The Conspiracy Theory Of A.I., pt. 1

Resistance

I have been having a brainfight with my computer for the last week.   Whenever I feel someone or some institution is trying to express a dominance over me I resist adamantly.  I guess my behavior is perceived to be ignorant and moronic.  I perceive my behavior as stubborn non-compliance when I feel I am being denied my own human essence as I perceive it to be.

Just a  few examples.  Banks.  I have had a long-standing hate affair with banks.  I have never in my life had a relationship with a bank that did not end in bitterness.  After every withdrawal (with today’s computer) or purchase, I check my bank status.  If I go to shop at more than one store on a singular hopping excursion (or online nowadays) I check the balance before the first payment is made, after it is made, before the next purchase, and after it is made once again.  Others tell me their banks have never cheated them.  I scoff.  Do they stay on top as I do?  Do they accept extraneous charges as normal business?  

Example #1

As a seventeen year old entering the labor force and proudly receiving my first check I walked into a bank and opened my first checking account.  I rented a room from my factory foreman for $35 p/mo. I proudly wrote my first check for three months rent for $105.  I think I’ve written in the past that I don’t always write numbers and letters as clearly as others.  But I think the American way of writing the number 1 is absurdly confusing—see even the keyboard doesn’t just make a straight line; it has a downwardly angled tail on the left of the line and an underlining mark beneath it.  And that is how I made my number on my very first check.  Ten days or so later, my foreman informed me my check had bounced.  I went to the bank in a fury.  No, they told me my funds were insufficient because my check had been for $705.  They tried to tell me I would receive my copy of the check (they didn’t even have carbon checks at that time) but I demanded they present it and would not leave.  The police were called and they informed the bank they would show me the check NOW, because they were not going to arrest me if I were right.  (I’ve had really great support throughout from legal officialdom in my bank feuds).  And there it was.  “Looks like one-hundred-and-five to me,” the policeman said.  “No,” the bank “officer” (i.e. paper clerk with a desk where they sit to convince people who are being cheated that the bank is not really cheating them) replied, “it looks like a seven to us.”  The policeman is still looking at the check, “Well maybe, I don’t know, but look here where the amount is written in on the next line—that sure says one hundred and five and 00/100 cents, not seven hundred,” he hands the check back to the bank official, “what do you think?”  After a very long pause the bank official (always women in those days, while loan officers and bank managers were always men) “Yes he wrote one hundred and five.”  “So?” the policeman asks.   “Well,” says the bank woman, “When we are writing them into our ledgers we don’t have time to look at the second line.”  Suddenly I piped in even though I had been told by the police officer to let him speak, “So why do I need to write it if you don’t have time to look at it?”  “Yeah, “ the policeman echoed, “you guys are clearly in the wrong.”

Well the short ending was the check was put through and I didn’t get my overdraft charge returned.  That was the last time I didn’t demand my overdraft fees returned.  But some twenty years later I was banned from banks and couldn't open an account for nearly ten years.  But eventually my troublesome attitude was removed after I was married and apparently they thought I wouldn’t be so troublesome—the banks came courting me and my wife convinced me to open another account.  Well my troublesomeness persisted until one morning when I was driving Uber and I made a deposit to the account from my Uber account for $500.  I checked my balance on the phone to make sure it had been credited, drove to the ATM and got my balance,  and a receipt was printed out at 4:07 AM.  I called my daughter’s auto loan company and made a payment of $497.32. I had pulled into a parking space near the ATM lane to do that, and after making the payment checked my balance.  I had a receipt of my payment emailed that stated the payment had been made at 4:14 AM.  

At around ten AM I decided to call it a night and signed out of the Uber app after transferring the rest of my night’s earnings to my bank account and then checked my bank balance to find the auto payment was back into the account and there was a $35 insufficient funds charge deducted from my account. I drove to the bank.  They tried to tell me they  came into the bank and posted the deductions from the night before first and then added the credits. That, I told them, was stupid on the face of it, but I nevertheless showed them my ATM balance from 4;07 AM and my payment receipt at 4:14 AM.  He tried to brush me off and told me to keep a ledger, and I said my receipts were a ledger and whether I kept a ledger or not I would have written in the deposit before I wrote the payment.  Once again the police were called and once again they took my side. And once again, even though I won the overdraft refund and even demanded them to pay the bounced “check” fee to the auto loan company, the short case is once again I have been blackballed from banks.  The reason I got them to pay the auto loan charge was they were under investigation at that very time for that very practice.

Example #2

On one occasion I stopped to get gas and in those days you had to go inside to pay.  I gave the clerk $20 after waiting in a long line, pumped exactly ten dollars in gas, returned to the line and was told by the cashier that  I had only given him ten dollars. Once again I refused to remove myself.from the front of the line.  Two people  behind me tried to push me out of the way, but I gripped the counter and couldn’t be budged.  The manager came from his office but said if I didn’t leave, he would call the police, I said, “please do.”  When they arrived I did remove myself and explain what had occurred.  They went to speak to the manager and came back and told me to return at 10pm when the store closed and the manager would be able to tally the day’s receipts to see if I was truly owed $10.  They informed me they would also return at that time and go with me to speak to the manager. Well I sat in my truck until ten when I got out and began to pace.  I tried the door but it was locked.  The officers arrived ten minutes late and the manager opened the door but said he had already done the books and to return the next day and speak to the owner.

 I slept in the vehicle until I saw the owner unlock the entrance and then went to confront him to demand the return of my ten dollars.  Once again the police were called.  Of course I had to retell what had happened and they checked with their dispatch to confirm the officers had been there the previous day. But the owner was adamant that the money from the previous day had been deposited and there was no way to refund me now, and how could he possibly know I wasn’t trying to cheat him out of ten dollars.  “I think,” one of the policemen said, “the very fact of his persistence is strong evidence he is not trying to cheat you and I really think you should return his money.”  Well the owner finally pulled ten dollars from his own wallet to “get rid of me.”

Example #3

I mostly paid my way through college.  But during those years I got married and my wife became pregnant. So I entered the college loan program.  Although it was a private institution, the cost was only $1500 per/semester. I borrowed the money more to cover the birth than the tuition, however.  Well the pregnancy went fine and my wife brought our daughter home and began to breastfeed and developed mastitis.  But the doctor didn’t think it was serious, and then it became serious. I guess because he probably thought I might sue (I hadn’t considered it, and least not then), he decided to repay not only his fee but the hospital charges and I was returned my money.  I attempted to give back the money I had borrowed but the bank wanted the full interest of the loan,  so my loan was now interest on the loan which somehow became a new principal that itself was drawing interest.  I guess that was exactly what I had signed that should I pay the loan in advance I would still need to pay the entire interest. Since I had signed that then I had no beef.  By the time I had graduated the next year and began my first job teaching Bible in a private school, a position that I kept for only one semester, I believe I only needed to make two more payments.  It was three or four  months between official jobs though I was doing some odd research for others in the interim.  When I secured my next (and last) white collar position I attempted once again to pay off the loan.  Apparently I had accrued more interest on my interest.  Now if you remember Ronald Reagan’s campaign, getting college loan deadbeats to repay their defaulted loan was a huge priority.  Reagan had recently taken office when I called to restart my payments (and I had previously received a deferment until  I became re-employed). I don’t know who I spoke to, it might have been Ronald Himmler himself, but the operator told me I had to pay off the entire bill “right now.”  “I’m not prepared to do that, I will renegotiate if you like, “ I replied.  “No you must pay it all now, “ Himmler continued to insist.  In exasperation I said, “Do you wish to accept a payment for what I am willing to pay.”  “No, if you don’t pay it all now, you can just forget it!”  “Okay, I accept your offer, I will just forget it.”  “It’s not an offer!”  “You mean you’re threatening me?”  “No! I’m not threatening you, I’m telling you.”  “  Telling me to pay it all or forget sure sounds like a threat, but if it is not a threat, then you’re telling me it’s an offer.  I accept the offer.  I shall forget the loan. Thank you.” I hung up.  I never paid the loan.  When I began receiving social security however I did get deferred payments on a loan that was now in excess of $13,000.  I don’t know why, but when I attempted to reinitiate my deferments at the end of last month I could not find my account online.  I called the education department and was informed my debt had been wiped out and I was no longer liable.  Since I had not qualified under Biden’s forgiveness program anyway, and the relief program was overruled by the Court, I was perplexed.  But my debt has (apparently) been expunged.

The Stubborn and Disruptive Jerk

I am not necessarily correct on anything I proclaim to believe in. You can tell me my ideas are incorrect. I may try to defend them.. I may move partially in your direction.  But I will not let anyone “own” or manipulate me.  So yes I am stubborn. Yes I will be disruptive if I sense someone is trying to take advantage of me.  I am told to let these things go. I will not.  I don’t care how troublesome I am if someone is being troublesome to me, I will defend myself verbally and I will protect myself verbally from the actions of others against me.  But I will defend the same rights of others physically if I perceive they are being abused by another in my presence either by a verbal or a physical attack on the other.  But I will defend them by attempting to deflect the confrontation away from the person I perceive is perpetuating the attack.  I will deflect the verbosity away from the other or I will attempt to take the blows thrown upon the other.  I write that frequently.  As a result I am often castigated as a rude interloper.  Were I a woman in a pro-gun anti-abortion state I would try to gather all of the women together and buy guns and take them (unloaded) to stand in front of clinics and protect doctors and women to reopen abortion clinics and let them perform.  Well you really  don’t need guns, someone might actually load one, it’s just a nice rhetorical touch in that pro-guns to kill pro-abortionists seems to be the legal standard in these states.  Will some women get hurt, yes?  Will some possibly die, yes?  But how many more might be hurt or die if the women who yell about having their rights denied do not prevent the enforcers of those wishing to deny them.

If a black man (usually a man, even in the Brionna Taylor case they were after a man) is being abused by the cops instead of filming the beating or yelling from the sidelines, why not the neighborhood march together and stand against the one being beaten? The person such as I, of course, has nothing between the ears.  The person such as I is too dumb to be fearful, right? The person such as I is troublesome.  The person such as I is insensitive to pain and maybe causes more harm.  But if one is unwilling to be hurt today to save another, if one is unwilling to call out anyone  who thinks they have free reign to abuse you, or another, then more abuse occurs.  Abuse does not stop.  Of course I, as a singular individual, accomplish little except marking myself as a persona non grata with banks and certain and possibly causing embarrassment to those who think I should just give in.

Or we can wait until we are destroyed by AI.

The Conspiracy

This is my conspiracy.  The one I believe in.  Not that I think AI is out to get you.  Nor do I even accept the argument that far more knowledgeable programmers than I like Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI has no more intelligence than I do than all the books in the Library of Congress.  What both have is more access to more knowledge than I, or any human, can possibly obtain.  What can be known is irrespective of intelligence.  Knowledge can be accessed when needed.  But what knowledge one knows can also be directed.  One can be directed to knowledge by teachers, by those who review books, by the books themselves.  But intelligence is what a species needs to know as a species.  Could sentience, or species like intelligence to survive be built into computers, most probably.

But simply because the computer can defeat the greatest chessmaster in the world does not make the computer more intelligent than the greatest chessmaster in the world, it only means that the computer has more access to many more chess moves than any grandmaster has ever had the opportunity to observe or study and that it can access those moves almost instantaneously.  

So I do not believe “artificial intelligence” even exists, at least not at present.  But I do believe it does present massive dangers to humanity.  It presents that danger not because it is ever going to directly walk around with better bombs and chase John Connor back into his past.  No if such a war ever occurred John Connor is gone, no need to go back and try to prevent his birth.  But maybe there is someone, some human, who is behind that termination effort, who hopes he has control of the terminators, and who desires the death of all the John Connors and their mothers.  That is my conspiracy theory, the one I think is true, but one that I find overwhelming evidence to support that I would like to present to you next time in part two.