The panel titled “Unravelling Reality: From Psychedelics to Synchronicity” featuring, from left: Jason Quitt, Rizwan Virk, Paul Hynek, Adam Apollo, Anthony Peake, Dr. Pascal Michael and Clyde Lewis on May 30.
Underwater bases off the California coast; UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles; a girl who can read minds; orbs in the desert sky. These aspects of the phenomena are explored at Contact in the Desert, the world’s largest UFO conference, held May 29 to June 2 at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. More than 2,300 attendees sought information on these impossible-made-possible ideas. Read on to experience them yourself.
UFOjai: Making Contact in the Desert | Part VI
Most generations develop a new type of tool, and that form of technology becomes a new way to contextualize and explain the UFO phenomenon.
In the Bible, Elijah and Elisha describe seeing “a chariot of fire” take Elijah up to Heaven.
Pliny the Elder in the Greco-Roman era describes in “Natural History” a “burning shield” that “traversed the sky at sunset from west to east.”
In 111 CE, China, the “Book of Han” describes “a burning lamp” that moves “slowly across the sky.”
From the 1940s-60s, UFOs became synonymous with nuclear weapons, appearing at bases and in some cases, taking nuclear warheads off-alert.
This postmodern approach to the UFO phenomena, where we psychologically project our fears and accomplishments onto these unknown objects as a way of processing and understanding them, is something Carl Jung touches on in his book “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.”
So in this modern era, as we enter a new technological revolution, it’s only fitting we attribute these craft, their technology and the force that creates them, to Artificial Intelligence.
“Are Aliens AI?” “Cosmic Codebreakers: AI, Consciousness & The Next Horizon,” and “From NHI to THI (Transhuman Intelligence): Elaborating on the Extratempestrial Hypothesis with Evolutionary Psychology, AI Development, the Relativity of Death & Ontological Shock,” are just a few of the AI-centric panels that took place this year at Contact in the Desert, the world’s largest UFO and psi-phenomena conference held in Indian Wells from May 29 to June 2.
Ojai Valley News photo by Marianne Ratcliff
Richard Geldreich during his lecture “Using Archives and AI for Modern UAP Research” on May 31.
AI tools
To analyze all the new information and research unraveling at breakneck speed related to the UFO phenomenon, some scientists, programmers and tech experts are turning to Artificial Intelligence.
During one demonstration, Richard Geldreich, a video game developer who worked at SpaceX on Starlink satellites, demonstrates the AI capabilities of his search engine: ufo-search.com.
The easy-to-use website utilizes AI to collect information on UFO encounters and sightings from various sources such as archive.org, the Mutual UFO Network’s investigation history, newspaper archives, and others, to create a comprehensive, searchable database.
“I’ve worked a lot on recovering lost archives,” Geldreich tells the crowd. “My specific purpose there is just to take the data we used to have, and bring it back, and then put it in a format that will last many, many decades. And I’m hoping other developers and researchers can take that data and run with it.”
The website allows users to search the name of a town, and all of its UFO cases appear. Or they can type in a style of craft and see where the “hot spots” of activity are around the world.
“The actual engine runs in the browser, so there’s no server needed to do the actual searching,” Geldreich says of the site. “Which means the NSA can’t see your searches, which, I think, is a good feature for this particular topic.”
Ojai Valley News photo by Grant Phillips
Mark Sims of Ojai introduces a lecture at Contact in the Desert on May 31 in Indian Wells.
AI authors
Another use of AI was shared by Mark Sims of Ojai, who is one of the owners of the Ojai Valley News.
While working on a book about Canadian engineer Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, a man who built the world’s first UFO-detection station in Canada, Sims was able to collect a variety of hard-to-find essays, archives, articles and documents written by Smith.
Smith’s work was building toward a book he titled “The New Science,” co-written by himself and an extraterrestrial named Affa. But the book was never published in its entirety.
After six years of compiling thousands of files, Sims was able to produce a draft of the unpublished book, but he hit a snag: Smith had written a table of contents, and according to it, Sims was missing a few final chapters.
To complete the project, Sims and his partner, Hunter Bobeck, created an AI chatbot version of Smith, based on the data Sims collected from the various archives and records.
Sims was then able to have the chatbot finish the work for Smith, making it, most likely, one of the first published books finished by an AI version of the author.
“My motivation was to connect with others who, like myself, have made contact and received scientific, philosophical and spiritual knowledge not yet known to the human family,” Sims says in the book’s forward. “It’s been both an honor and a joy to help bring ‘The New Science’ back to the world, in the spirit in which it was first written: to help the human family better understand the Universe in which we live.”
Sims plans to keep developing these innovative uses of AI technology, as well as other Language Learning Models, to build other chatbots based on UFO researchers and experiencers. That way, even after they pass on, they can continue to teach others and write additional works to help inform the next generation of ufologists.
Photo provided
Panelists from the conversation “Artificial Intelligence: Balancing Ethics & Innovation” featuring, from left: Peter Robbins, Rizwan Virk, Mitch Randall, Paul Hynek, Adam Curry, Adam Apollo and Matthew James Bailey.
Are aliens AI?
Then there’s the “out-there” concept that grapples with AI and the connection to aliens, or the new term Congress likes to use: “Non-Human Intelligence.”
An allegedly common race of NHI that experiencer Whitley Strieber and others have written about are known as the Grays. They fit the iconic image we all think of: small beings with large eyes, small mouths, no ears, and capable of telepathic communication.
Michael Masters, a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technical University, speculates that these might not be aliens at all, and instead, a version of ourselves visiting from the future.
When studying the alleged anatomy of the Grays from an evolutionary perspective, they are described as having tiny mouths, indicating talking and eating are less important to the species. The lack of genitalia could indicate they have found another method to reproduce. And as we continue to incorporate technology into our lives, via brain-computer interfaces such as Neurolink, these beings might be a logical conception of our next evolutionary step as human beings.
This concept was expanded upon by Paul Hynek’s workshop at Contact this year, titled “Are Aliens AI?”
Hynek is the son of famed ufologist J. Allen Hynek, who acted as a scientific adviser to the U.S. Air Force’s study of the UFO phenomena, known as Project Blue Book.
Hynek shared his thoughts that “the universe is informational, and that consciousness is not emergent, but is a fundamental part of the substrate of reality.”
This concept emerged from quantum physics, where scientists zoomed in on the particles making up matter, such as atoms and electrons, and found tiny points of energy instead of physical objects. Most of the atom consists of empty space, with a dense nucleus and electrons that are more like clouds of possibilities than fixed particles. For example, the behavior of these particles is measured with concepts like its spin, charge or position probabilities, which is information, as opposed to a physical substance.
As a result of these scientific advancements, Hynek speculates that we might be headed toward a “post-biological future,” with information prioritized over physicality.
“I don’t view that necessarily as suffocating our spirituality or surrendering our humanity,” Hynek says of a potential transhumanist jump. “But [instead] returning to the divine, digital womb from whence we sprang.”
He speculates that the bodies and crafts of these Non-Human Intelligences may be designed to be disposable, and may serve as merely vessels for this potentially inevitable technological singularity.
“If there are aliens out there, they could be millions and millions and millions of years more advanced than us,” Hynek says. “And I think then, it’s inevitable they become post-biological to escape the frailties and bottlenecks and bugs of organic life. … I think that may be the trajectory we are going on.”
This concept of vessels serving as physical shells or containers for a digital consciousness seems like a wildly futuristic concept, but it was first presented by computer scientist John von Neumann back in the 1950s.
Von Neumann developed a theoretical framework for self-replicating machines, or mechanical systems capable of building copies of themselves using raw materials from their environment. These became known as “Von Neumann machines,” and are eerily similar to Hynek’s interpretation of alien beings and the Grays.
Photo via Rizwan Virk’s Instagram
Rizwan Virk lectures on May 30 about “The Simulation Hypothesis: AI, NPCs, and Ancient Religions.
Simulation hypothesis
Running parallel to AI developments is the emergence of the video game industry, which is now the highest-grossing form of entertainment, earning more revenue than the music industry and Hollywood box office combined, according to Forbes.
And in the same way AI provides a framework for the phenomena, video game vocabulary has offered a new approach to understanding Simulation Theory — the controversial hypothesis that the world we live in, that we call “reality,” is only an artificial simulation created by another form of intelligence.
While video games have provided a new framework for us to view the Simulation Theory through, the concept is far from modern.
“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” was written by Albert Einstein in 1955.
“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1849.
There’s Plato’s allegory of the cave in The Republic, the Demiurge concept in Gnosticism, the Hopi concept of cyclical worlds from which we first emerged.
“Know that all phenomena are like reflections appearing in a very clean mirror; devoid of inherent existence,” is attributed to the Buddha.
Rizwan Virk describes the Simulation Hypothesis in his lecture, and throughout his book, “The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientists Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In A Video Game.”
Virk provides a framework for understanding the Simulation Hypothesis, alleging that if we, as a culture, are capable of creating a simulation that is indistinguishable from our own reality, then based on probability, it is very likely we are not the first to do so, and are most likely in some type of simulation ourselves.
While we have not yet created this indistinguishable simulation, which he calls reaching the “simulation point,” he thinks we are closing in on it.
Virk describes various advancements in Augmented Reality and AI used for video game development, and outlines the steps needed to achieve it.
Some of the steps to reach this “simulation point” have already been achieved, like simulating a large game world, photorealistic optimization of 3D rendering, and massive data storage that exists outside of the rendered world.
But a few concepts required to reach this “simulation point” like implanted memories, the ability to incorporate physical sensations and feelings into the virtual space, and the ability to beam the signal for the simulated world into our eyes or minds are concepts still underway, and not yet perfected.
Virk says, hedging his bets, that with all the new technology in development, he’s confident we will get there sometime around 2049. And when it comes to whether or not we are in a simulation right now, he places the probability at around 70%.
But when it comes to questions like who are the simulators, what is the purpose of the simulation, and whether or not it’s “simulations all the way down,” it’s all still just speculation.
And what about the meaning of life if all of this is just a simulated reality?
Virk discusses the two main “flavors” of simulation theory, one where the entire universe consists of “Non Playable Characters,” or NPCs, and one that resembles a Role Playing Game, or RPG, where many players log on to a server and complete tasks and quests to build up character traits and experience, each with an avatar representing a “real” being that exists outside of the simulation.
Virk seems to favor the latter.
“Believing that the physical world is a game can be comforting in a number of difficult situations, whether physical, financial, or social,” Virk writes. “You can believe, like the actors who win Academy Awards, that you have chosen some difficult roles, or difficult quests, and that you have learned what you need to learn from these experiences and are ready to move on.”
Wandering the halls of the hotel during the convention, the concept of a simulation starts to feel almost welcoming, that all of these characters, from all around the world, have chosen to undertake the difficult quest of trying to understand the unimaginable. From all over Earth (or its servers) these people have taken their avatars to this strange location in the desert, in a collective effort to find some missing pieces of what it means to be human, and to put them together again.
Next week: Journalism: The Nuts and Bolts of the Phenomenon
A high school in suburban Chicago was awarded a grant to implement AI-powered gun detection technology.
Oak Lawn Community High School District 229 was one of 50 recipients selected nationwide for the Omnilert Secure Schools Grant Program, the school said in a recent announcement.
The district was awarded a three-year license for Omnilert Gun Detect, an “advanced AI-powered gun detection technology” — at no cost.
The AI system identifies firearms “in real-time through existing security camera infrastructure,” the announcement said.
Once a potential threat is identified, the AI system activates a rapid response process by alerting school officials and law enforcement, ultimately ensuring that threats can be addressed “as quickly and effectively as possible,” the announcement said.
The implementation of the AI system aligns with District 229’s security strategy, that includes a combination of physical safety measures, emergency preparedness and mental health resources, the announcement said.
The school said staff training and safety drills will be done to ensure the technology is used effectively and responsibly.
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