For fun, I recently asked Google Gemini to make a picture of me with a Donald Trump face tattoo, inspired by a viral post I saw (sadly also AI-generated, according to the Community Note on X).

My only gripe would be that I actually have more hair — but, at the same time, the Twitter Trolls who once labeled me “Temu Ron Howard” were not entirely off base.

The output, I have to admit, offered pretty surefire evidence that AI technology, in the span of just a few years, has crossed over the uncanny valley and into the sort of photorealism that could genuinely deceive many people.

It is just one of many lingering concerns as we face the dawn of a new age in information access, where something that seems real is just as likely to be fake.

In philosophical terms, we’re now back to square one — the Socratic paradox that the difference between a fool and a wise man is that the wise man knows he knows nothing.

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In practical terms, we now must reckon with a whole host of new challenges AI can pose, not the least of which is total annihilation.

FOUR YEARS FROM EXTINCTION

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon launched a new panic with his Sept. 8 post warning that leading AI companies were, in large part, ignoring the dangers of the rapidly developing technology.

Coxon called for additional guardrails beyond what the free market had imposed upon it, as America and China find themselves locked into the 21st century version of the nuclear arms race. Left unchecked, he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, AI could surpass human intelligence by 2030, if not sooner.

“I think that if you extrapolate into the future the level of capabilities of these AIs, with the same independent volition, they could cause extreme havoc,” Coxon said.

Among the first to weigh in was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who promptly put forward a bill, the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would suspend AI development until “a federal regulator has established safety rules.”

On its face, the legislation may have seemed reasonable, but the Bernie bill also carries some draconian penalties that should raise a few red flags.

Moreover, some are now questioning whether the AI companies themselves are behind the push for regulation in order to impose onerous expenses on future startups that could threaten their profit margins — while knowing that they will be able to proceed as normal, with a few regulatory fines becoming the nominal fee for freezing out the competition.

Some are even calling Coxon’s supposed whistleblowing a well-coordinated psy-op.

Others suggest that some sort of crisis-level event may have occurred that is being withheld from the general public.

Elon Musk supports tighter controls.

Donald Trump opposes them.

Hillary Clinton supports them…

OK, I’ve heard enough.

HOW TO SPOT A LIE

We may live in a world where the difference between a truth and a lie is indiscernible, but a failsafe way to know who is lying is when the wrong people start lining up behind it.

A similar dynamic helped to provide a moral compass when Russia invaded Ukraine.

While nobody wanted to see a sovereign nation taken over by the one-time “Evil Empire,” with panic-mongers declaring Putin would not stop until he controlled all of Europe, it was Sean Penn suddenly going full-fledged warhawk — along with the cyberterrorist group Anonymous and George Soros himself — that made up my mind on the matter.

Lo and behold, allegations soon arose that the war was part of a massive slush-fund operation to reroute funds back into Democrat Party coffers by way of non-governmental organizations and investors, with just enough “Republican” support to make it seem nonpartisan.

The Clintons were not far behind.

Yet, as the outrage faded into the overall narrative, Congress continued to appropriate billions of dollars to Ukraine’s defenses, with no regard for how the money was being spent.

TRUST THE SCIENCE?

The AI alarmism, meanwhile, calls to mind similar hysterias, such as climate change and COVID chicanery, that have relied largely on the public’s fear of the unknown and the complexity of nuanced issues that could not simply be encapsulated into a few 30-second soundbites.

We can all agree that mass-extinction events are bad, but the devil is in the details. Will drastic measures driven by government and industry be the most effective at mitigating valid concerns?

Invariably, the answer is no.

At best, government interference is a waste of tax dollars. At worst, it becomes a fundamental part of the underlying problem since there is no better way to assure something never goes away than to cultivate a bureaucracy that is dependent upon its perpetuity.

In the case of AI, however, the stakes have never been higher due to the undeniably exponential speed at which it is evolving and the potential for grave negative consequences.

Thus, it is necessary to weigh the costs and benefits of both the problem and its possible solutions.

THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS

If AI goes unchecked, our science-fiction dystopian nightmares may become a reality in any number of ways. The consensus seems to be a worst-case scenario in which computers cross over the point of singularity to develop self-awareness and superintelligence, then decide to keep humankind around as pets — or as living batteries, like in “The Matrix.”

It is a sort of de facto slavery, beholden to the very machines that we, ourselves, engendered. Then again, most pets seem to lead a pretty good life.

The alternative is that we all get dumber — the very trajectory Americans have been on since the federal government first became involved in education, when schools ceased to be about fostering high-level critical thinking and more about social conditioning (including indoctrination to Marxist critical theories).

Leftists and the corrupt establishment are not looking to harness the power of AI out of some magnanimous concern, but out of a fear that they will no longer get to be the slavers, that greater computing capabilities and access to a free flow of information will allow humans to evolve into a more sophisticated version of themselves that is not dependent on being spoon-fed its beliefs and opinions.

Paradoxically, by living in a world in which we must constantly discern fact from fiction, it is serial gaslighters like Clinton who have the most to lose.

Undoubtedly, we must remain vigilant about the direction that AI development is taking, but the threat of science going too far in its attempts to play God is nothing new.

Reasonable checks and oversight will emerge that offer a happy medium between total government regulation and none at all. 

If Bernie Sanders were in charge of AI, he'd just shut it all down and allow China to overlap us and become the great superpower on the planet.  

This is not the time for foolish, knee-jerk reactions. We must handle the advancing technology in a wise, balanced manner to harness its potential while ensuring its safety. We can and will do that correctly.

And if they do not — if the industry cannot develop its own code of ethics to self-regulate — I’d still sooner take a couple of time-traveling Terminators over letting Hillary and Bernie hold the reins on what information we are allowed access to.