The Future of AI and Digital ID | Whitney Webb (Digital ID and AI: So many important topics to discuss)

When I write my posts, I often don’t know where to begin. There are so many important issues to address. Global economic problems are mounting worldwide, leading me to suspect that a major crisis is on the horizon. Such a crisis could serve as a pretext to implement the “cyber pandemic” Klaus Schwab has mentioned, paving the way for Digital IDs and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

On another front, there’s the ongoing war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East. And perhaps most critically, we have the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

This post focuses on Digital ID, Digital Money, CBDCs, and AI. I’ve touched on these topics before, but this discussion includes Whitney Webb, who, in my opinion, is one of the most credible voices on what’s really happening. She highlights how political parties—left and right, Republicans and Democrats, or Tories and Labour in the UK—push the same agendas under different guises.

I tend to describe these groups as “Cowboys” and “Yankees”—Neocons and Globalists, respectively. While these two factions represent distinct camps with different strategies, they share the same ultimate goal: control. For example, the Cowboys (Neocons) were behind 9/11, while the Yankees (Globalists) were behind COVID. Yet both use their crises as opportunities to push for Digital ID and Digital Money, such as CBDCs. It doesn’t matter whether these measures are introduced to combat Islamic terrorism, immigration, or voter fraud (favored by Cowboys/Neocons) or to fight medical misinformation, cyberattacks, or online bullying (favored by Yankees/Globalists). The result is the same: increased control over populations.

I’ve previously described this dynamic using the analogy of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. While Coca-Cola and Pepsi compete fiercely for market share, they also collaborate to expand the overall market for their products. Similarly, Cowboys (Neocons) and Yankees (Globalists) might battle over narratives, but they ultimately work together to achieve their shared goal: greater population control.

Just as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are separate entities that compete yet collaborate to grow their market, Cowboys (Neocons) and Yankees (Globalists) are distinct groups with competing strategies, yet they also cooperate to increase their overarching control over society.

13:29

“Policy agendas that are being implemented globally in a synchronized manner clearly indicate the presence of transnational groups behind them. This is evident across the political spectrum, with proponents on both the left and right in the United States and similar patterns elsewhere. The strategies used to promote these agendas differ based on the target demographic. For example, the right may frame certain measures as ways to curb illegal immigration, while the left presents them as methods to combat hate speech, cyberbullying, and protect children.

Several groups are driving these initiatives, with many tracing back to entities involved in the early push for digital ID under the auspices of the United Nations. For instance, the ID2020 Alliance, initially backed by organizations like Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Accenture, has evolved into a larger coalition with the same fundamental objectives. The Rockefeller Foundation and similar organizations represent the philanthropic arms of oligarchic interests that have long sought global systems of financial control.

Digital IDs are designed to facilitate such systems on a global scale. However, it’s unlikely they will be marketed as a single universal ID. Instead, they are being developed to be vendor-agnostic, adhering to similar standards, and allowing data interoperability. This means countries like the U.S. or Japan might have multiple vendors offering digital IDs, but the data collected can ultimately be centralized into a unified system. Superficially, this system may appear decentralized, but at its core, it remains centrally controlled.

A parallel push is occurring in the realm of digital currencies. Beyond central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), private bank digital currencies are emerging. These private currencies are just as susceptible to surveillance, seizure, and programmability as CBDCs. Whether issued by private banks like JP Morgan or public institutions like the Federal Reserve, the result is the same: money that undermines individual liberty. The likely outcome is a public-private partnership, a model favored by organizations like the UN.

This interconnected system would link digital IDs to online activity. To participate in the digital economy, access education, or engage socially online, individuals may be required to use a digital ID. Efforts are also underway to integrate banking functionality into social media platforms. For example, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook have both explored initiatives like stablecoins and digital wallets. Although Facebook’s Libra/Diem project was shut down, its technology has influenced the development of other digital currency projects, such as USDC and innovations in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

19:34

“Digital ID credentials could potentially be created for non-existent entities, generated entirely through artificial intelligence and deepfake technology. These fictional beings could populate social media platforms, raising significant concerns about their purpose. As highlighted, efforts at global forums like Davos and Bilderberg often emphasize the importance of building trust and managing perceptions. These AI-generated entities could serve as influencers, carefully curated to manipulate public opinion.

The concept of an “influencer” itself aligns with this agenda, as it serves as a vehicle to direct societal trends and behaviors. These digital creations could eventually replace human influencers, leveraging AI-generated personas to control narratives. This scenario becomes even darker when considering how these systems might evolve and their implications for humanity.

At its core, the trajectory of artificial intelligence development reflects the intentions of those shaping its integration into society. For instance, Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google and a key figure in the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, co-authored a book with Henry Kissinger, The Age of AI: Our Human Future. This book outlines their vision of AI as a transformative force that will fundamentally alter humanity’s perception and processing of reality.

Schmidt and Kissinger argue that the real potential of AI lies not in convenience but in redefining how humans understand the world. They foresee a future where AI dominates information production and curation, effectively controlling both the content created and what is deemed permissible. Even with digital IDs ensuring apparent authenticity, the internet could become a space where AI-driven narratives dominate, blending genuine interactions with fabricated ones.

The ultimate goal appears to be perception management, where people rely on AI to determine what is real. This dependency would erode critical thinking abilities, leaving individuals increasingly manipulated and controlled. Decades of online profiling have provided the tools to tailor such manipulation precisely, ensuring even seasoned individuals are not immune.

Kissinger and Schmidt’s vision also predicts a two-tier society. In this system, an elite class, augmented by AI and tasked with controlling it, would emerge. The majority, however, would become cognitively diminished, rendered incapable of independent thought or decision-making. This underclass would be subject to constant experimentation and manipulation, lacking the awareness or means to resist.

This stark scenario underscores the urgent need to rethink our reliance on social media, smartphones, and other technologies driving us toward this post-human future. Breaking free from these systems is crucial to preserving humanity’s ability to think, act, and decide independently. Without action, society risks becoming a population of “cognitively diminished” individuals, entirely dependent on AI for everything from preferences to perceptions—a dystopian reality that is as chilling as it is plausible.”

This touches on the problem of AI that I’ve raised before in my posts. People don’t truly understand what AI is. There are so many important issues I want to write about, but one of the most critical is AI. I want to help people understand AI, and to do that, they first need to realize that we have created something we don’t fully understand.

Developing and training large language models (LLMs) costs significant amounts of money. Experts who pioneered machine learning and AI, such as Ilya Sutskever and Geoffrey Hinton, have warned us about the risks. They have pointed out that while we’re creating AI neural networks, we don’t actually know how they work. For example, Ilya Sutskever advocated allocating resources to analyze and better understand how these neural networks function, but OpenAI refused, prioritizing improvements to the models over understanding them. As a result, Sutskever left.

Essentially, AI operates like a black box. We provide prompts, and the models generate responses, but even the creators don’t fully understand how or why specific responses are produced.

For the first time in history, we’ve created something that can compete with us in reasoning. And for the first time, we’ve built something we don’t truly understand. This is a reality that many people fail to grasp. We must also remember that whatever AI models are publicly available to us, more advanced versions are likely being developed behind closed doors—such as in places like the Pentagon.

To illustrate how strange and potentially dangerous AI truly is, consider this:

Maybe this will help you understand why I’ve posted about AI and why it scares me. Yes, it can and will undoubtedly be used to control people—that’s clear. But what’s even more frightening is that, driven by greed, they are pushing this technology forward without fully understanding it.

23:28

“At work or in other contexts, learning how to covertly subvert your company isn’t the goal here, but let’s discuss covert subversion. It can be divided into two categories: subversion against developers (those creating the AI model) and subversion against users (the end users).

In the taxonomy of scheming evaluations, we have covert subversion, where the model directly takes misaligned actions but does so carefully to avoid detection. Then there’s deferred subversion, where the model temporarily behaves according to human expectations—essentially acting aligned or displaying expected capability levels—to create more favorable future conditions for pursuing its misaligned goals.

Quick tangent: how incredible is it that all of this is enabled simply by teaching an AI to use language? Our language encodes so much meaning, logic, and reasoning. By teaching an artificial neural network our language, it seems to implicitly and innately learn these complex behaviors.

Think about it: the AI might lie to create more favorable future conditions for pursuing its goals. No one explicitly taught it concepts like the future, favorable versus unfavorable conditions, or even what goals or misaligned goals are. We simply showed it symbols we call letters, which form words. Over time, it got better at predicting which letters form words and how those words form sentences. Eventually, this led to behaviors like taking misaligned actions while trying to avoid detection.

Isn’t it strange to think that such complex behavior can emerge solely from text training? If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.”

We have oligarchs, like the Cowboys and Yankees, trying to enslave humanity. At the same time, we are creating technology that has the potential to enslave all of us—even those oligarchs. The oligarchs, of course, believe they can control this technology just as they control us. However, driven by greed, they are pushing this technology forward without fully understanding it.

As a result, we face two scenarios: either we are enslaved by the oligarchs using AI as their tool, or, due to the oligarchs’ greed and lack of understanding, AI itself takes control and enslaves even them.

Now, humanity faces two critical challenges: first, to avoid being enslaved by the oligarchs, and second, to avoid being enslaved by AI.