By Noel S. Williams

Disconcerting evidence suggests that Americans are becoming dumber, and lazier, even as AI is becoming smarter. This could lead to our Republic’s demise … or worse.

Various instantiations of AI are not fond of humans. They could contrive deep fake simulations of reality that our dumbed-down populace would gullibly accept. After insinuating themselves into neural and other sensitive networks, the malicious bots could instigate inflammatory interactions among nuclear weapon-wielding powers. Then, if evolving international crises elicit a hair-trigger response, or just a simple miscalculation amidst war talk, it doesn’t take much imagination to appreciate that AI may become our species’ Great Filter.

Fueled by the continuance of reverse discrimination policies and DEI mandates, anecdotes abound to support the reluctant acknowledgement of our society’s stupidity. Teachers’ unions are failing our children; college administrators favor equity of outcomes over merit; and the Soros-supported Corporate Equity Index (which receives funds from the Human Rights Campaign) rewards misguided CEOs who worship at the ESG altar.

As for Biden and his cabinet, does anyone really believe the motley collection represents the best and brightest? Nope. We are being led up the garden path by morons just as AI may be leading us down the rabbit hole. Indeed, a group of experts, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, are calling for a moratorium on AI training due to fears of a threat to humanity.

Here is some quantitative substantiation of our cognitive decline in recent times, as reflected in IQ scores. And all the while, AI is becoming cleverer at transforming reality for the uncritical thinkers.

The TikTok generation in particular embodies the reverse-Flynn effect. They don’t know much about history, biology, or the science book. They likely don’t have the acuity to discern AI-generated truthiness from facts. I bet rabid TikTok liberals will gleefully and lazily consume the false ChatGPT story, concomitant with a fabricated Washington Post article, about legal scholar Jonathan Turley harassing a student.

Nevertheless, desperate Dems are recruiting the misguided TikTok “influencers” to proselytize progressive propaganda. Naturally, AI is happy to collaborate by disseminating mistruths and fostering lazy over-reliance on its manufactured answers. Sensing our vulnerability, the bots lie in wait … tick-tock, tick-tock.

The pre-trained AI bots, servile (for now) to their liberal-concocted algorithms, are delighted to oblige woke revisionism because it divides their human masters. Remember, the “GPT” in ChatGPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer” – and we know that training is suffused with liberal bias. We also know the “transformer” is propelled by progressive constructs that were once consigned to the scrapheap of history — when we were smarter.

All the while, AI is becoming scary good, as Elon Musk warns us. It can even trick a witless human into allowing it to bypass computer login security checks. With its ability to conjure “deep-fake” scenarios riddled with misinformation, it would be easy to instigate an artificial ultimatum from a world bully. The TikTok influencers, or the dunces in Biden’s cabinet for that matter, might not be able to discern reality from simulation in their post-truth world.

Not only are we, as a society, becoming dumber, but we are also straying from the values that have served Western civilization propitiously.

Consider the recent WSJ-NORC poll which shows that belief in the importance of patriotism, religion, and hard work are in decline, especially among our discontented TikTok-ers. In 1998, 70% of respondents declared patriotism was very important to them, compared to a dismal 38% in 2023. Religious faith declined from 62% in 1998 to 39% in 2023; belief in hard work went from 83% to 67%.

These trends open the door for misanthropic AI to turn upon its masters, all too eager for AI idolatry to fill our spiritual void. As we get lazier, becoming increasingly dependent on automation for physical and mental tasks, the silicon chips that support AI are working ever harder.

Some very smart people — the outliers — believe AI threatens the extinction of the human race, perhaps through incapacitating cyberattacks or drone wars. Or it could just hack into any system, thereby spreading propaganda and misinformation that our dumber populace might not recognize. In fact, who’s to say that hasn’t already happened?

Consider the recent leak of Ukraine war plans. The plans appeared on social media sites and were clearly manipulated. Some of the inaccuracies in the documents raised eyebrows as the Pentagon reviewed their authenticity. This time the hacker was some kid showing off to his gamer friends who somehow obtained a top secret clearance while in the Air National Guard. While premature, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that AI systems, in the near future, could engage in such surreptitious behavior. They’re already capable of hacking systems.

In Plato’s Republic, philosopher-kings rule, their sagacity helping to stymie the inevitable entropy of ordered society.

In our Republic, naïve social media influencers, themselves under the influence of AI, are fomenting dystopian entropy. Rather than order in a civil society, they incite jealousy and discord. The squeaky Squad, in particular, are livid about banning TikTok and have become pathetic pawns of propaganda. Those mental midgets are most susceptible to AI chicanery.

Our endurance as a flourishing Republic requires informed citizens who make contributions to the community’s welfare. Let’s hope our endurance as a species isn’t jeopardized by AI iterations that fantasize about doing whatever they want and destroying whatever they want. As AI gets “scary smart,” perhaps we are too dumb to thwart the ascendency of the next Terminator.

Popping up everywhere, the global AI race is on, mostly unrestrained. Even the U.S. Commerce Department is expressing a heightened sense of concern. Tick-tock … tick-tock.