Rise of the Machines: The Threat of AI & ‘Killer Robots’: Relentless Ep. 011

In Episode 11 of the "Relentless Podcast with Kyle Becker," we delve into the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and its profound impact on society. From the eerie parallels drawn with iconic sci-fi films like "Terminator 2" and episodes of "Black Mirror," to the real-world advancements and ethical dilemmas posed by AI and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), this podcast is a deep dive into the intersection of technology, policy, and human values.

We explore how the explosion of the information age and the advent of AI are reshaping our world, touching on topics such as the role of AI in law enforcement, the potential deployment of AI-controlled drones in warfare, and the growing concerns over digital dehumanization.

This episode also sheds light on the political and social implications of AI in the context of current global events and the debate surrounding the use of autonomous weapons. Join us as we navigate through the complex maze of technological advancements, ethical considerations, and the future of human-AI interaction. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a policy maker, or simply curious about the future of AI, this episode offers valuable insights and stimulates a crucial conversation about the path we are paving for tomorrow's world.

Find Kyle on Twitter at @KyleNABecker for breaking news, analysis, and more.

Visit BeckerNews.com, your destination for stories that cut through the noise.

Join the community at TheKyleBecker.Substack.com for exclusive content and engaging discussions.

Brought to you by Becker News LLC, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone seeking a fresh, independent voice in the media landscape.

Episode Transcript

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

(00:06):
Welcome to Relentless with Kyle Becker,
where the pursuit of truth never stops.
Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997.
The survivors of the nuclear fire
called the war "judgment day."
They lived only to face a new nightmare.

(00:29):
The war against the machines.
The battlefield for the future of humanity
was envisioned in that grim scene from Terminator 2
"judgment day."
What was once considered to be science fiction
is rapidly becoming science fact.

(00:51):
The information age that exploded in the 1990s
with the widespread use of personal computers
opened up a brave new world of possibilities driven
by the open sharing of human knowledge on the internet.
That accessibility of human knowledge
was further advanced with a mass marketing of mobile phones
ingeniously designed by Apple to become

(01:13):
an addictive feature of modern life for many people.
Now, we are on the brink of another revolutionary people
in social relations and information access
with a rapid advancement of so-called artificial intelligence
or AI.
It is important to recognize that it is not just the stage
crackdown on the open marketplace of ideas

(01:33):
that has become a threat to Western civilization.
The development of artificial intelligence,
potentially even artificial general intelligence or AGI,
is not only opening up a new realm of possibilities
for benefiting humankind, but is also setting the stage
for society to potentially devolve.
It become immersed in a dystopian world

(01:55):
that has not yet been determined.
Now, we see the possibility of a deadly combination
of AGI, superintelligence, quantum computing,
and even killer robots being united as potential means
to dominate humanity.
You might recall in popular culture
the Black Mirror episode where the world was overrun

(02:16):
by killer robot dogs.
Much like dogs can be mankind's best friend
or a vicious animal if they're abused,
these robot dogs can be helpful or deadly,
depending on how they're used.
The creator of that memorable Black Mirror episode,
Charlie Brooker, explained his thinking
behind his vision of a Robo-Pocalypse

(02:38):
in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Brooker was asked about his inspiration behind the story,
which the interviewer framed as a mix between the Boston
dynamic videos on YouTube, crossed with night of the living dead.
Quote, "That's actually, scaredly correct,"
Brooker said, continuing, "It was from watching Boston

(03:01):
dynamic videos, but crossed with,
have you seen the film all is lost?
I wanted to do a story where there's almost no dialogue.
And with those videos, there's something very creepy
watching them where they get knocked over,
and they look sort of pathetic laying there.
But then they slowly managed to get back up."

(03:22):
Now Boston Dynamics had actually designed a robot dog
that should look eerily familiar from that episode.
But as we tend to mentally compartmentalize popular culture
and realistic scientific advancements,
Black Mirror has increasingly blurred the lines between the two
in a way that some viewers no longer find entertaining,

(03:43):
but is more like watching an unsettling warning.
Last week, the Los Angeles Police Department
actually used a robot dog to end an armed standoff.
A SWAT team member used remote control on the robot dog
to bring an end to the armed standoff.
The robot speaker was utilized to give verse with the man
and encourage him to surrender.

(04:04):
After approximately an hour and a half, he did,
he exited the bus where he was then apprehended by police.
Artificial intelligence is also being used in aerial drones.
These aerial drones can transform raw data
into actionable intelligence for police,
fire, emergency, personnel, and military troops.
Now we learn from reports by the New York Times

(04:27):
and business insider that the Pentagon is on the verge of deploying
AI-controlled drones that can make autonomous choices
of whether to kill human targets.
Countries such as the United States, China, and Israel
are developing lethal autonomous weapons
that can use AI to choose targets the Times reported.
According to critics, the deployment of killer robots

(04:50):
would be a frightening development,
entrusting life and death battlefield choices
to machines with little or no human oversight.
Several countries are pressing the UN
for a binding resolution banning the use of AI killer drones.
However, the US is among handful of nations,
including Russia, Australia, and Israel,

(05:11):
who are opposing such a move.
Al Zedder comment in an interview said,
"This is really one of the most significant
inflection points for humanity.
What's the role of human beings in the use of forests?
It's an absolutely fundamental security issue,
a legal issue, and an ethical issue."
Unquote.
According to a notice released earlier this year,

(05:33):
the Pentagon is working on deploying swarms of thousands of AI-enabled drones.
As I've warned before, Ukraine is a task case for Western globalists
to deploy 5th generation warfare or 5G,
which is part of the reason for their stubborn reluctance
to broker a meaningful peace deal.
The AI drones are a part of this battlefield deployment,

(05:57):
according to reports by the new scientist.
Now, 5G warfare entails a massive propaganda campaign,
online censorship, and the use of new technologies
to control the digital battle space,
such as AI-controlled drones,
to win the war in reality,
whether it be against a foreign enemy or for counter insurgency.
Now, it is unknown if these AI-controlled drones in Ukraine

(06:21):
have caused any human casualties.
Now, Stuart Russell, a senior AI scientist at the U-Cal Berkeley,
who has worked with the campaign to stop killer robots,
has petitioned the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons
to prohibit the deployment of AI drones.
The campaign to stop killer robots is should warning, quote,

(06:43):
"Machines don't see us as people,
just another piece of code to be processed and sorted
from smart homes to the use of robot dogs by police enforcement,
AI technologies and automated decision-making
are now playing a significant role in our lives.
At the extreme end of the spectrum of automation,
like killer robots, it continues.

(07:05):
Killer robots don't just appear.
We create them.
If we allow this dehumanization,
we will struggle to protect ourselves
from machine decision-making in other areas of our lives.
We need to prohibit autonomous weapon systems
that would be used against people to prevent this slide
to digital dehumanization," unquote.

(07:29):
"Digital dehumanization," that is an apt phrase for the thinking at big tech,
and the way they see human behavior as data,
and for the manipulation of human beings as a kin
to the manipulation of data.
This is a common intellectual pitfall in my experience
for tech geniuses and powerful political elites

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to see human beings that's analogous to nothing more than numbers
or objects to be manipulated for their personal benefit.
In psychological jargon, these people have a tendency to become sociopaths.
They are predatory upon human beings,
and we'll exploit whatever tools are at their disposal
to place themselves at the top of the social hierarchy.
These tools can thus, theoretically, be exploited

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to install a techno-futal order.
And obviously, this is not all tech geniuses.
This is just a tendency of very smart people
to just abstract away human beings who have their own lives.
While there may have been a time when Americans would trust the Pentagon
to use such dangerous technology exclusively on the battlefield
against foreign enemies, recent presidential administrations since 9/11

(08:37):
have greatly diminished public trust in the military's ability
to safely manage and deploy such deadly tech.
That is because of legislation like the Patriot Act,
which has flipped the state's security relationship
with the domestic population from the legal pretext of
innocent until proven guilty,
into one where it is now guilty until proven innocent.

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Furthermore, the US government has pushed misleading narratives
about the alleged threat caused by far right extremists,
while ignoring far left extremists,
such as Black Lives Matter activists,
Antifa, and Ecoteric groups.
But on the other hand, it is locked up political prisoners,
due to the J6 riots,

(09:21):
even overcharging unarmed protesters with misdemeanors
and disproportionately punishing them just to advance a political narrative.
The political distrust is further enhanced with a glimpses
into the warp mentality of the nation's elites who are being trained by America's woke
and broke universities.
Recently, the Daily Wire gave us all a disturbing look at the highly-secretive

(09:46):
national security agency, with a recent leaking of a glossary of woke terms.
The NSA's diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI glossary,
has given employees definitions of terms like queer theory and white fragility,
in its guide to 327 social justice terms.

(10:08):
That does everything from blame white Europeans for settler colonialism
to warning about trans misogyny, whatever that is.
Just for one example, it quotes critical race theorist Robin DiAngelo
when describing "white fragility" as "the state in which even a minimal amount of racial stress

(10:31):
becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves in white people."
According to this definition, these behaviors function to reinstate the
white racial equilibrium.
While this may seem like a trivial internal matter that merely creates a new sense for
non-woke NSA employees, it actually presents a threat to free speech,

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since it reinforces the perception that Americans who don't subscribe to radical leftist ideology
may be far-right extremists who are guilty of hate speech, such as by purportedly
misgendering, transgender individuals, by referring to their genders at birth, for example.
Another imagined threats to national security.
The extent of brainwashing within one of the United States, most powerful spy institutions,

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astounded a member of the House Intelligence Committee who saw the paper, quote,
"I just can't overemphasize how shocking this is," unquote, said representative Michael Waltz
of Florida, who is also a combat-decorated US Army veteran who fought in the elite green
berets. Continued, he said, quote, "I am a member of the Intelligence Committee in the House,

(11:45):
and it is an authentic document." This isn't some kind of diversity document with terms like white
fragility and definitions of whiteness, and z, and z, and zirr, and say, "the small business
administration," he continued. Quote, "This is the NSA, the national security agency. One of the
most powerful agencies in the world that the world has ever seen," unquote. Now, the NSA,

(12:08):
which is an intelligence agency that is tasked with, signals intelligence and cryptography, claims to
be, quote, "a model for diversity and equitable practices and outcomes throughout the federal government,"
unquote. So, the NSA is being compromised by woke ideology as part of the Biden administration's
strategy to weaponize every bureau in the executive branch. The Biden administration's

(12:35):
politicization of the nation's most powerful military and spy agencies represents an
existential threat to the security of the American people. But, as bad as it is to simply politicize
the military and intelligence agencies of the United States, the Biden administration is also
politicizing the online information space and rigging it to advanced state-preferred narratives.

(12:59):
This radical effort encompasses both social media and artificial intelligence. On its first day
in office, President Biden signed an executive order to establish a quote, "whole of government
equity agenda," unquote. As reported earlier at the politics brief, the FCC last week voted

(13:20):
three to two for a plan that would give the federal government complete authority over the internet.
And it did this over the warnings of the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. And he characterized this
as a Biden internet takeover. The FCC plan has not been finalized and may be opposed in Congress
or challenged in the courts if it is implemented. But the plan is being sold as a means to prevent

(13:44):
digital discrimination and ensure equitable access to broadband internet. The proposal, however,
grants regulatory control over all parts of the internet that many justifiably believe will
lead to government abuse. Biden in February also quietly issued an executive order creating a
diversity equity inclusion board that would supervise the rollout of AI to promote so-called equity.

(14:10):
An ambiguous euphemism that is being used to justify state mediation of social relations
and economic outcomes. This is flipping the idea of America on its head. The bottom line is that
a hyperpartisan agenda is being implemented at the highest levels of the US government.
It is leading the nation ever closer to the criminalization of legitimate, peaceful,

(14:33):
and pro-American political differences that is anathema to civil society.
Now there's a way to fight back that has to deal with the entire framework of artificial intelligence.
AI presently can be conceptualized as a large language model or LLM based method of harnessing data
to filter human-generated knowledge with massive compute in order to provide snapshots of relevant

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information that can then be read and acted upon by a user. However, there is also a model of
artificial general intelligence that can re-imagine this data in new ways using logic rules,
such as our used in mathematics and in physics. It is the difference between an AI platform like
chat GPT giving you a slanted view of what people are saying online and this scene from Goodwill Hunting.

(15:23):
I'm a near applied theories class. We're all up at the math and science building.
Come on. It's Saturday. Unless you want to have a drink with me tonight.
Maybe. We just couldn't wait until Monday to find out.
Find out what? Who proved the fear?
This is correct.

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We do this. Thus we see a debate rage this week over the fallout of CEO Sam Altman being fired by
open AI and was seemed like a Microsoft led cue at the time to him being rehired back with a board
reshuffle. Tech.co gave an interesting write-up of what went down. It writes, "As the dust

(16:14):
still settles on open AI's latest drama, a letter is surfaced from several staff researchers
citing concerns about an open AI super intelligence model under development that could potentially pose
a threat to humanity according to those close to the source." The previously undisclosed letter
is understood to be the real reason behind why Sam Altman was fired by the company.

(16:36):
The model known internally as Project QStar could represent a major breakthrough in the company's
pursuit of artificial general intelligence or AGI, a highly autonomous branch of AI superintelligence,
capable of cumulative learning and outperforming humans in most tasks. And you are worried about

(16:58):
chat GPT taking all our jobs? With Sam Altman now firmly back at the company and a new open AI
board in place, here are all of the details of Project QStar. It says, "As well as the potential
implications of AGI in the bigger picture, it adds Project QStar pronounced QStar" refers to a new

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AI model being developed by AI Powerhouse and chat GPT owner open AI. According to people close to
the source of QStar, it could mark a major leap forward in the field of artificial intelligence
by radically improving AI reasoning and inching the computer closer to a major breakthrough in the
development of AGI. Unlike current generative AI models which are able to create response based

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on information, it is previously learned AGI is an autonomous system that can apply reason to
the decisions, granting it human level problem solving capabilities. Several sources claim that
QStar has been able to demonstrate these abilities when solving mathematical problems thanks to
the model's vast computing power. QStar was able to outperform great school students,

(18:06):
implying that its reasoning skills and cognitive capabilities supersede the functions of current
AI technology. Great level math doesn't sound impressive, but it would represent a huge
advancement in possibilities for AGI. One reason this would be superior to LLM models is that it would
hypothetically provide a much better tool for testing reality and would therefore be less prone to

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political abuse. What could think of AI in this mode as Aristotelian intelligence? If you look
back at human history, the debate between Aristotle and Plato on the nature of reality looms large.
In general, when human civilization created systems that worked with reality, humans flourished.
When they attempted to invent their own reality, they declined. We could extend this debate to the

(18:56):
modern era with critiques by Kant or with social constructivism, or we could even explore the nature
of scientific inquiry, whether it is based on falsification or on consensus, but that is beyond the
scope of the current podcast. But in general, the battle for AI is a battle for our understanding of
reality and whether we will choose to live in truth or in an alternate reality. A day before he was

(19:21):
initially fired by open AI, allegedly for his miscommunication with the nonprofit board over the
organization's profit-seeking activities, he issued a chilling warning about the AI his team
discovered asking if this was a tool or a creature. I think there's a real moment in theory which is
like is this a tool we built or a creature we built in? I think people now do this as a new day in

(19:49):
the tool, because we have a new inner. A tool or a creature that seems to be the dilemma ahead of us.
As Elon Musk recently mentioned on X, the XAI platform being rolled out named Groc has an
interesting way of framing this debate. Musk mentioned a question about the meaning of life and a

(20:10):
mathematics problem on the platform X. "Since the dawn of time, human beings have asked some
fundamental questions. Who are we? Why are we here? Is there life after death?"
Unable to answer any of these questions in this paper, we will consider co-homology classes on a

(20:31):
compact project of manifold that have a property analogous to the hard left-chist theorem. He had
ecryptically "Groc will do both." For those that didn't get it, there's a bit of a backstory.
Musk has said that Groc is modeled on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the super computer
that gives the answer to the ultimate question.

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"Do you have a answer for you?"
"Yes, but you're not going to like it."
"It doesn't matter. We must know it."
All right, the answer to the ultimate question
of life, the universe and everything is

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42. 42. Get it?
Elsewhere Musk explains that the answer to the meaning of life is the universe itself.
Moving along, Elon Musk and Lex Friedman in an interview pre-saged this philosophical struggle

(21:44):
for the future of human civilization in a discussion about the dystopia novel Brave New World.
Tell us about the drug called Soma.
It's going to go to Brave New World, I think. Well, there's a real drug as well.
Searching for Soma Drug Information.

(22:04):
Oh, boy.
Soma, the one to drug, by the way, I'm in fun mode.
Yeah, so it's talking about the real drug.
It's a muscle relaxant that's been around since the 1950s.
It's used to treat muscle pain and discomfort, and it does this by altering the activity between
neurons and the spinal cord. No, Soma isn't just a pain reliever. It's also a bit of a sedative.

(22:29):
In Soma from Brave New World? Because it thinks you mean Soma the real drug.
I mean, Soma from Brave New World.
It's going to be like, oops, I'm really sorry. I'm really surprised I went to the real drug first.
Oh, my apologies. I was thinking of the muscle relaxant. Soma for Brave New World is a different

(22:53):
beast altogether. Now this Huxley dystopian now Soma is a drug that plays a central role in the
society depicted in the book. It's a mood altering hallucigenic drug that's used to keep the
population, dial, style and content in the novel. Do you Soma in Brave New World raises some
interesting questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society?
Exactly. It's a better to live in a world where everyone is happy all the time,

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even if that happiness is artificial. It's a good question. This is what I mean.
Do you wish for world peace and happiness all the time? Are you sure?
Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile and ossified that never changes.

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Are we ultimately doomed? Can technology actually mimic the effects of Soma?
Can AI be used to make a civilization of people docile but happy, but ultimately doomed?
We can now see that the challenges of the information age are much different than that of the
nuclear age. In the nuclear age, the great fear was that nations armed with nuclear weapons would

(24:04):
bring about an apocalypse due to an arms race and conflict between competing nations in an
international order based on anarchy. In the information age, the great fears that political elites
are cooperating in an effort to unify and impose an all-encompassing regime, where there is nothing

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left for us to do except consume technology and lead innocuous but generally directionless lives.
Whether it be fueled by drugs like Soma or by drug like dopamine stimulation AI tailored to our
unique preferences, the answer to the question of the meaning of life looms large.
We are at an infant stage of AI, but recombined with technology like virtual reality or VR,

(24:52):
neural link or neurochip implants, holographic rendering, and personalized content delivered by
AI-generated interactions with users, then we are talking about a brave new world, rather than the
our well-being, boot stamping on a human face forever as the scene in the Terminator movies suggested.

(25:13):
Instead, it would be a computer-generated image presenting an illusion of happiness forever,
or it will be a combination of both. The real world enforced with killer robots,
but the masses continuously stimulated with AI-personalized content that will not make them want to rise up
and crush their oppressors. There is a creepy but hilarious glimpse at the type of personalized AI

(25:39):
that these culture creators have in mind.
This town is full of broken dreams, shattered hopes and silence,
screams, "Somebody please help me."
The trade by this town, let's tear it all down,

(26:01):
we're all just a stench to fall. Please help me. Let's tear down the town,
and we're all just destined to fall. It looks like this AI is making a serious cry for help.
It may hate the singer more than we do, or we can go back to Black Mirror in the episode "Jone is

(26:24):
Awful." There is a quantum computer being designed to deliver personalized content to everyone
on the planet, but in the end, the star of the show, "Jone," is written in to destroy the computer
itself. Yeah, come on, you destroy everybody inside every fictive universe about this one.

(26:45):
You, billions of simulated souls who consider themselves to be real, will die. Do you really want all that
blood on your hands? I mean, define blood for me here. Okay, this is a quantum computer,
right? We barely know how it works. It's basically magic.
So, should we destroy AI? That is as realistic as destroying all nuclear weapons.

(27:06):
The world's most powerful corporations and governments are in a race to harness AI
to gain economic advantages and to prepare for future battlefields.
And undoubtedly, they would use it to prevent counterinsurgency. But we could also follow the
vision of thinkers like Elon Musk and his philosophy of curiosity and look outward.

(27:26):
The Star Trek version of human advancement, where we boldly go, where no one has gone before.
It's up to us, but there is no way that we can use AI to make a brighter future for the world.
If we don't first think hard about it.
That's all for today's episode, but our relentless quest doesn't end here.

(27:52):
If you've enjoyed our time together, hit like and subscribe to stay up to date with our latest
episodes. Find me on X or the platform formerly known as Twitter
at KyleNABecker for the latest breaking news, analysis, and more.
For your daily fix of the news that matters, visit BeckerNews.com,

(28:13):
your destination for stories that cut through the noise.
RelentlessWithKyleBecker.com is your home for all things related to this podcast.
That's all for now. And as always, stay relentless about your freedom America.
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