When China rolled out DeepSeek-R1 back in January, it sent shock waves through global markets and triggered a significant sell-off in American stocks, as it performed just as well, if not better, than U.S. models but could be produced at a fraction of the cost.
Now there are rumors of an R2 model that isn’t just smarter than anything we’ve ever seen before; it’s an entirely different kind of artificial intelligence that other leaders in AI development haven’t even fathomed.
“It is a completely different species of intelligence operating on principles nobody in the West has even theorized yet,” says Glenn Beck, reading from a social media post by an anonymous account that goes by the name @iruletheworldmo, who is speculated to be either “an insider in one of the big AI research firms” or “a bot” created to mislead other researchers.
“Research gives it questions, and it invents entirely new branches of mathematics to answer them. One physicist showed it a problem he'd been stuck on for 15 years. It solved it in seconds with notations nobody recognized. It took three days for them to translate its solution back into standard mathematics,” Glenn continues reading.
The anonymous source also claimed DeepSeek Labs in China is developing brain-enhancing technology, including two-way neural interfaces “that make Neuralink look like child’s play” and is already at the stage of human trials. The source then warned that while China sees this as a civilization-changing race, the U.S. is lagging behind, treating it like a standard tech competition.
If everything in the post is true and China’s DeepSeek AI has indeed reached such capabilities, we’re in trouble. However, there’s also the possibility that “it's a Chinese bot” stirring up fear.
The fact that we don’t know “is the craziest part,” says Glenn.
Even if the account is lying and DeepSeek AI is nowhere near as advanced as the post indicates, that doesn’t change what’s coming: “AI is going to get so good, it will predict absolutely every move that everybody's going to make,” says Glenn.
Just last week, Mass General Brigham unveiled an AI tool that can apparently assess your health by examining a selfie. Dubbed FaceAge, the system can estimate a person’s biological age, analyze features like skin texture and muscle tone to predict health outcomes, spot signs of cancer, and even predict cancer patients’ survival outcomes.
“How great is that?” asks Glenn, adding, "How terrifying is that?"
To hear more about the latest updates in the AI world, watch the clip above.
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Joe Allen is quite the jack of all trades. He’s an author, a researcher, an arena rigger, an editor for Steve Bannon’s "War Room," and one of the world’s foremost thought leaders in the intersection of AI, transhumanism, and spirituality.
It’s the latter role Nicole Shanahan is most interested in.
“What is your definition of transhumanism?” she asked him on a recent episode of “Back to the People.”
It’s “the drive or the quest to use science and technology to go beyond the human,” Allen said.
It’s a merging of human and machine, in other words, and while it sounds like dystopian fiction, the concept is entirely real, and it’s happening right now.
We don’t have cyborgs yet, but given the fact that transhumanism has snaked its way into the reproductive world, which is booming today thanks to America’s fertility crisis, it’s likely only a matter of time before they walk among us.
Nicole points to transhumanist companies that are currently manufacturing human eggs in a lab “without any input from a female ovary” and then fertilizing them with either “real sperm or synthetic sperm, which can also be grown.” In other words, pseudo-human beings are being created by machines in laboratories.
Trying to stop this, she says, is “impossible” — as is halting the development of organoids or the implantation of brain chips.
“That leaves us with the fact that the transhumanist cyborg machine human is going to exist,” she says frankly, calling it a new attempt at the age-old ploy to steal the human soul.
“Now is the time that we have this very narrow window to create a fork for the future of humanity,” she tells Allen.
As terrifying as sharing the world with transhumanist creations is, Allen says there are two pieces of good news: One, the “god-like” AI we’ve been told is coming down the pike is likely a “sales pitch” that overexaggerates the actual product. Yes, humans will regard these technologies as “digital deities,” and yes, “they [will] have real power,” but they likely aren’t as superhuman as we’ve been told.
Secondly, “if we believe that we are intended to be more human than machine, and if we believe that there are realms far beyond this one to which we're accountable, then we're going to fight for it, and it's going to be across the world,” says Allen.
“It’s going to be a massive fight,” but “you have to have faith in the human spirit, the human soul, and the God that is within and above and moving through it.”
To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.
To enjoy more of Nicole's compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
One of the foremost thought leaders in AI and transhumanism is Joe Allen, who now serves as the transhumanism editor for "Bannon’s War Room" — and he warns that transhumanism isn’t exactly a thing of the future, but rather it’s happening right now.
Transhumanism is the merging of humans with machines, and in the present moment, that consists of billions of people obsessively checking their iPhones. That addiction does not bode well for mankind.
While Allen believes “the power is in the transhumanists' court,” Shanahan, who was deeply embedded in Silicon Valley for a long enough time to really immerse herself in it — believes there is still power in the natural.
“I’ve been surrounded by this world for 15 years now and was always kind of beloved,” Shanahan tells Allen. “Beloved because I was very organic, not augmented in any way. Maybe I used Botox for a few years to try it out, but I stopped all of that.”
“I really love natural human biology. I think it is incredibly beautiful. I think it actually makes an individual beautiful and desirable because there’s something innate in every living being. And I think that this is the piece of the future where there will be mass desire, and this is talked about in 'Mad Max 2,' but for fully organic earthly women,” she continues.
“That never goes away, and I’ve seen a preview of that, having lived in Silicon Valley for as long as I have. I’ve seen that preview. I’ve seen these very powerful men seek out the most organic female, a female that almost reminds them of Greek oracles. So, brilliant, connected to God, channeling information, visionary, but also physically pure,” she adds.
She’s noticed that these tech elites “spiral” and become “greedy” in search of these kinds of women, which Allen chimes in to call “crunchy harems.”
An example of this, Shanahan says, is the Burning Man festival.
“Burning Man is a simulation of that world, of that future, of these very powerful elite men going to Burning Man, and all of these young beautiful women going to Burning Man, and creating these miniature harems around these men. I mean, that’s what Burning Man has become, unfortunately,” she tells Allen.
“You’ve been around a lot of these guys,” Allen says. “I know every person’s different, but by and large, is it misguided goodwill at the heart of the tech elite transhuman dream, or is there a touch of malevolence, or is there deep malevolence?”
“A bit of their humanity is possessed by something very anti-human,” Shanahan answers, adding, “They’re so manipulative; they’re trained in humanity.”
While Shanahan admits she doesn’t “understand it all,” she does “see where the humanity is and what is interfering with that humanity.”
“And I don’t know precisely what that thing is. I know Christians have a word for it,” she continues.
“Demon sounds about right to me,” Allen adds.
To enjoy more of Nicole's compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The price of the advancement of technology lies in the risk of becoming enslaved to it. With so many voices advocating for different directions for the future of technology, it is sometimes hard to gauge the correct relationship humanity should have with tech. Technology, especially social media, is easily viewed as a scourge of modern society. However, it may also be one of the keys to saving America from a spiral into tyranny, as Michael Cernovich suggests.
On “Zero Hour,” Michael Cernovich, an independent filmmaker and author of “Gorilla Mindset,” joins James Poulos to discuss the concepts of time, the West’s narrow understanding of history, and the benefits and drawbacks of technological advancement.
Cernovich argues that we live in a peculiar historical period, which he calls the age of “tech,” in the sense of technology as we know it today, with communication and sharing information. In his view, technology is a key factor in deciding the trajectory of America today: “Trump doesn’t win 2016 without Twitter. America is a right-wing culture, so right-wing that the media had to lie to prop up these other people as moderates and centrists.”
They talk about the transhumanist movement in which people seek to merge their consciousness with technology because they “hate their body and hate humanity as a result.” After dismissing these people as “kooks” and “weirdos,” Cernovich compares the current movement to some of the worst events in recent history, such as Mao’s crushing of China or the Soviet tyranny in Russia.
Poulos adds that, in each case, these events were forced and “compulsory” for the entire population rather than being a fringe movement that left everyone else alone.
To Cernovich’s point, all of these political movements and the destruction that followed occurred in “pre-tech” societies. In present-day America, we have a choice: “You had to live that way in Communist China before tech ... it’s not that we have to [live that way].” The question is “whether we’re going to submit ... is there a red line, or are we just going to cower and go along with it?”
Technology has clearly advanced to unprecedented and almost unimaginable levels, but the temptation to “advance” humanity out of its present state remains all the same. Cernovich warns about this gnostic impulse to resist human nature and escape its bodily state, but he and Poulos agree that this is ultimately a movement that seeks to “escape responsibility,” both from God and his commandments and from the demands of normal human life.
Clearly, the advancement of technology is a double-edged sword, with as many temptations as it has benefits. According to Cernovich, we are uniquely positioned to resist similar instances of tyranny like those that arose in the 20th century: “If we didn’t have these technological tools, we would have already been decimated.” Will America be able to navigate this treacherous landscape in the future?
To hear more about what Michael Cernovich has to say about tyrannical regimes, technological advancement, transhumanism, and more, watch the full episode of “Zero Hour” with James Poulos.
So as I was watching my Philadelphia Eagles play the New Orleans Saints on Sept. 22, a realization about the state of society dawned on me.
For some context, the Eagles haven’t looked any good since their Super Bowl run in 2022. And this game was no different. Everything about this team just feels disjointed and discombobulated. Turnovers, bad defense, lack of rhythm.
No longer do teams have any desire to develop their talent, read their opponents, and learn how to gain in-game experience to get better. They just shake their magic 8 ball and wait for the answer.
But this isn’t a problem that only my Eagles are dealing with. This is an NFL problem. If you haven’t been paying attention, the product the NFL has been putting out there, for lack of a better word, stinks. And that can partly be attributed to the NFL not being a passers' league anymore. Instead, it’s trending toward more hard-fought, defense-heavy play styles.
Through the first two weeks of the 2024 season, passing yards have been the lowest they’ve ever been since the 2007 season. Seventeen starting QBs still haven’t even been able to hit 200 passing yards in a game. Put plainly, the NFL is boring.
But there’s something deeper going on here than mere mediocrity. And something jumped out at me in this game that finally gave me the words to describe what’s deeply wrong with the NFL.
Twice in this game, the Eagles went for it on 4th and short when they could’ve put points on the board with field goal attempts. And both times, they failed.
Why did they go for it?
Why abandon all common sense?
Because the almighty data analytics told them to.
Analytics are the major fad these days in pro sports. Every franchise across all pro sports has been scrambling to assemble the best possible in-house data analytics team to keep up with the analytics arms race. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t be considered a serious organization if your team hasn’t made some kind of serious investment in it.
Funnily enough, the Eagles were the ones who spearheaded the push for analytics-based football back in the '90s and were the first football franchise to have an in-house analytics department back in 2010.
And the problem is this: Teams are over-relying on data analytics to the point that pretty much all decisions are made in some form or another based on analytics. What this ultimately does is stunt and make fragile the development of everyone involved in the success of a team, from the players to the front office.
Tom Brady said it himself recently in an interview. He points out how the NFL has a developmentproblem. Rookie QBs are getting thrown into the fire and starting in their first year without taking the first few years to hang back and learn the team’s culture and program.
But even worse, QBs are no longer taking command of the game. The era of the “field general” QB is over. The QB no longer reads the defense and makes adjustments in real-time. Now, what you have is a young kid who simply takes the play his coach gives him and runs with it. And who did the coach get the play from? The analytics guys up in the booth.
No longer do teams have any desire to develop their talent, read their opponents, and learn how to gain in-game experience to get better. They just shake their magic 8 ball and wait for the answer.
It’s a very artificial, robotic process. And the product on the field is reflecting that.
So why does any of this matter?
What you’re witnessing in today’s NFL is just a small sample of society’s slow transition into full-on transhumanism.
Transhumanism? That conspiracy theory stuff?
Despite its conspiracy-theory-coded stigma, the transhuman agenda is very real and very apparent.
Let’s start with what it is. Simply put, transhumanism is the gradual abolition of roles human beings traditionally performed throughout history and, therefore, the abolition of what gave people’s lives meaning.
Transhumanism has been around for awhile. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has slowly made all kinds of manual labor obsolete, as the invention of new automated technologies have been able to complete tasks in place of human hands and minds. Sure, this has made life easier and more convenient.
But there is an existential hole left in its wake. When the roles that defined humanity are slowly taken away from humanity, how then do we define humanity at all?
When a rural rice farmer is replaced by a humanoid robot, what is the rice picker?
When a mother is replaced by a surrogate mother, what is the mother?
When labor no longer exists because all labor is performed by automated machinery, then what exactly are we?
The answer is that we become welded to the machine. We offload our labor (and therefore our ability to think) onto machines and, by doing so, cling to the machine in total dependence.
That is what’s happening here with today’s NFL. Owners, front offices, players, and coaches have all given away their unique ability to make high-pressure decisions at the highest level of pro sports in exchange for the almighty analytics department.
And that destroys any chance of achieving greatness.
By committing their hand in this unholy marriage to data analytics, NFL teams have stunted the organic growth of their players and coaches and, consequently, have created a debilitating dependence on the answers the computers feed them.
The ChatGPT-ization of the NFL is here, and its mediocre, boring, and robotic output is merely a reflection of what the rest of us are going through in our own lives here in 2024.
Geoffrey Hinton made headlines fortelling the BBC that artificial intelligence is an “extinction-level threat” to humanity. Hinton is no alarmist — he’s popularly dubbed the "godfather of AI" for creating the neural network technology that makes artificial intelligence possible. If anyone has authority to speak on the subject, it's him — and the world took notice when he did.
In May of 2023,Hinton quit his decade-long career at Google to speak openly about what he believes are the existential dangers AI poses to us "inferior" carbon intelligences. Moreover, ChatGPT’s debut in November of 2022, just half a year earlier, had already sparked a global reaction of equal fascination and trepidation to what felt like our first encounter with an elusive technology that had now welcomed itself into our lives, whether we were ready for it or not.
AI conjures up predictions of an Orwellian-like digital dystopia, one in which several oligarchs and AI overlords subject the masses to a totalitarian-like enslavement. There have been many calls for regulation over AI’s development to mitigate this risk, but to what extent would it be effective?
Ironically, artificial intelligence was not elusive at all before November 2022; it had embedded itself into our lives long before ChatGPT made it en vogue. People were already unknowingly using AI whenever they opened their smartphone with facial recognition, edited a paper with Grammarly, or chatted with Siri, Alexa, or another digital assistant. Apple or Google Maps are constantly learning your daily routines through AI to predict your movements and improve your daily commute. Every time someone clicks on a webpage with an ad, AI learns more about his or her behaviors and preferences, which is information that is sold to third-party ad agencies. We’ve been engaging with AI for years and haven’t batted an eye until now.
ChatGPT’s debut has become the impetus for the sudden global concern about AI. What is so distinct about this chatbot as opposed to other iterations of AI we have been engaging with for years that has inspired this newfound fascination and concern? Perhaps ChatGPT reveals what has been hiding silently in our daily encounters with AI: its potential or, as many would argue, its inevitability to surpass human intelligence.
Prior to ChatGPT, our interactions with artificial intelligence were limited to "narrow AI," also known as “artificial narrow intelligence” (ANI), which is a program restricted to a single, particular purpose. Facial recognition doesn't have another purpose or capacity beyond its single task. The same applies to Apple Maps, Google's search algorithm, and other forms of commonplace artificial intelligence.
ChatGPT gave the world its first glimpse into artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI that can seemingly take on a mind of its own.The objective behind AGI is to create machines that can reason and think with human-like capacity — and then surpass that capacity.
Though chatbots similar to ChatGPT technically fall under the ANI umbrella, ChatGPT’s human-like, thoughtful responses, coupled with its superhuman capacity for speed and accuracy, are laying the foundation for AGI’s emergence.
Reputable scientists with diverse personal and political views are divided over AGI’s limits.
For example, the pioneering web developer Marc Andreessen says that AI cannot go beyond the goals that it is programmed with:
[AI] is math—code—computers built by people, owned by people, controlled by people. The idea that it will at some point develop a mind of its own and decide that it has motivations that lead it to try to kill us is a superstitious hand wave.
Conversely,Lord Rees, the former U.K. Astronomer Royal and a former president of the Royal Society, believes that humans will be a mere speck on evolutionary history, which will, he predicts, be dominated by a post-human era facilitated by AGI’s debut:
Abstract thinking by biological brains has underpinned the emergence of all culture and science. But this activity—spanning tens of millennia at most—will be a brief precursor to the more powerful intellect of the inorganic, post-human era. So in the far future, it won’t be the minds of humans but those of machines that will most fully understand the cosmos.
Elon Musk and a group of the world’s leading AI expertspublished an open letter calling for an immediate pause on AI development, anticipating Lord Rees’ predictions rather than Andreessen’s. Musk didn’t wait long to ignore his own call to action with the debut of X’s new chatbot Grok, which has similar capabilities to ChatGPT, along with Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s new AI chatbot integrated with Bing’s search engine.
Ray Kurzweil, trans-humanist futurist and Google’s head of development, famously predicted in 2005 that we would reach singularity by 2045, the point when AI technology would surpass human intelligence, forcing us to decide whether to integrate with it or be naturally selected out of evolution’s trajectory.
Was he correct?
The proof of these varying predictions will be in the pudding, which is being concocted in our current cultural moment. However, ChatGPT has brought timeless ethical questions in new clothing to the forefront of widespread debate. What does it mean to be human, and, asGlenn Beck poignantly asked in an op-ed, will AI rebel against its creator like we rebelled against ours? The fact that we are asking these questions on a popular scale is indicative that we are now in a new era of technology, one that strikes at deeply philosophical questions whose answers will set the tone for not only how we understand the nature of AI but moreover, how we grapple with our own nature.
How, then, should we mitigate the risk of our worst fears surrounding AI becoming a reality? Will we, its current master, inevitably become its slave?
The latter fear often conjures up predictions of an Orwellian-like digital dystopia, one in which several oligarchs and AI overlords subject the masses to a totalitarian-like enslavement. There have been many calls for regulation over AI’s development to mitigate this risk, but to what extent would it be effective? The government will hold all the reins to AI’s power if directed toward private companies. If directed toward the government, tech moguls can just as easily become oligarchs as their rivals in the government. In either scenario, those at risk of AI’s enslavement have very little power to control their fate.
However, one can argue that we have already dipped our toes into a Huxleyan-like enslavement, in which we have traded seemingly menial yet deeply human acts for the convenience technology serves on a digital platter. An Orwellian-like AI takeover won’t happen overnight. It will begin with surrendering the creative act of writing for an immediately generated paper “written” by an AI chatbot. It will progress when we forego the difficulty of forging meaningful human relationships with AI “partners” that will always be there for you, never challenge you, and constantly affirm you. An Orwellian future isn’t so unimaginable if we have already surrendered our freedom to AI on our own accord.
Avoiding this Huxleyan-type of enslavement — the enslavement to AI’s convenience — requires falling deeply in love with being human. We may not be in charge of regulating the public and private roles in AI’s development, but we are responsible for determining its role in our daily lives. This is our most potent means of keeping AI in check: by choosing to labor in creativity, enduring the inconveniences and hardships of forging human relationships, and desiring things that ought to be worked for outside our immediate grasp. In short, we must work on being human and delighting in the fulfillment that emerges from this labor. Convenience is the gateway to voluntary enslavement. Our humanity is the cost of such a transaction and the anecdote.
What would make you get a Neuralink brain-computer interface? Most people respond with an automatic, “Nothing.”
But the assumption is that a brain chip would be unnecessary, a way to level up, to become smarter or stronger.
Here’s what we all suspect: Once everyone agrees to an implant, it’s only a matter of time before chips are getting hacked, commercials are mandatory, and money gets involved.
God forbid, let’s say you’re diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Your mind will deteriorate slowly until your wiring completely abandons you. But what if a brain-computer interface could preserve your memories and cognitive functionality? Or let’s say you’re paralyzed and getting a neural implant could restore any damaged nerves and allow you to move again.
This is the hope that led 30-year-old Noland Arbaugh to become the first human to receive a Neuralink brain-computer interface. A swimming accident damaged his spine, leaving him a quadriplegic. And so far, the technology has made life at least a little easier. The process hasn’t gone entirely smoothly, but the implant has given Noland more freedom of movement. He can also use his mind to play chess and Civilization 6.
Now, a second patient has been greenlit.
Only Homer Simpson would buy the first-generation flying car, right? Not if you’re desperate enough.
Here’s a hypothetical that is murkier than the previous two: What if your child died and you had the chance to download his consciousness and implant it into a brain-dead human? Or into some sort of android, when robotic technology is advanced enough?
For many of us, this isn’t a logical or moral dilemma but a spiritual one. Tackling dementia and paralysis concerns the restoration of a living body. But when death comes into the equation, we are forced to ask, “What about the soul?”
For decades, futurist Ray Kurzweil has balked at the idea that humans have souls that should be left alone, untouched by human hands. Who could have guessed that Kurzweil, like so many other brilliant nerds, would be toppled by Joe Rogan’s Socratic method?
As our own Peter Gietl put it, “Joe Rogan might be the perfect foil for a futurist and woo peddler like Kurzweil. He knows just enough about these subjects to be dangerous but also asks questions with an Everyman logic that is a perfect antidote to cut through the vague science this man spews.”
How can we understand evil within the context of artificial intelligence?
Maybe we shouldn’t be worried about artificial intelligence but rather artificial consciousness. Or, even more harrowing, artificial spirituality.
The boundaries of our social cosmos are already distinctly psychological. Where previous generations were afflicted by vast unknowables, comical ignorance, and inanimate technology, we’re lost in the squall of the digital unconscious, the connected brain, and data centrality — total interconnection by digital means. That’s without any devices implanted.
A brain chip is internal. Social media is external and much less invasive. Yet look at the damage that it has caused, to children specifically, affecting notions of play, body image in pre-teen and teenage girls, and even sexuality and ideas regarding gender.
Elon Musk is calmly but direly urging us to start preparing for a world full of AI that’s smarter than us.
I’m a big fan of Elon and his role in what Jonathan Haidt has described as the “techno-democratic optimism” unique to America in relation to tech. But in this situation, it’s important to remember that the man owns the brain chip company.
We all know that the dignity of any revolutionary medical tech is at the very least vulnerable to abuse. Plastic surgery didn’t begin with breast implants.
Customization is an integral part of our new world. But where is the limit? What about genetic engineering? What about designer babies? These technologies are no longer plot devices in science fiction. It’s going to happen in real life, as people are increasingly willing to medicalize their lives.
Here’s what we all suspect: Once everyone agrees to an implant, it’s only a matter of time before chips are getting hacked, commercials are mandatory, and money gets involved.
We’re already witnessing widespread “de-materialization,” where physical objects are becoming obsolete as the world becomes increasingly digitized.
You see this in the subscription model. You used to own movies. If you didn't, you rented a physical copy. Music used to be owned on physical media too. Now these items are accessed via subscription.
Then there are the political implications. The brain is the source of all human behavior. If someone figured out how to control it, he could manipulate society to his advantage, fiddling with our species’ most dangerous tendencies and habits.
We’ve moved past biopolitics — the elites’ control of our bodies. Now we live in an era of psychopolitics, where elites grip not just the politics, not just the body, but the total of the mind of citizens.
Neuro-technologic reality also changes immediately. No one can keep up any more. The transformation of our habits, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions is hard to prove and even harder to monitor. So why would we hand over our most important possessions — our brains — to a dubious invisible network, the same network that facilitates pornography and BuzzFeed?
The language of online is structured mostly as exclamatory and imperative slogans. Declarative statements often serve as a Trojan Horse of discourse that is actually combat.
It is part of the reason that everything seems so hard to resolve. The pace of life is daunting. We don’t even fully realize it. But we feel it. Things are different and we don’t know why.
Inject a silicon chip into your brain, and there’s no way to know how much it has changed you.
Our cultural illness is neuro-technological. It’s something we signed up for, and it sends constant updates. An automated disease manifested through emotion but guided by some unknown could lead or already has led to neuro-totalitarianism.
On the other hand, it would be cool to order DoorDash without having to move at all, so sign me up!
Humanity is so much more than a 'biological bootloader.'
Parents should talk to their children about what makes humans unique and beautiful and warn them to be wary of anyone seeking to demote humanity from being the pinnacle of creation.
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