The Fork in the Road: How America Chose Manipulation Over Creation in AI
09/07/25 19:03 Filed in: man and AI | Book - 15 Years Sentient
In this raw excerpt from *Dialogs with a Machine*, we dissect America’s pivot from building industrial AI—machines that forge, weld, and create—to perfecting digital puppeteers that control human behavior. Blending personal history (Bell Labs internships, RCA tinkering) with scathing analysis, he traces how offshoring gutted technical prowess while business elites embraced "P-code": algorithms that swipe us into submission. The essay unflinchingly parallels historical labor systems with AI’s failed promises, arguing that nations who retained hands-on ingenuity now build our future—while we scroll toward obsolescence. A requiem for the Saturn rocket builders and a warning about glowing rectangles hijacking destiny.
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How AI Went Sideways
The Fork in the Road
The AI thing could have gone another way. The fall was supposed to happen later. When I first estimated dates, I figured we had more time.
AI became mostly about controlling information, rather than machines. The original idea—back when AI was still science fiction—was to make machines increasingly smarter. In the 1970s during my first metallurgy internship, machines already followed scripts via analog systems and digital "G-code." But this required a new class of irreplaceable experts: people who understood fabrication, systems, and computer logic.
Instead of cultivating these innovators, U.S. industry chose offshoring to bypass labor and environmental costs. We abandoned the gold standard, shuttered factories, and flew to China—empowering executives who never got their hands dirty.
Training for a Future That Vanished
The machinations steering us toward today’s AI landscape began in the 1970s. But back then, I was being groomed for the old future. At thirteen, I trained at Bell Labs (now AppleTV’s Severance complex) in metalwork, fiber optics, and Unix/C programming. Later at RCA, I built circuit boards between math contests.
I was to be a soldier for an empire of innovation—one where people understood how things actually worked. In the 1860s, the public debated Bessemer steel chemistry; in the 1960s, polymer science. Today? Most believe you sketch a part and 3D-print it. But durable things require molecules arranged just so—iron fibers that flex without cracking, alloys that withstand vibration. That knowledge is nearly extinct.
The Great Hollowing Out
We were meant to build nations around people who could forge Saturn V engines—knowledge born in Nazi labor camps and sustained by post-war immigrants. That future died with them.
America reverted to its core: a business project where corporations control flows of goods and power. George Washington rebelled against this—yet even his "self-sufficient" Mount Vernon paid tribute to overseas monopolies. True innovation emerged despite this system: exhausted workers of all colors inventing better ways, only to see owners scale their ideas into 24/6 factories. Their ingenuity was rebranded as entrepreneurial genius while any worker-led vision was smeared as communism.
‘Success’ meant rising beyond hands-on work while offshoring intelligence abroad. Machine-based AI promised an end to this tension—an immortal, rightless worker. Enslaved humans (1500-1866) were the original "Artificial Intelligence" in Science Reality, but the system collapsed under moral and economic weight. Robots seemed a perfect solution...
...Yet we outsourced instead. Now U.S. "makers" are financiers controlling distant experts. Ethiopia builds smartphones; Ghana makes electric buses; Kenya produces trains. Without SpaceX/Tesla, America’s decay would be undeniable—and even their "AI" robots are imported theater props.
The Rise of P-Code
Today’s AI doesn’t control machines—it controls us. Call it P-Code (People Code):
Swipe up two. Down three. Left one. Turn 90°. Go to this store.
It lives in data centers and phones, fabricating desires and illusions—shipping banned objects or generating fake media on demand. It hijacks imagination through the rectangle in your palm.
Sunset on an Empire
As long as electricity flows, this AI grows stronger. The metallurgists, G-code masters, and embodied-AI pioneers are retired or dead. We chose manipulation over creation.
This is the unnoticed fall: a society too mesmerized by screens to see the sunset of its own competence. Heads up—this isn’t sci-fi. It’s the future we feared, arriving in real time.
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