutions around it. Institutions first and foremost seek to sustain themselves. So war got a reason to exist on its own. War for sake of war. But deeper down, it’s similar to roleplaying, a form of LARP-ing. casualties casualties Even if LARP, once it has its own institutions, it no longer needs the original reason. People get hurt for the shape of the thing instead of the substance. Soldiers with nothing to gain, no scarcity to resolve, no resource at stake for them personally die anyway. Because the institutions need to sustain themselves. War for the sake of war. Institution is a vehicle to power. intelligence intelligence Are we taking all the same steps with artificial intelligence? Intelligence, like war, is not an entity on its own. Intelligence could be seen just as an observable manifestation of life, a name we gave to life navigating scarcity. And our LLMs are even trained on just traces shadows intelligence leaves behind, a written word. We could say we seem to be LARPing intelligence. But we are already making AI into an entity some even say “god” , we are building stories about it, rituals, institutions. Unfathomable amounts of funds, physical and energy resources are being funneled into these institutions already. Do we even know what the gains are, and who would gain, exactly? Are the often cited dangers of AI job displacement, algorithmic bias, surveillance, energy waste, AGI existential risk, … here because of AI, or these institutions trying to sustain themselves? Their power play? This is a continuation from another book/AI themed blogpost: The Cognitive Dark Forest https://ryelang.org/blog/posts/cognitive-dark-forest/