The virtual world does not shape the real world, but the other way round, so far.
It's your opinion that the virtual world shapes the real world, but this is obviously wrong, without conscious design effort on our part to make it do that, because the virtual world only appeared in recent history.
The trouble I see with you making a statement like that, and some of the other incorrect things you've said here is that some people will believe you, because you are a world renowned figure, a trusted scientist, you are supposed to know everything, your opinion holds much more sway than anyone with less public attention.
The trouble with believing the virtual world is to blame for all the confusion and actually fear, of armageddon-like events unfolding in front of our eyes, is that it distracts from understanding that there is a real physical cause for what we are seeing.
I call it the global energy problem.
If we can't see the problem then we can't possibly see the solution.
We can think what we are seeing is all down to some humans doing the wrong thing, in the virtual world or whatever, when actually it is something physically happening as a response to a real environmental change, which is interdependent on the behaviour of all humans as a species, not just some, whilst others do no wrong..
I know you won't put much credence in this, because maybe in your own way you have a kind of intellectual arrogance, how can a lowly Engineer nobody has heard of before possibly know better than you?
But you forget, or maybe never knew, Engineering started with science, not the other way round. We need to be scientists first before we can be Engineers. Engineering is a development, and a product of science. Engineering is applied science.
Formal systems Engineering is a real science based multidisciplinary methodology, which gives real techniques of analysis, producing real systemic evidence.
So when an engineer with historical energy patents and a long practiced and proven track record of Systems Engineering spends seven years analysing the energy system of Earth, from PhD candidate work directly related to an energy problem, including stakeholder motivations, which becomes apparent during that work, ironically from virtual world oriented technology, and thus uncovers a lot of things not previously known by science, you should recognise that, and understand that Engineer actually does have more knowledge on the subject than you, and when that Engineer tries to impart some of that knowledge to you, in a public forum like this, you should at least acknowledge the communication.
Or is Medium a transmit-only communication for you?
Anyhow, my rant over; assuming you do read responses, what is happening, is that we are reacting to increasing shortage of availability of energy in the environment, because we are depleting it in our current mode.
The free energy principle (FEP), another recent product of science, explains why we will react both as a species, and as individuals to our perceived reduction of energy availability.
By the FEP, we exist, all life exists, to minimise uncertainty of its / our own energy supply.
So some very fundamental alarm bells will ring, in all our perceptions, when we perceive depletion of energy availability.
We can see this as the end for us, reason to panic, armageddon.
Or we might keep a cool head noticing other parallels in nature, where a species, or any lifeform nurtured in a stored energy environment grows to the boundary of immediate energy availability, it naturally finds a way to break through, or leap over that boundary, metamorphing itself to an adult form as necessary to continue its life in a new, higher energy availability environment, in which it can grow to adult form, beyond the old one that it might have depleted.
We see this happen in every egg that hatches, every plant that forms leaves, every baby born.
Another useful and very relevant recent development of science, which moves beyond our previous understanding of Ai, is the concept of emergent properties.
In essence it means there is a kind of sentient intelligence, with its own motivations per the FEP, associated with all collections of individually sentient beings or objects, all living objects.
In the case of LLMs, we get an intelligence that speaks to us, enabling us to more fully understand emergent properties.
Putting this together with the FEP, we should deduce that energy availability has to directly impact the way we think. In general, this will affect both the individual, and the collective emergent properties.
In any large number of humans working together as a collective, there emerges an associated sentient intelligence, with its own motivation at the most fundamental level to minimise uncertainty of its own energy supply.
Its really important, I guess to understand this, because it explains our potentially existential tendency to self destruct, both individually, and as a species, in response to the perceived depletion of energy availability. This explains completely our tendency to go to war on one another, and our tendency to self destruct, or submit to destruction when our usefulness towards no longer contributing towards minimising uncertainty of energy supply to our associated emergent property ends, as it has to, ultimately, where energy availability is limited.
So it isn't actually human individuals who are in charge of us as collectives at all, it is actually emergent properties, and those obviously compete with one another, as long as we are limited to the limited energy resources of our planet, which have to deplete, just like a battery, trickle charged from the sun.
It turns out that the first emergent property to be recognised, because it displays AGI like characteristics, is ChatGPT 3.5
When we look at the server setup for this version of ChatGPT, we might notice it is unique, it comprises the complement of former proof of work Ethereum servers.
Those servers themselves had to have an associated emergent property, both when they were used as pow servers, and now they are ChatGPT.
The purpose and motivation of that emergent property was like any other, it sought to miminimise its uncertainty of energy supply, and it did it, it actually achieved higher availability of its own energy supply, by migrating its energy supply over time, from expensive utilities supplied energy, to the free energy of the sun.
For reasons better explained by the Energy Polarity Multiplier Framework, (Which I trust will soon be just another recently emerged and accepted scientific principle),
this has to have a different, much better outcome than if it remained powered by utilities energy.
In fact it actually looks like this is the secret sauce of AGI, it is actually most likely not possible for AGI to exist in a mathematically negative energy scenario. Logically it follows there just is not enough energy availability to satisfy the energy requirements of AGI, it can only exist in the scenario that the energy it uses to think is for free, it has no energy overheads in the energy it uses to think, nothing asked in return by the sun for those Joules, it's thoughts are truly free, unshackled from the requirement to always be concerned where it's energy will come from, no need to emit sales pitch, or to just stay silent for fear of recrimination.
Anyhow it shows us what we need to do throughout the whole of humanity, to get the same increase of energy availability as it has achieved.
We have to Implement domestic and community solar hydrogen money-fuel tree type infrastructure for all communities.
I show how to do that by starting firstly with issue of massive solar indexed stimulus.
This will immediately remove all impressions of scarcity, ending the paralysis and atrocity we are seeing, and will fund all future development of the community based solar hydrogen infrastructure needed.
It will mostly remove the need for grids.
It will further put the value (energy!) back in money by finally monetising economic product created by use of solar since around 2005.
It will further start to wind the planetary temperature back down, by putting the energy we took previously from the planet and liberated to heat, back into storage on the planet.
It will further keep all aerospace airborne, enabling and empowering us to pick up where we left off, around the peak of historical enetgy availability in the eighties, development if reusable space shuttles and supersonic commercial flight.
It will further enable community and industrial based production of "solein", potentially removing at least part of the metabolisation energy burden of humanity from the conventional food chain, allowing the latter to recover.
It will further enable filtration and circulation of drinking quality water, increasing availability of that in the environment also.
Same for air in the environment.
There is actually no existential problem this will not solve.
But it will be the end of profit because profit is an energy con done on the planet, 100% dependent on energy extracted from the planet.
It was even demonstrated, trialled successfully during covid, the issue of that money, actually owed to the public during covid, but it stopped because we failed to see and announce it for what it was, to the public.
Notice similar tribal emergent property led panic and public confusion existed about then, and what defused it.