‘White Crisis’ and/as ‘Existential Threat’, or The Entangled Apocalypticism of Artificial Intelligence

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

Dr Syed Mustafa Ali, Lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications at The Open University (UK), delivered the following paper at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence and The Apocalypse organised by CenSAMM (Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements), a new initiative of the Panacea Charitable Trust in Bedford, UK, which took place 5-6 April 2018:

Interested viewers can watch the presentation which is available on YouTube:

Complete recordings of the two days proceedings (talks, panel discussions etc.) are available here.

Peace

Is This The Future?

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

1. Climate Change Escalating So Fast It is ‘Beyond Point of No Return’
2. Elon Musk Announces His Plan to Colonize Mars and Save Humanity
3. UK Military will use Artificially Intelligent Lasers to Expand Britain’s Economic Empire

Despite my researvations about the necessity – let alone desirability – of embracing an ‘apocalyptic‘ outlook, if only to understand the thought, speech and/or action of Racist (White Supremacist) man and woman, I think developments such as these, viz. (1) possibly irreversible climate change, (2) extra-terrestrial expansion of colonial/modernity = systemic White Supremacy (Racism), and (3) the rise of the machines under ‘the megamachine’ that is postmodernity/postcoloniality, need to be considered in terms of their ‘entanglement’ with each other and other related developments.

Beyond this, there is the question concerning the possible relevance of the following somewhat obscure Qur’anic signs / indicators (ayaat) to consider:

(55:37) When the sky is rent asunder, and it becomes red like ointment…

(55:33) O assembly of jinn and ins. If it be that you can pass beyond the zones of the heavens and the earth, then pass. Yet not without authority shall you be able to pass.

(27:82) And when the word is fulfilled against them, we shall produce from the earth a beast to speak to them for that mankind did not believe with assurance in Our Signs.

Peace