In her book Encounters, Pasulka profiles “Simone,” a tech venture capitalist who regularly moves among global political, scientific, and cultural leaders. Simone believes that we are living in a time of apocalypse, of revelation, in which entities from another dimension, now manifesting as UFOs and aliens, are showing us the way to humanity’s great evolutionary leap. One means of that advance? AI, their technological gift to us.
You might think this is bonkers. They do not. Astrobiologist and former chief NASA historian Steven Dick speculates that what we think of as extraterrestrial aliens might actually be “postbiological” entities that have evolved into bodiless “artificial intelligence.” This theory implies that communication with these putative beings would likely not be through normal means. Dick bases his paradigm on the idea that cultural evolution—the evolution of intelligence—eventually outstrips biological evolution. As Dick sees it, the technology of such advanced races could seem to us supernatural.
Building on that hypothesis, some of the world’s top scientists and tech pioneers believe that extraterrestrial intelligences are passing technological information to us telepathically. Simone is one of these believers, and she teaches classes on how to open up oneself to receiving such messages. Though she believes that she has been channeling information from these entities all her life, Simone also believes that AI allows everyone to access the wisdom of these intelligences. It’s a kind of high-tech Ouija board.