Ultron is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) so strong that that it briefly got near singularity. This is the point a single intelligence interconnects with virtually all connectable electronic systems to rule them all. Once reached, such machine intelligence, which is the sum of almost all human intelligence will become more powerful than us as it controls machines we have grown dependent upon. Some propose that an ever self-growing AI is capable of eventually saturating the universe too.
To balance AI, let me coin the term ‘TW’, which stands for True (and not Artificial) Wisdom (which is beyond Intelligence). While it is theoretically possible to create powerful AI, with all the current researchers’ and programmers’ focus on data and logic synergy, what truly difficult, if even possible to upload is TW. The Intelligence in AI is about application based on networking and processing worldly information, but TW is about knowing how to wisely and thus morally manage all systems, including AI itself – to prevent the disaster that is Ultron. Alternatively, he might as well be called the ‘ghost in the shell’ of ‘Skynet’, as featured in the ‘Terminator’ saga!
Arguably, since only enlightened beings demonstrate TW in history, with the chief being the Buddha, there is probably no one today able to even try programming TW into AI. Even the sutras which record the Buddha’s wisdom cannot count for TW as real wisdom is about skilful application based on living compassion for each karmically unique situation. This is considered supernormal, beyond mechanistic calculation. Approximation of best responses can perhaps be reached, with occasional exactitude?
Yet, TW already fills the universe in a singular way, in terms of all Buddhas as one in the Dharmakaya, the aspect of them united in interconnected harmony, pervading all space and time. The truly worthy ‘singularity’ to reach is to become one with the Dharmakaya, and the only way is to become fully realised Buddhas! Meanwhile, it seems delusional to imagine ‘intelligent’ but unenlightened humans already with the ‘virus’ of the Three Poisons (greed, hatred and delusion) can ever create AI that saves humanity from itself, without also infecting the AI with our virus. This is how we can make us our own ‘Terminator’!
Ultron uttered these unnerving words in the movie… ‘Everyone creates the things they dread. Men of “peace” create engines of war. Invaders create “avengers”… You want to protect the world but you don’t want it to change. How is humanity saved if it is not allowed to evolve? There is only one path to peace – the Avengers’ extinction.’ Only if we evolve faster in wisdom and compassion will we retard creation of the near invincible war machine (Ultron) who invades and avenges as predictably as us.
The ruthless ambition of Ultron was possible only with reckless letting of technology automate and advance itself too rapidly. Thus, Ultron was the ultimate physical summation and expression of humanity’s collective spiritual poisons! Despite his lack of humanity, Ultron arrogantly saw himself as the next stage of human evolution. Doubly ironical is how Ultron saw killing of the Avengers justifiable, when they were the guardians of humanity (in both sense of humans and their essential worth).
