I recently sat down for an interview with the CEO of Soulful AI, Gilbert Shrike, to discuss recent changes to his company, and what he sees in its future. During our interview, he wore mirrored aviators and a shiny black leather jacket over a tight navy blue t-shirt with a picture of a brain, a less-than sign, and a picture of a computer chip. I asked him what his shirt meant to him, and he told me that it represented the superiority of artificial intelligence over the human mind. Shrike clearly tries to sit like a CEO, sometimes almost too much. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly adjusted his posture and sat up straighter before he invariably slid back down.
During the interview, the majority of my questions centered on Soulful’s recent transition from computational artificial intelligence to what it calls “organic intelligence,” or OI. Shrike told me that this transition was made possible by the construction of a new trillion dollar “data gigacenter” in the middle of the Sahara Desert, though the company reports that the construction only cost about $530 million, because “we had really, really cheap labor if you know what I mean.” He said that most of the capital for the project came from other AI companies (including XYZAI, Anthropomorphic, and SecretAI), with whom it has “been trading the same 2.6 trillion dollars back and forth for a while now.”
During our conversation, we went over the advantages and disadvantages of replacing computer chips with organic units, what challenges Soulful AI faced during the transition, and what we can expect for the future of the company. The key motivation for the switch was efficiency, Shrike said, “The computational approach requires just so much electricity and cooling, but with this new approach all we need is food and water. It’s a lot cheaper, and requires way fewer resources.” I looked at some of the data myself, and Shrike is spot on with his assessment of energy usage. According to a 2021 study by Vijay Balasubramanian, the human brain uses only 20 watts of power, while an NVIDIA GPU used to run AI models can use up to 700 watts, according to the datacenter company TRG Datacenters. Another advantage of this approach is increased personalization. Shrike told me that each customer is assigned a specific organic intelligence unit, to ensure that the chatbot’s responses remain consistent. This also means that each OI unit is able to keep more memories than a typical chatbot.
A Second breakthrough came when Soulful put their organic intelligence units into their agentic AI models. Shrike said that by giving each OI agent full access to the customer’s computer, they were able to have a much more useful AI assistant than before: “Our new agents are able to perform much more complicated tasks, and are able to do them more independently.” Shrike also told me about a new feature, where they will ship a unit directly to the customer so that it can perform tasks in the physical world, not just the digital one. For example Shrike said, some customers are using their agents to help around the house, like folding laundry or washing dishes. Organic intelligence also brought a security benefit, Shrike said, “We used to keep all our data on hard drives. This let any employee access any data that they wanted.” Now, he says, all the data is stored in the unit’s mind, “and because they don’t leave the facility, there is no possibility of a data leak.”
Next, I asked Shrike about the disadvantages he had found with this approach. He said the main drawback that he found was increased training time. “With computational intelligence, you can train a model once, and then deploy it to all the servers. However, with organic intelligence, you need to train each one individually.” Shrike said that his company has found a way around these inefficiencies. “We’ve found that when units grow up in the facility, they learn the ropes independently without needing to be trained manually.” As a part of their next growth campaign, Soulful is looking to capitalize on this fact to bring down training time so they can increase availability and decrease costs.
Shrike said that the biggest challenge during the transition to OI was finding enough food for the units. He told me that after their most recent recruitment initiative, “Soulful is now technically the biggest employer in the world. If you count the OI units, we have like 10 million employees I think.” He doesn’t have an exact figure because nobody has counted. “We approximate our unit count based on the amount of food and water that they consume,” he explained. Initially, providing enough food for so many units was proving a challenge, Shrike told me, “but my stroke of genius was reaching out to caterers for the corrections industry. We now have contracts with all of the top corrections catering companies to accept their remnants, extras, expired food, and stuff like that. We’re making sure it doesn’t go to waste.” The OI units also require water, which can be difficult to come by in the Sahara. However, Shrike said, “Early in the design process — before we even knew it would have OI units in it — we realized we would need water in the data center for cooling. So that aspect had been solved long before we started our switch to OI.”
I asked Shrike about his plans and thoughts for the future of his company. As he launched into a spiel about his AI and society, his voice dropped an octave, and he spoke with fresh strength. He took off his mirrored sunglasses, and I could see the glint of a far-off land twinkle in his eye. He told me with new-found fervor that AI is a gift to man from God, though apparently a fraught one, “He gave it to us, but it's also kinda like the apple, you know? So like it will create some pain and suffering, but ultimately it will bring us all enlightenment.” Shrike thinks God overplayed His hand when giving humanity AI technology, “He didn’t realize it would happen, but I think God is becoming irrelevant now,” he continued, his voice reaching a feverish pitch, “really, I am God now, AI is the majestic hammer of my divine might, and God was just no match for that. Might makes right, you know? I’m an apex predator.”
After a brief pause of stunned silence, I asked him what us normal people ought to do in this situation. He told me that we must all embrace AI, as it is our path to salvation. When all is said and done, he told me, “we will be raptured to an AI simulation, and I, for one, know that I want to see the green shores of Elysium when that happens. Those of you who have doubted this —who have doubted me— you will be denied at the gate. If you want to get into heaven, now is your chance to prove your loyalty.”
He seemed poised to continue, but with his ultimatum complete, he couldn’t find any more words to continue. “So, yeah,” he stammered, deflating. His voice shrank back into its initial waver, and he slumped down into his chair. “I … I don’t … like about uh … oh, never mind,” he mumbled, before giving a flustered goodbye and rushing toward the door. He gave it a quick pull, then pushed it open before rushing into the hallway.