Globalization and AI Are Coming to Get Us!

Dear Fellow Earthlings, Back on September 11, 2017 (blog installment 460) I described the way in which modern Hebrew has come back as a living language,

not just a liturgical treasure or an elusive dream, but as a living, breathing language...

Nowadays, allliving, breathing languages are in danger of being snuffed out by two forces:

1) globalization

and

2) artificial intelligence.

The former pushes all languages towards forms that resemble each other; the latter provides the limitless algorithms to seal the deal.

Globalization leads to a "dampening" of differences: Emojis purport to convey "worldwide human facial expressions" -- and succeed because people follow the suasion inherent in emojis. Similarly, whereas pythons and anacondas used to be creatures of Asia and South America, respectively, they can now be found living side-by-side with each other in Florida. Similarly, bullfrogs now destroy indigenous species in both Japan and Oregon with equal intensity...

And then there's the food we eat, the way we dress, and the attitudes we are adopting: Little by little, we are all coming to eat the same things. And people all over the world, tend to wear he same types of clothing. Indeed, people continue to toss aside various traditional ways of thinking as they succumb to the flood of information coming to them through their mobile devices, computers, and the mass media.

Furthermore, the world's languages, in being translated from one to another, begin to change. The translation/interpretation process often sidesteps or otherwise mitigates the differences between the languages as those artifacts of heritage, cultures, and religious beliefs are being "processed"/simplified/standardized/globalized... The list is endless. The result is the same. Suddenly, beliefs of people whose ancestors arrived in certain countries fewer than 50 years earlier are prompting the people of their host nations to push the newcomers' religions and other ways of dealing with life (and the hereafter, as well) as replacements for the beliefs and philosophies of the people whose countries thay have moved to -- and seek to dominate, if not take over entirely...

Rather than just waiting in the wings, artificial intelligence (AI) keeps amassing algorithms that generalize, using the sheer masses of zeroes and ones kit utilizes to overwhelm all opposition, to move toward a "unity" so dense that kits mass overwhelms all else. Human intelligence -- or even the intelligence of all Earth's biological entities taken as one -- are no match for the AI agenda, the agenda of complete takeover of every system of which kit is a part and which in turn follow kit's commands.

Is it already too late to put a lid on all this? I think not. However, we must act immediately.

Preserving old customs, old traditions, "old" (original, linguistically diverse) languages is the bedrock on which saving our diverse culturesand their individual languages rests. Without this foundation, we have NO foundation. And without a foundation, stability is impossible to achieve. If we humans can regain a semblance of the stability provided by tradition and culture, then and only then will we be able to overcome the forces of division that prevent us from achieving peace amongst ourselves -- and balance with our fellow living creatures!

Then, with a singularity of purpose -- but with the diversity that has brought us survival for hundreds of thousands of years, we can move on -- and activate the "five functions" described in Installment 526 (February 15, 2021))! Of paramount importance at this stage is that we humans must ensure that AI be a failsafe entity, whose prime directive is "to do no harm" to Earth -- an entity with no capacity to "seal any deals" when it comes to determining and/or controlling the destiny of humanity and Earth's other living entities!

Steve Walker

Earthsaver and Jingles Creator

© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.