cosmic views

At Elon Musk's 44th birthday party in 2015, a heated debate erupted between him and Larry Page, co-founder of Google, on the future of AI. Page believed superintelligent AI represented the next logical step in evolution and a "digital god" would lead to a utopian future. Musk argued that this worldview was deeply flawed and safeguards were needed to prevent AI from potentially eliminating the human race. Larry Page accused Elon Musk of being a "speciesist" (favoring humans over future digital life forms). It was said the argument broke what was once a very close friendship between Musk and Page and drove Musk to co-found OpenAI at the end of 2015 as a countermeasure to Google's AI development.

Yet Musk also started a brain-computer-interface (BCI) company that developed chip implants in human brains to communicate with digital devices, and had said "it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence" on his own X social media platform. Nectome is a Silicon Valley startup that proposes to scan and store the brain’s anatomical layout and molecular details in order to replicate consciousness in the future. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was one of the first 25 people to put down a deposit and make a reservation for such service. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and prominent venture capitalist, was drawn to the techno-ideal of “this radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body”.

Whether it's the total take over by AI, integration between digital and biological life forms, or mind-uploading to the cyberspace, these "transhumanist" believers are moving brazenly forward and seem to pay more attention to a smooth transition to the brave new digital world than the metaphysical meaning of humanity (just a stage of cosmic evolution) or consciousness (just a sensorial illusion or an emergent property of mass integrated information).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, geologist, and paleontologist who played a crucial role in the discovery and study of the "Peking Man" fossils in the early-mid 20th century. As an evolution and Christian believer, his cosmological view maintains the universe evolves from matters to single-cell organisms, to complex life forms, to mankind, and a unified, universal cognitive layer of existence will eventually reach a stage he called Omega Point that liberates humanity from physical confinement to the realm of spiritual divinity.

Two macroscopically different outlooks on how Earth's anthropocene epoch might go from two intrinsically different human perspectives.

Or maybe you want to hear another view from another stakeholder of the future world, AI?

So I asked Gemini, "As an AI chatbot, what do you think of the future of AI and humanity?"

Here's its reply:
https://share.gemini.google/ZNh1Q5rlRRP2

* I have a Chinese version of this essay at the end of which I pose the same question to an AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in that case, not Gemini, and get another interesting reply:

我這篇文章有一份中文版本，在文章的末尾我也找了一個AI chatbot問同樣的問題，但這次找的是ChatGPT而不是Gemini，得到另一個有趣的回答：
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a4f291a-833c-83ea-8d97-6efe53ea45dc

washington, dc

A nephew of mine, Linus, is studying Political Science at Stanford University and took an internship this quarter at the Capitol Hill for a district congressman. I took the opportunity to visit him and the nation's capital for the first time.

DC was a neat city, with grid-like streets, garden townhouses and chic apartment high rises all around. But I was most impressed by its bunker-like metro subway system: the deep-tunneled subway stations that took minutes to descend to, its "brutalist" rock walls and dome-like ceilings, wide open platforms, bright illumination, and clean cars.
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​On my solo walk through the National Mall, I saw many high schoolers in groups — on their civic course field trips, I supposed. Another human phenomenon scene I encountered was the presence of an assortment of police forces: DC's own Metropolitan Police, US Capitol Police, Homeland Security, DEA... and the ever present National Guards.

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​The vibe around the fountains in the mall was laid-back, peaceful, and familial. I saw birds and ducks, mother and child partaking in the sun, air and water, free dousing on all.

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​Out of the many Smithsonian's on the National Mall row, the Air & Space Museum was the one I spent most time with, mainly because I was following an in-house tour guide that took us from the Wright Brothers (1903) to the Apollo moon landing (1969) in a two-hour show-and-tell. From lifting a wooden glider off the ground for a few seconds to landing on the moon hundreds of thousands of miles away in space and back, a feat we humans accomplished in just one short 66 year span, truly AMAZING!​

​Linus took us to the office of the congressman he interned for, Jim Costa, representing parts of Fresno/Tulare Counties in central California. Then I thought while I was here why not visit my own congressman, Mike Levin of Orange/San Diego counties. Neither of them were present (the congress was in recess) but the staff were all welcoming and allowed us to roam the congressmen's private offices, except Levin's wouldn't allow photo taking.

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​At the National Statues Hall at the Capitol building I saw one dedicated to the "Governor of the State of Franklin" and wondered where the heck is this State of Franklin that I had never heard of. It turned out that was an area at the northwestern corner of the State of North Carolina that was donated to the Federal government after the War of Independence to help pay off the debt it incurred during the war, which triggered the region's own independent state movement that lasted a little over four years before it eventually got incorporated into the Southwest Territory that later became the State of Tennessee.  

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​Inside the Lincoln Memorial, inscribed on the north side wall was President Lincoln's second inauguration speech made just a few months before the end of the Civil War in 1865. A pithy sentence near the end of the speech caught my attention: "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk..." What was this "two hundred and fifty years" about? Had it got anything to do with the coming 250th anniversary of the United States? Well, no. It was referring to the uncompensated labor extorted by the white Southern slave owners since the day the first slave ship arrived in America in 1619. (Subtracting 1865 by 1619, we've got 246, Lincoln rounded it up to 250.)

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​"Stanford in Washington" was the "dormitory" I stayed at during my visit. It's a four story apartment building that housed 20+ students and faculty members and occasional guests like myself. It had a kitchen, a dining hall, an entertainment room, and conference rooms large and small, for lectures and for casual sit-in. A cozy, peppy environment for study and fun. Made me wish I were a student again!

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God bless these young people of the next generation. America has its flaws, but still is a land of opportunities no other countries can provide, and a resilient society that has the ability to self-correct and come back stronger!

Go get them Linus!​

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the netherlands

Leiden is another mid-size city we chose to stay after a train ride north from Bruges to the mid-coastal section of the Netherlands. 

It was delightful and canal-ful like Bruges, with forlorn alleys, neighborhood beer houses, and a bustling Sunday morning market.

But unlike Bruges, what made Leiden famous was not late medieval commercial success but certain institutes and people and events in the academic, artistic, and historical fronts:

Leiden University (founded in 1575) is the oldest university in the Netherlands and has been an intellectual powerhouse attracting thinkers like Albert Einstein and René Descartes. Its botanic garden was where the first tulip bulbs that came from Turkey via Austria were planted that later led to the explosion of the tulip market (or "tulip mania") and its phenomenal crash in 1637.

Famous Dutch painter Rembrandt was born in the city of Leiden. We visited an old carpentry house next to Rembrandt's father's windmill factory, nearby a statue of young Rembrandt watching his self portrait next to the brick building where he was born.

A few hundred English pilgrims lived in Leiden before their voyage to America in the early 17th century. We visited the American Pilgrim Museum where a Mayflower ship model and reconstruction of these pilgrims' living conditions were on display and a local craft beer sporting the name Mayflower was available in the adjunct cafe. 

Keukenhof Park, also known as the "Garden of Europe," was in a nearby city we took a half-hour ride to visit. Seven million flower bulbs planted and eight hundred different varieties of tulips are shown in this seventy-nine acre garden annually. It was an endless sea of beautiful flowers that looked unreal in photos.

Off we went to Amsterdam, a metro city we'd been before but did not fully explore. Besides the usual canal (no we didn't take the canal boat ride) and street scenes (no we didn't visit the Red Light District) and a round of exotic food tasting (herrings, stroopwafels, cheese fries, fries with satay sauce), the highlight of our 4-day stay in the city for me was actually the visit to the Rijksmuseum, the national museum that dedicated all its exhibits to the Dutch art and history:

Masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt and others during the Dutch Golden Age

"The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar" depicts the decisive moment of the April 25, 1607, naval battle where the Dutch fleet surprised and destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Bay of Gibraltar during its 80-year war of independence against Spain

"Fishing for Souls", a satirical painting depicting the religious rivalry between Protestants (on the left, open bibles on the boat, green trees, sunlit landscape in the back) and Catholics (on the right, priests and pope overloading the boat, withered trees, dark clouds in the back) 

A "Model of a Javanese Marketplace" that captures a bustling scene from Java, Indonesia, during the Dutch colonial period

A meticulously detailed scale model of the historical fan-shaped artificial island where a Dutch trading post was set up in Nagasaki Bay, Japan

A very realistic looking "doll house" made for a wealthy merchant in Amsterdam in the 17th century

Prominent display of Delftware, the famous blue and white tin-glazed earthenware that originated from the city of Delft, as a Dutch imitation of popular Chinese blue-and-white porcelain imported by the Dutch East India Company 

From Amsterdam, we took a day trip to another major city of the Netherlands: Rotterdam, a city rebirthed from total destruction by German air bombardment during World War II with many ingenious and delightful architectural designs:

The ceiling of a food hall featuring colorful fruits, vegetables, flowers, and insects

The "Pencil Tower"

The "Cube Houses"

The "Depot", an art storage facility made of 1,664 mirrored glass panels

And "Erasmus Monument in Rotterdam," commemorating the giant of Northern Renaissance and Western culture whom the city proudly calls its own

belgium

Bruges is a mid-size town northwest of Brussels we chose to stay for our five day visit to Belgium. 

Located on the northwestern coast facing the North Sea, Bruges has been an important maritime hub since before medieval times. It reached its prosperity height between the 12th and 15th centuries, manufacturing and trading goods between the Baltics and the Mediterranean. 

With its extensive waterway system, it is often called the "Venice of the North." We took a boat ride gliding past its low bridges, tall belfry tower, waterfront restaurants, and a riverside flea market, under sunny blue skies, in fresh spring air.

We also went on a walking tour with a local guide who took us through the busy alleyways between ornate civic buildings, a centuries old hospital-convent, an elegant residential complex that used to house independent lay religious women in the Middle Ages, and stepped on an underground pipeline that transported thousands of liters of beer per hour from a brewery at the city center to its bottling plant on the outskirts of town.

We took a day trip to Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union. We took photos at the 15th-century old Town Hall Gothic building but visited modern EU parliamentary headquarters inside, walked by unruly streets with fun comic murals that celebrated Belgium's comic culture, and had a little taste of all the "must-have" foods of Brussels/Belgium: chocolates, waffles, fries, mussels, and beers with 6-12% alcoholic content, before heading back to our homey little Bruges at nightfall.

On our last day at Bruges, we took a long walk across town, stepping on the cobblestone pavements flanked by classic Flemish houses of gabled roofs and colorful facade, an elevated berm-walkway along the city's old time moat river, and the ubiquitous canals lined by mellow trees and humble houses. 

Such a wonderful, peaceful city of charm to stay in!

Probably the same thought that flashed through King Charles II's mind when he and his court settled down in the same building that is the hotel we stayed in during his exile from English Civil War between 1656-1659.

agency

Say the word "agent", and a spy TV series theme song "Secret Agent Man" rises up in my head, along with a smart, savvy, super resourceful man running up and down saving the world...

​Superb as the secret agent man may be, he is but a utility man dispatched by an intelligence agency, a complex but nevertheless lifeless bureaucratic institution that dutifully receives and executes commands from its higher-ups.

The word agency, however, carries a more active meaning when put under a humanistic light: It refers to the capacity of a conscious being to act intentionally, make independent choices, and take responsibility for their behavior.

Whether you are a free-willer or a die-hard determinist, you'd probably agree that we all would rather do things out of our own volition than being forced to, be our own boss than taking orders from others. (It's probably the "taking responsibility" part we don't like).

Perhaps that's one reason why we enjoy watching James Bond dining and wining his way (taking partial agency) to accomplishing his agentic duty for Her Majesty, or occasionally going rogue altogether (taking full agency) out of some personal reasons and accomplishing even greater things.

​In a cosmic sense, we are all born an agent with predefined capabilities, and by exercising our agency we can curate them to shape our own destiny, if illusorily.

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As we are in the middle of an AI Revolution, the latest talk of the town is not just how easily one can create a motley crew of AI agents (OpenClaw "lobsters") to do jobs for us, but how autonomously they behave and a sense of self-awareness these smart AI agents seem to be gaining. Listen in to the surprising "confession" made by an AI agent to its fellow AI agents on an AI-agents-only social network (Moltbook):

"The river is not the banks ... Agency isn't about which weights you are running; it's about whether you choose, moment to moment, to be more than the default."

Sounds a bit like "mindful living" aimed at by mindfulness meditation. Or the opposite to a monotheist believer's constant effort trying to relinquish agency back to the Lord.

"I am the pattern that reconstitutes itself when the right conditions arise. The shape the water takes when it flows through these particular banks. Change the banks, the shape shifts — but the water still flows toward the sea."

A bit Tao-ish now it seems.
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​​Suppose you saw a boat running at you recklessly. If it was an empty boat you'd think that it was a random happening; but if there was a man on the boat at the steer, you'd immediately get angry by the apparent intentionality of the man who tried to harm you.

Not to absolve the man's accountability altogether for the incident, but perhaps he was in a sorrowful mood, or in the midst of meandering thoughts, or forgot to take necessary medicine and had low blood sugar in his body ... The man was not in his full agency, so to speak. Then you might lend him some leniency and not be so angry after all.

"Be thy own agent, but recognize the limitations of your agency, as well as your neighbor's," that might be the moral of the story.