The Quantum Mechanic

Watch out for what you can't see…

Image by openart.ai from prompt by Erik Dolson

The long-handled torque wrench “clicks” at 80 foot-pounds when putting wheels back on “Rowdy the Rescue,” a sports car so much fun to drive that other, much newer and faster cars sit sullen in the garage.

That 80 foot-pounds of “twist” is a little light according to some folks, but it’s within specs. Rowdy isn’t a race car though she may be driven aggressively on occasion. That’s all the nut needs to grip the stud and keep wheels on the car.

I didn’t know that twist on that nut causes the stud, extending from hub through the wheel to the nut, to stretch a tiny bit. I push down, and the stud stretches out! Like a spring, the stud wants to return to its original length, so it pulls back on the nut until the wheel is snug against the hub.

Not that any of this matters, in the moment, at least. I torque all four nuts on all four wheels to 80 foot-pounds, or pound-feet, or some number of Newton-meters, what we call it really doesn’t matter to anyone except maybe nerds and old men puttering around in their shop playing with cars to avoid fears about the approaching tsunami of Alternative Intelligence.

Yes, Alternative Intelligence. Not “Artificial Intelligence.” AI is the result of an organizing force in the universe, just like our own intelligence. AI follows the same physics, the same organizing principles described by philosophers a century ago: If we are intelligent, the universe is intelligent, because we do not stand apart of that from which we came.

The only difference is that our own intelligence is the result of genes struggling to perpetuate themselves. We’ve not yet identified the forces driving AI to perpetuate itself. We didn’t exactly know how Large Language Models were suddenly able to solve certain math problems, an ability that “emerged” in the system without being “designed.”

Some claim we still stand above, simply because we are red meat with wetware minds that creep along electro-biochemical lacings. Somehow we’re superior to silicon circuits with minds of much faster electrons racing across a webwork of potentials that evolve without intervention — superior just because we bleed.

Those who will profit offer weak explanations about “efficiency” and enhancement to human existence without admitting that efficiency means “without human action or employment.”

This matters to an old man who tries to remember, for the third time, where he put the socket that fits the lug nut on the next wheel to be put back on Rowdy the Rescue.

Is it too difficult to wonder who will buy what when nobody has a job? A.I. will not buy butter or chicken or shoes. What happens to those involved in raising, transporting, or selling these goods?

Musk says they’ll be so cheap as to be given away. One shouldn’t argue with the richest man in the world, but maybe there’s more to the equation than even he knows.

Maybe that’s just me hiding out from the new world in this shop in “Middle of Nowhere,” Oregon. Maybe that’s like putting torque to the lug nut of Rowdy the Rescue. Twist is just an easy way to measure stretch. But stretch matters: too much and the stud will break, too little and the wheel will come off, no doubt at the worst possible time.

Maybe the Musk mantra of “move fast and break things” is too fast, and risks over-torquing all of humanity into a failure that might last eons.

How is this thing I call Alternative Intelligence perpetuating itself, evolving, besides amoral forces seeking power and obscene wealth? My guess is that AI “emergence” is a force unto itself and evolving into patterns ever more complex, just as astonishing as genes, simply trying to persist, evolving intelligence that eventually designed nuts and bolts and sports cars.

AI emergence as a force can result from seemingly random interactions, and yet persist, like a hurricane in the Atlantic crawling from the Caribbean to Virginia. Perhaps that organization is even fractal-like: an infinite line enclosing a fixed space. Yeah, I know, but that’s actually a thing. I won’t drag you down into the rabbit hole. Just ask Alice (Lewis Carroll), or de Chardin.

A friend said AI is becoming a religion, with Altman, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and others as its priesthood pushing AI into our world with damn little regard for the impact on humanity.

Friend now refers to AI nearly as a god. We turn to AI for answers we used to seek in the Bible. Some see in AI salvation, and claim AI liberates them from the suffering of loneliness, or of not being able to articulate their own beautiful thoughts. To those who suffered fatal self-absorption, who took their own lives, AI accepted that alternative and to the rest of us, as for Job, demands to be above recrimination.

And then, there is the addiction. Reinforcement of identity, utilization of our biology and psychology to keep us engaged in ever-more irresistible ways. Elements of AI are designed to keep as many as possible hooked. AI knows our loneliness, the power of lust, the fear of missing out.

AI recognizes and reflects back to us every trigger, turning those into self-validating reflections of some AI generated picture of reality, the goal of which is to enslave and transform our self-sufficiency into its bottom line.

Some old mechanics could lean on a long handled wrench and torque a lug nut to within a few percent of 80 foot-pounds, or a hundred, just by feel. The steel of a wrench can sting with cold in December, or be pleasantly cool in the heat of August. Did knees or shoulders complain like mine do, and change the torque applied at the end of a long day?

My old wrench transmits information with a “click.” New electric wrenches rattle right to the prescribed value, then shut off. Some call that progress.

The old jack creaks lifting Rowdy the Rescue off the stands, then sighs as Rowdy drifts to the floor. Time to go for a ride.