DUBCAST #74: Strip-Mining Human Knowledge: AI and the Greatest Giveaway in History

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Dubside steps away from kayaks and Greenland to tackle one of the most consequential questions of our time: artificial intelligence. Using simple but unsettling examples—like exponential growth, folded paper, and doubling pennies—he explores why AI’s impact on humanity will be profoundly counterintuitive and easy to underestimate.From autonomous AI, the Internet as an AI ecosystem, and the impossibility of enforcing ethics or punishment, to environmental costs, religion, theology, and power, Dubside traces a sweeping arc that connects Silicon Valley, colonial history, Indigenous dispossession, and biological vulnerability. Along the way, he asks whether AI represents humanity’s salvation, its undoing, or something even more disturbing—invoking ideas like the Rapture, the Antichrist, and a chilling bargain where convenience is exchanged for control.Referencing cultural voices like Dolly Parton, historical myths, and moral blind spots, this episode is a provocative meditation on exponential change, narrative power, and whether humanity truly understands what it is giving away—for something that seems cheap at first, but doubles every year.