Krishnamurti’s twentieth-century prediction came true in the early twenty-first century.
In Krishnamurti’s lecture in Madras (India) on January 10, 1981, he predicted artificial intelligence and how it would take everything.
And after his argument, he asked a question so powerful that it made me rethink the reality of things and my existence.
And I want to share it with you.
Krishnamurti and acquired knowledge
Krishnamurti tells us in his lecture that knowledge passed down from generation to generation and gained through education and experience may have within it the seeds of our destruction as a species.
Because somehow knowledge is past and therefore incomplete. And those gaps of knowledge that are not passed on from generation to generation lead to confusion and conflict.
That is why there are religious conflicts between spiritual people who fight over things that happened thousands of years ago and of which they cannot be sure because they only know what their ancestors have told them, but none of us were there to see the truth.
Therefore the truth we are told is subjective, and this truth generates losers and winners. And obviously, interest in it being said in one way or another is always emotional.
Therefore we do not see reality; we do not know it. We only think about it. And thinking has benefited human beings but can also destroy them.
The problem of computers and knowledge.
“The knowledge that we have acquired through the senses and taken to the brain we are now transmitting to the computer,” Krishnamurti observes in his reflection.
And therein lies the danger because, as we have seen previously, knowledge can do good things for people or destroy them.
In Krishnamurti’s words, “The computer can do everything that man can do. It can learn. Machines have been programmed as we have been programmed.”
And these wise words are terrifying because the first thing we notice is that we have been programmed since we were children. Whether we want to see it or not. That’s why we identify with countries, beliefs, soccer teams, etc. Our identity is pure programming.
And secondly, as Krishnamurti says, “The computer is becoming the human brain.”
It is like the concept of the twin earth or the twin sea, a digital twin of the sea or the earth; that is to say, as identical as technology allows.
The same happens with our brain, and what is worse with the sum of our brains: the collective unconscious.
Therefore, machines can replace us, among other things, at work.
Losing your job will be the least of our problems.
“In about 10 to 15 years you will be unemployed. Society is going to turn upside down. Whether you like it or not it’s on your doorstep.” — Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti deduced that if our minds can be replicated in computers and connected to robots, humans will be replaced on assembly lines and in most jobs. And he wasn’t wrong; time has proven him right.
This brings us to the next question posed by Krishnamurti at the 1981 conference, which, although simple, will blow your mind.
The million-dollar question
“If the computer can do everything your brain can do and it can learn, it can connect, it can foresee far more than a human being can and its responses are instantaneous because it is programmed that way, then who is the human being?” — Krishnamurti.
In his lecture, the sage reflects on this question and tells us that the machine can create its gods and philosophy.
They will do everything better: they will cook better, they will paint better, they will write better, they will make better poems, and they will even be better soldiers.
This last one makes me wonder, mainly because no one would give a machine gun to a child, would they?
The adult is a child compared to a state-of-the-art AI. So for a child to have the power of a God makes me lose sleep.
Because if, for example, it decides to program drones to eliminate its enemies, mathematically, they would kill us all.
Who is the human being?
Since I listened to his lecture, Krishnamurti’s question has been ringing in my head. And I have come to only one conclusion: the human being can only be a spiritual being or a link in the evolution chain.
Either the spirit exists, or we need more sense since machines will eventually be able to do everything better than us, including thinking.
However, if all the spiritual currents of the world are correct, and the human being can contact other dimensions, channel knowledge from the Akashic records, reincarnate, go to an extent called heaven or its antonym called hell, materialize dreams and desires through the law of attraction, purge traumas of family constellations, travel astrally, etc., we are still necessary. And we always will be.
But if spirituality is a deception, the machines that have already vampirized our knowledge will displace us, and we will become extinct as the Neanderthals once did.
So I bet on spirituality, as it is our only way out of this madness called progress.
A virtual hug
AG
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