When I was a kid my friends knew I had the BEST birthday parties. We had games (who could drop the most clothespins into a jar), eating contests (who could eat the most pigs in a blanket… it always came down to the biggest kid, Doug Childress, against the smallest, Troy Hanes). Birthday cake. Presents. And every year we pulled out the boxing gloves and went at it in the backyard. A rip roaring good time.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve started looking at birthdays less as a celebration and more as the relentless push of father time. A measuring stick that every year gets a bit longer and more impermanent.
America is 250 years old today and I again feel like that kid ready to celebrate. Yes, there are countries with less crime, less corruption, and more social cohesion (I’m living in one of them). But there are none with the raw unbridled energy that comes with living free in the world’s greatest democratic experiment ever. Where you can speak your mind in a public forum and never have to worry the government will come knocking on your door for what you said. Where you can move freely from sea to shining sea and take in grand landscapes that are surpassed only by the people living there.
I’m convinced there has never been a more free and independent country on this scale and will never be another like it. Ever.
This is a big one, America. Enjoy it!
Humans Go EXTINCT? 😳🔥 Doctor Hale Explains the AI Endgame 🤖 #ai#future https://t.co/D2g3ietFiP via @YouTube
Back in mid-2024 I decided to use artificial intelligence to write a thriller. “It started out rather simply with this prompt, “Chat GPT, you are the bad guy in a story where you kill Elon Musk, the world’s first casualty in the battle against AI.”
Writing the story forced me to think extensively about how the intersection of AI and humanity would play out in the long run. A tool I used in the novel was a character named Dr. Maximilian Hale, a respected anthropologist who appears on a Joe Rogan podcast. The resulting scene was (per readers’ reviews) a chilling look into the future of humanity. And spoiler alert: we are doomed!
I decided to recreate that interview for my YouTube channel, The Optional Human. It’s meant to entertain but it’s also meant to get people thinking and talking about the future of humanity and whether we stand a chance against AI.