What 'Dune' teaches us about human achievement and the dangers of AI



One of the superb concepts of "Dune" that didn’t make it into the movie was the Butlerian Jihad. This is not the jihad that Paul commences, but rather an event long in the past that had drastic implications for the universe of Dune. In short, the Butlerian Jihad was a war on AI and thinking machines (computers). The jihad was incited by a machine decreeing an abortion, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Humanity was already on the verge of being replaced, but when machines were beginning to determine who lived and died, mankind was losing its sovereignty as well.

This crusade against thinking technology strikes at looming questions that grow bigger in our lives by the day. We outsource our energy and capabilities to a tool whenever we use technology. Typically, this is well and good. An axe is far more efficient at splitting wood than attempting to do so with one’s hands, and this frees up a person to spend his energies elsewhere.

But as technology advances, we perpetually outsource ourselves to the devices around us. When we create a car, we use a device to substitute our legs. Again, this is good, as it allows far more efficient travel. But what happens when technology is entirely substituting the human individual?

Now, I am not necessarily referring to the AGI, but what happens to vast chunks of the population when a machine can do everything they can but better? What happens when we have created tools that have abolished the need for men? We made tools to serve us, but now they have replaced us. Is that a good thing? Can technology advance too far? Can we even stop technology from advancing? Huge numbers of people can no longer effectively live without modern transportation. Can we return? Should we return?

"Dune" presents us with a theoretical world where technological progression has been halted. And while it’s far from a perfect world, I think it’s a better, wiser one than we have now. Technology is not necessarily good because it is advanced. It needs to justify itself. I think we need to adopt an attitude of skepticism, certainly given the current state of the modern world. We may be in a better material position, but with skyrocketing rates of mental illness, drug abuse, and suicide, something has clearly gone wrong somewhere.

And I don’t think it’s terrible to refrain from technology that makes your life easier at the cost of your competence. You’ll never be a great artist if you rely on inputting prompts into an AI generator, and you’ll never be a talented writer if you exclusively use ChatGPT. Those skills have to be developed and refined the hard way. Otherwise, you’re just like everyone else using AI generators and ChatGPT.

In “Dune,” this type of person is called a mentat. This individual is a social adaptation to the lack of computers and advanced algorithmic calculators. Much like a savant, mentats can perform almost impossibly complex computations in their heads in only a few seconds.

Screenshot from Youtube


Now, that power is probably infeasible for us, but the concept is ever-present in our lives. If you want to be physically fit, you have to actually exercise those muscles. Refraining from technology that substitutes for your muscles is one method of gaining strength. And with strength, you gain a little control as well. Now, you are not relying on devices that break down or malfunction. It’s all on you.

That principle extends to nearly every facet of life. With careful restraint, you can develop within yourself all that unrealized potential you are wasting away. The human being was not made to be at rest. Human beings were made to do work, and it is only through work that a person becomes truly remarkable.

However, the most important lesson of the Butlerian Jihad is that it presents a world where humanity has regained control of itself. We often think our lives are insignificant specks in the grand scheme. After all, what can one man do against the march of progress? If you have problems with where the world is heading, how could you fix things, especially when you are one among billions?

But "Dune" presents a more hopeful outlook. We can take back control in our lives. We can say no to our desires and appetites to build ourselves up. We can say no to the march of the world. And I think that is an inspiring thought.

When will computers be smarter than humans? Return asked top AI experts: Anton Troynikov



The 2020s have seen unprecedented acceleration in the sophistication of artificial intelligence, thanks to the rise of large language model technology. These machines can perform a wide range of tasks once thought to be only solvable by humans: write stories, create art from text descriptions, and solve complex tasks and problems they were not trained to handle.
We posed this question to six AI experts, including James Poulos, roon, Max Anton Brewer, Robin Hanson, and Niklas Blanchard. — Eds.

1. What year do you predict, with 50% confidence, that a machine will have artificial general intelligence — that is, when will it match or exceed most humans in every learning, reasoning, or intellectual domain?
2. What changes to society will this affect within five years of occurring?

Anton Troynikov

AGI will be here by 2032. Then will come pandemonium — but be optimistic. 2032. My timeline is short, though perhaps not as short as some others, because I am increasingly of the opinion that the human intellect is not especially complex relative to other physical systems.

In robotics, there is an observation referred to as Moravec’s paradox. At the dawn of AI research in the 1950s, it was thought that cognitive tasks which are generally difficult for humans — playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, and the like — would also be difficult for machines. Sensorimotor tasks that are easy for humans, like perceiving the world in three dimensions and navigating through it, were thought to also be easy for machines. Famously, the general problem of computer vision (a field in which I’ve spent a large fraction of my career so far), was supposed to be solved in the summer of 1966.

These assumptions turned out to be fatally flawed, and the failure to create machines that could successfully interact with the physical world was one of the causes of the first AI winter when research and funding for AI projects cooled off.

Hans Moravec, for whom the paradox is named, suggested that the reason for this is the relatively recent development, in evolutionary terms, of the human prefrontal cortex, which handles abstract reasoning. In contrast, the structures responsible for sensorimotor functions, which we share with most other higher vertebrates, have existed for billions of years and are, therefore, very highly developed.

This also explains why we hadn’t (and to a large extent, still have not) managed to replicate evolved sensorimotor performance by reasoning about it; human intellect is too immature to reason about the function of the sensorimotor system itself.

Machine learning, however, represents a way to apprehend the world without relying on human intellect. Like evolution, machine learning is a purely empirical process, a general-purpose class of machines for ingesting data, finding patterns, and making predictions based on these patterns. It does not make deductions, nor does it rely on abstractions. In fact, the field of AI interpretability exists because the way in which AI actually functions is alien to the human intellect.

Given sufficient data, and enough computational power, AI is capable of determining ever more complex patterns and making ever more complex predictions. The ways in which it will do so will necessarily be increasingly alien as it outstrips our own capacity to find and understand these patterns. A concrete demonstration of this principle is the success with which AI has been able to model language. Linguists have been unable to provide any successful framework for automatic translation for the entire history of the discipline. AI cracked the problem as soon as enough data and computing were available, using extremely general methods.

Language is an expression of reason. An emulation of reason itself — through the prediction of what a human would reason with a mechanism alien to that reason — cannot be far behind. We’ll get there not because AI became particularly powerful but because the human intellect is, in the grand scheme of things, rather weak.

Within five years of human-level AI being created, there will be initial pandemonium, followed by normalization. I am generally optimistic about humanity’s future, but foundational technological progress has always come with upheaval. Yes, we got the printing press, but we got the Thirty Years’ War along with it.

I don’t presume to know what shape the upheavals will take, but they are likely to be foundational as societies must reorient around the capability to produce machine intelligences as good as the average human at will. But we’ll figure it out.

Anton Troynikov has spent the last seven years working in AI and robotics as a researcher and engineer. His company, Chroma, makes AI better by increasing its interpretability.

The elites’ plan to replace God with AI



Are the elites trying to replace God with AI?

Allie Beth Stuckey and her guest Justin Haskins, co-author of “Dark Future,” think so.

“Imagine a future in which everything is controlled by artificial intelligence. I’m not just talking about your smart home. I am talking about our legal system, I’m talking about major international decisions like whether to launch a nuclear attack on another country,” Stuckey says.

“That might sound like a crazy dystopian conspiracy theory, but that is where the world’s most powerful people are taking us: into a future that is completely and totally controlled by artificial intelligence,” she adds.

Stuckey dives into a story that should serve as a warning to everyone who uses this kind of technology — which is basically everyone.

Global giant Amazon shut off a man’s smart home devices for a week after a delivery driver falsely accused the customer of using racial slurs via his Amazon doorbell camera.

The homeowner, Brandon Jackson, is a black man, but was digitally exiled by the company and reported for being racist.

“That could be a really big deal if a company decides to shut down the features in your home that you actually rely on and increasingly rely on for important things like air conditioning and security,” Stuckey says.

Haskins agrees.

“The more interconnected and dependent we become on technology, the easier it is to control and manipulate people’s behavior,” he says.

He warns that while this was a relatively small story, the future looks bleak when it comes to our use of artificial intelligence — and a lot like the film "Minority Report."

“Most people don’t know this,” Haskins explains, that when people are convicted of crimes, “there are governments that use artificial intelligence to tell them what they think the sentencing decision should be.”

“That’s terrifying,” Stuckey says. “This technology is not unbiased.”


Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Did Google create a SENTIENT artificial intelligence?



Did Google create a sentient artificial intelligence?

A software engineer on Google’s artificial intelligence development team, Blake Lemoine, is convinced that the company's A.I. is now sentient and able to hold conversations at the level of a 7 or 8-year-old child. Google has dismissed Lemoine's claims and suspended him, but as Glenn Beck noted on the radio program, this isn't the first time a company insider has warned of the possible existence, and potential threat, of artificial general intelligence.

Glenn shared the details of Lemoine's "very disturbing story" and broke down the pros (curing cancer and other deadly diseases) and cons (the complete inhalation of the human race) of the remarkable scientific advancements in artificial intelligence.

"Because of high tech, we're going to see miracles in our lives," Glenn said. "The tricky part is to not see horror shows in our lifetimes."

Watch the video clip below to hear more from Glenn Beck. Can't watch? Download the podcast here.


Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.