10/4/22: OPTIMUS CRIME

Elon Musk recently unveiled his new robot prototype — the much-hyped anthropomorphic bot named Optimus. Musk imagines it will one day be sold as a “general purpose” mechanical humanoid — cheaper than a car and equally capable of working in factories and doing chores at home. We are facing the 21st century “future shock” while trying to determine whether these new hi-tech innovations will enhance our lifestyle, or if they will contribute to and perhaps even cause the destruction of society and life. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks about OPTIMUS CRIME. #GroundZero #ClydeLewis #OptimusCrime

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10/4/22: OPTIMUS CRIME

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So last night as I brought up the invasion of the outsiders, there was a small consensus that said they had a feeling Artificial Intelligence is somehow responsible for the invisible invasion that is bringing us down. I was really surprised that this was brought up because I wanted to cover it when I heard about how Elon Musk was about to unveil his super-hyped robot named, Optimus.

When it comes to science fiction, I am a big fan of robot films.

Cyborgs, androids, gynoids, Fembots, or American fictional robots like the Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Star Trek’s Data, and many, many more are amazing.

I have action figures of the Iron Giant. Robbie the Robot and B9 in my collection of collectables. I once had a R2D2 miniature that would travel around the room like a Roomba vacuum cleaner.

Maria, the golden robot from Metropolis has always been a favorite of mine as well.

The ultimate American robot is The Terminator, an indestructible killing machine that stops at nothing. RoboCop was another important addition to the pile as the man that it was made from was still trying to find his humanity.

My wife loves Chappy — and well, I could list my favorite robots from all of the movies and TV shows I have seen.

The Pentagon is taking its cue from a 1995 dystopian movie called, Screamers, which features a fighting robot called Autonomous Mobile Sword. A self-replicating crawling machine, it tracks a living pulse, then leaps to dismember its target. A small problem: it cannot distinguish between friends or foes, civilians or soldiers, men, women or children, primary or collateral damages.

The military is opening up the arms and their bottomless pockets to autonomous androids for warfare.

Fully autonomous robots that make their own decisions about lethality are high on the US military agenda. The US National Research Council advises “aggressively exploiting the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles.” They are cheap to manufacture, require less personnel and, according to the navy, perform better in complex missions. One battlefield soldier could start a large-scale robot attack in the air and on the ground.

This is dangerous new territory for warfare, yet there are no new ethical codes or guidelines in place. I  The idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.

To say that maybe we should hold back on all of this mechanized death makes you a Luddite or a medieval thinker.

The general consensus among progressive thinkers today is that medieval thinking that exists in the 21st century is not useful. The idea of praying mysteriously to an invisible God and living miserably can be changed through technology.

It is now fashionable for man to play God – God made man – man becomes God by becoming more than man, more than a human, human plus.  The man also becomes a God or a modern-day Prometheus when he rolls out his inorganic creation of wires and anthropomorphic arms and legs.

Elon Musk unveiled his new robot prototype– the much-hyped anthropomorphic bot named Optimus.

Optimus is a bipedal machine that Musk imagines will one day be sold as a “general purpose” bot that’s cheaper than a car and equally capable of working in factories and doing chores at home.

The presentation of Optimus at Tesla’s AI Day was laced with the usual Musk intoxicants of hype and misdirection. But it also offered roboticists an admirably detailed look at some of the machine’s actual capabilities. Their judgment? Tesla’s engineers have done incredible work in such a short space of time but Optimus is still more hype than reality: a research robot that will take many years to develop into anything meaningful.

Two robots were shown. The first, named Bumble C, was a “rough development robot” seen walking across the stage and carrying out tasks in prerecorded demos like picking up a watering can and moving boxes. The second robot was described by Musk as “fairly close to what will go into production” and had an external covering. But it was only used as a prop, wheeled about behind Musk and only shown waving its hands.

Musk repeated his ambition to create “a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” one that can be “made in very high volume, ultimately millions of units” and that will “cost much less than a car — much less than $20,000.” He later claimed that inventing such the machine will allow for “a future where there is no poverty” and a “fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”

In a Q&A at the end of the presentation, Musk repeated speculation that the bot could “be like a friend” one day and said customers will be able to order one “within three years, probably not more than five years”

One thing that I have noticed lately is the rude awakening that people have been saying will come has certainly arrived. It is like some of us have just awakened to the technological hell that is the 21st century and while it can be argued that while we have been through over two decades — that has not changed the hell that we have endured and the hell we have yet to endure.

It is all about what doesn’t kill you and makes you stronger and soon we have been promised that the technological utopia planned for us will wipe away our tears and tranquilize all of the hassles of being escapees from the 20th century.

Advancements in technology have not really done a damn thing to support the human spirit

It is an ongoing obstacle to realizing human potential. It has been proposed that it has made us lazy, mentally dependent and shallow.

Yes, our dependence on technology and science has given us a lot of good things, like the ease of procuring food, and clean water – we have even beat Darwin at his own game of survival of the fittest as there are artificial knees, hearts, and other body parts available to keep people alive beyond their due date.

And yet I always hear from a few of my listeners who sound like they are neo – Amish more than willing to get off the grid—throw away the cell phone, the TVs, the Internet, live miles from hospitals and doctors, and literally rough it — in fact, they believe that in the end they will be the lone survivors — if anything that looks like peanut butter hits the fan.

But I always stop and wonder if living like you are in the third world is really worth it. In fact, it is well known that the majority of the planet lives like this.

Have you ever thought about how people fare in the third world where there is no national health service, very limited access to a doctor’s care, very little medical technology available? How do the millions out in the glorious countryside, miles from big cities, tending their sheep or goats, living a family life, dancing, laughing, and crying when grandma dies a natural death? How do they do it?

America is great because of the fact that we have a mountain of creature comforts. We have just enough urban sprawl;, internet Tv and beer that we probably do not know how most of the world lives.

I can tell you that we probably don’t care either.

We have innovation and technological advancements that are indistinguishable from magic. We have scientists who we now think are indistinguishable from God.

This topic is complicated. Of course, the powers that be want us all to think that if it weren’t for science, high tech the WHO, doctors, vaccines, and medical science, half the world would be dead by now.

That may actually be true, but what exactly would be killing us?—the natural world?—or the man-made world? It would be difficult to make this assessment, due, obviously, to the fact that there is no place on earth not infected by the greedy, and often evil hands of  those technocrats that are lulling you into a nanny state by promising all of this cool tech like Elon Musk and his Optimus robots or the marriage of human and Neurolink,

Yes, we know the gadgets are cool, the wonder drugs are being sold to the highest bidder– but it is odd how we are accepting these things without thinking about what they will do to us in the long run.

I mean, no one really has talked about 5G at all, mainly because the dangers of being exposed to all of that digital smog pale in comparison to the climate crisis.  There are no real lobbyists or activists that will go to Washington and say that 5G is only for machines and not for us puny insignificant humans.

How does the announcement of a new robot that looks like an overpriced science fair project supposed to improve our lives at the moment — I guess we need to try and understand how technology birth takes us uphill and down.

We are all feeling the pinch when it comes to how else technology diminished our lives, Whether it be a renewed streaming of violent behavior, depression, suicide, anxiety, or a feeling of meaninglessness.

Oh yes, read Facebook and you will see just how happy the world has become.

Correlation without causation? Maybe.

Future shock? You bet — this is exactly what breeds this feeling of meaninglessness.

People facing the 21st century “future shock” are trying to determine whether these new innovations in their lives will enhance their lifestyle, or bring it to a great unprecedented level, or if these new innovations will contribute and perhaps even cause the destruction of society and life.

For example, robots and high-tech social AI are now becoming part of our lives. It does not look like this will change; in fact interactive technology will improve, exponentially.

Interactions with social robots are going to be a real issue in the coming months and will most certainly become an integral part of our lives in the next decade.

As more robots enter our lives and our homes, we are experiencing an increase in robots designed to engage us socially. This trend is not likely to slow. Social robots will continue to improve, and continue to grow in numbers as technology moves forward.

The thing most intriguing is that we have unwittingly been conditioned to accept mechanical companions, from talking teddy bears to speaking and crying dolls.

Toy makers have for decades been working to increase interactivity and engage children by creating the illusion of intentional behavior in robotic toys. Children begin their interaction with technology at a very young age.

It has been found that within 10 minutes a child of two can master the use of an iPad or even a Smartphone  to play games and watch animated cartoons. They are calling these children “APP pupils” or the “APP generation.”

They are the first generation to use handheld digital technology from birth.

That generation is getting older and many of them are isolated and are only social online. Many hardly leave their homes and spend most of their social lives online.

Decades ago, the Black Pope of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey predicted in the “The Devil’s Note Book,” that there would be a future industry of android companions. “The means by which a humanoid may be constructed are as diverse as the choice of materials will allow.”

Various organizations desire to use emerging technology to create a human species so enhanced that they cease to be humans.

They will be post-humans with the potential of living forever. Many people are of the opinion that the transhumanist’s arrogant quest to create a post-human species will become a direct assault on human dignity and an attack on God’s sovereignty as Creator.

The 20th-century arguments of “pro-life” have found their way into the religious and political dialogues of the 21st century, but there will be in the future another political and religious debate and it will no longer be enough to be pro-life, as we will enter into the time where we will also have to be pro-human.

Education about the full implications of these emerging sciences is a key to be able to directly confront what faces humanity.

Despite transhumanist’s hostility toward any and all religious discourse, it certainly sounds like a new faith.

You see, it is not that technology is a bad thing — it is mostly the intent of new technology that needs to be analyzed.

It is the intention behind the advancement of technology that pulls us away from nature and away from our natural way of being.

We seem to have always been aware of the dangers of the advancement of AI, and robotics, But our concerns have been expressed primarily for the wrong reasons: robots and advanced AI being a threat to our physical dominance over our environment.

Yes we are concerned that they can  take our jobs, and eventually regulate us to that of slaves.

Not many people seem to be concerned about our loss of soul, our loss of humanity, our loss of being human, and our loss of a connection to God.

That, to me, is the real threat, and if not addressed properly, it will be responsible for our eventual demise.

Written by Ron Patton