European Colonists to Aztec Empire, and Artificial Intelligence to Human Being

We, the human being, are in an Aztec moment.

In 1519, the territory of the Aztec Empire reached its peak.

• The emperor is thinking about how to appease those restless city-states and ensure permanent peace in the empire.
• The priests are preparing for the sacrifice and praying for the blessing of the sun god.
• A civilian is taking care of his elderly mother, worried about her frail body
• A young hunter is hunting in the deep forest. He needs to accumulate enough wealth to have a chance to marry that beautiful girl.
• Beside the pond, children were playing and having fun together.

Everything looked so beautiful, and everyone thought that the prosperity of the empire could be maintained for a long time.

However, a year later, Spanish colonists came.

Under the Spanish attack, the Aztec Empire collapsed almost instantly. Later, the plague brought by Europeans killed a large number of Native Americans.

In the former Aztec Empire, no matter whether it was war or peace, whether it was family or love, whether it was sadness or happiness, they all had no meaning.

Why did the Aztec Empire collapse so quickly? According to Jared Mason Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Europeans had three decisive advantages: guns, germs, and steel.

• Guns allowed the colonists to easily defeat the indigenous armies
• Germs, especially smallpox, caused the death of countless indigenous people

Here, I do not want to simply repeat what is in the history books or defend the injustices of Native Americans.

The key question here is: We humans seem to be in this Aztec moment.

Artificial Intelligence to Human Being, just like European Colonists to Aztec Empire.

The advantage of AI

Relative to humans, relative to all carbon-based life. AI, or computer intelligence, has too many advantages:

AI has unlimited memory

Any human being, no matter how smart he is, cannot memorize all knowledge. As for AI, it only needs 22.14 GB of memory to memorize all Wikipedia knowledge.

AI will only get smarter

Many people who question AI always say that ChatGPT has these shortcomings and MidJourney has those shortcomings. But they all ignore one thing, that is, AI can continue to iterate, and AI will only get smarter. I remember that in 2020, I used ordinary automated chatbots, which were very stupid. In just three years, ChatGPT has demonstrated such a high level of intelligence.

Humans will always age and die, AI will not

When a person dies, all his wisdom disappears. Einstein was very smart, but he died. Leonardo da Vinci was very good at painting, but he also passed away. No matter how many geniuses appeared in the past and how many new geniuses will appear in the future, they will all grow old one day. But AI won’t. AI can live forever, AI can iterate, and AI will only get smarter.

AI can replicate itself infinitely

What does it mean if a genius appears in human society? It just means that mankind has one more genius, and most other people are still ordinary people. However, once an AI algorithm makes a breakthrough, it means that we have trained a more powerful model. The models everyone uses are smarter models.

In the future, humans will not be able to match AI.

In what ways will AI subvert humanity? Will the tragedy of the Aztec Empire happen again?

Two possibilities: One is that AI awakens its self-awareness and then rules humans. This topic has been discussed many times in many science fiction novels, so I don’t want to repeat it here. After all, this possibility is too science fiction.

But another possibility is that careerists use AI to subvert humanity.

Generally speaking, it is almost impossible for one, or a few careerists or terrorists to subvert the current world order and rule the world. Why, because most people still love peace, and a few people cannot subvert the order of human society.

But if they master powerful AI, they can:

• They can let AI simulate real humans and create public opinion on the Internet
• They can control various weapons through AI: aircraft, drones, tanks, and even cars.
• They can produce various substances through AI and robots without the support of the working class.

A careerist + AI can form an army or a country.

What would happen if such an army fought a human army?

• AI armies don’t get tired, while human soldiers get tired and need to rest.
• AI doesn’t know fear, humans do.
• AI can replicate itself infinitely, and there is no concept of casualties; humans will die.

Do you think I’m being alarmist?

In 1519, no resident of the Aztec Empire could have predicted that their empire would collapse two years later. But, that’s the way it is.

It is now 2023. Will our human society really not fall apart like the Aztec Empire?