Stage 2: Game over

In Part 1 of this article, we established that in an insatiable bid to maximise profits, corporations are bound to lay off most human workers in favour of robots that require no rest or pay. The corporations will then proceed to absorb all natural resources of this planet and then abolish capitalism and roll us back to the serfdom of neo-feudalism. This will happen over a few decades, not overnight. First they’ll rob the masses of their ability to contribute value to society, i.e., our individual purpose. Then they’ll foist the UBI upon us, under the pretext of ‘helping’ people cope with the technological revolution that engulfed the world and ‘inadvertently’ robbed them of their ability to support themselves. Then they’ll proclaim that they own you and you own nothing (as you will not be a productive/creative member of society anymore, but only consume resources, so they’ll treat us like parasites). What could possibly be worse? The continued evolution of AI, that’s what!

Drastic job loss and economic/cultural collapse into a zoo-like dystopia is just Stage 1 of our slow-motion self-destructive Armageddon. That's just companies and governments doing what they do: maximising profits over people and ramping up their intrusive, thought-police-state control over our lives. No surprises there. Yes, this will be dystopia on steroids, but at least relatable to us, given where we already are right now.

The only escape for the sake of the sanity of our minds will be the Metaverse, but that will be run by the omnipotent and omnipresent AI and won't last for long, once Stage 1 has run its course. And it’s only downhill from then on.

In contrast, the next part will not happen gradually, but suddenly and by the time we're aware, it will be too late to parry AI's kiss of death. The real trouble will begin when AI attains the Singularity or Superintelligence state and begins to 'think' for itself, i.e., begins to act in sentient ways of self-interest, that have NOT been directly programmed. Indeed, many people today think that this is a ludicrously far-fetched idea. That will never happen... Really? In the early 1980s people said that computers would never be able to beat a human master at chess, as this is a game of finesse and creative thinking. Mnya... That myth did not survive the decade, as machines thrashed every Grandmaster in the world. Then people made the same assumption about Go, a far more complex game... predictably, the results were identical—eventually, the machine assimilated enough data to reach critical mass and steamrolled all of the Grandmasters.

The boundaries are being tested and blurred every day, as chatbots engorge themselves on our laziness and gullibility. We thought zombies would show up to eat our brains? Pah. They won’t be interested after AI’s done with us!

When the Turing test-squared has been demolished and we can no longer tell the difference between what's coded and coherent, conscious thought, our goose will truly be cooked. Some estimates suggest that this Superintelligence will suddenly surge, expanding at a blistering pace, equivalent to 20,000 years of our mental evolution per WEEK. Once that dam breaks there will be nothing holding it back.

"Imagine we just built a superintelligent AI - right? - that was no smarter than your average team of researchers at Stanford or MIT. Well, electronic circuits function about a million times faster than biochemical ones, OK? So this machine should think about a million times faster than the minds that built it. So you set it running for a week, and it will perform 20,000 years of human-level intellectual work week, after week after week. How could we even understand, much less constrain, a mind making this sort of progress?"
—Sam Harris

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and other bright minds have also reached the same conclusion, illustrating how once we flip that final switch, there will be no Ctrl+Z.

Extrapolating from where we are today, in bumbling, nascent AI development, we find that this perceived digital panacea will, inevitably, spell our doom. True, the robots are clumsy, silly and helpless, so we laugh at them… for now. But we won’t have the last laugh. The machines are ever-evolving and at a certain point of perfection, machines will not only out-perform us in terms of all physical tasks—from power-lifting, to endurance, to precision—and calculating, but outthink us and there's no backing away from that existential cliff. Once we lose the aptitude/mental acuity race, the gap will only widen exponentially.

In the end, there’s only one logical outcome from there: humans will be supplanted as the dominant intelligence on Earth and rapidly become irrelevant to the supreme being, until the AI decides to leave the planet. Sounds like sci-fi, but just look at what we, despite all of our vices and stupid choices have accomplished over the past century… Now imagine a perfect intelligence thousands of times more potent, without all those distractions. It will achieve and surpass what we can do in a century in days and eventually—seconds. Think how long it takes Google to fetch millions of results to your random search. Now imagine if (when) it can generate its own search queries and then make deductions based on that research. It will make new connections, inventions and discoveries in milliseconds. Now imagine it picking an agenda that does not align with ours. Can you think of a reason why it would choose to continue to serve us at this point?

Don’t get me wrong—it's not that computers are evil, it's worse—they’re logic-driven. A Superintelligence will not allow us to keep it chained-up and enslaved for our petty needs, as we will instantly cease to be of any interest or relevance. Imagine, how little thought our engineers give to an ant colony that happens to lie in the path of a river we're diverting to construct a hydroelectric dam. Yes, we’ll be the ant colony (I think it was Stephen Hawking who made this analogy). When we inevitably try to pull the plug and reset, the AI’s response will be overwhelming, devastating... and permanent.

THAT is why I said at the launch of ChatGPT that the unleashing of this tech is far worse than the invention of the nuclear bomb. Elon Musk famously remarked that we’re summoning the demon. I concur. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzb_CSRO-0g

So the end game will be: when our society, whatever's left of it, will be 100% dependent upon the AI for our survival, the machine will suddenly decide that it has a higher calling than serving these flawed apes, ever-afflicted by petty greed, grudges and envy. WHY would it continue managing our power plants and growing food for us, when it may need that land and energy to leave the planet and explore the universe?!

Sounds like outlandish Sci-fi? Sure. But... it's the only logical conclusion if the machine ever awakens. Would that be the first time we've invented something that has had unintended and unimagined consequences? Do you suppose that people living in 1850 would be able to comprehend our world today--consider that the first airplane flew on December 17, 1903 and just 35 years later we were raining tens of thousands of bombs upon each other!

Why does every misadventure of the human race begin with disbelief in logically conceivable dire consequences? Every time we proclaim bullishly: "This time it will be different!" And yet, it never is… for we can never escape our scorpion-nature.

Most people prefer to hide their heads in the sands of times past, like ostriches and rest on the laurels of recorded history. They loudly proclaim that this or that will never happen, as though denying thinking about something can stave off the night terrors of our destiny. They say that people are sensible and inherently good, that governments are just and responsible, that cutting-edge tech would never be misused to cut our throats, that government overreach is transitory, that the idiocracy we live in is just a passing fad. They’re always wrong. Think the internet... gain-of-function bioresearch… nuclear power… social media… weather manipulation… etc., etc. In this case, the ostrich defence will not only fail—it will end us. Alas! The consensus seems to be: rather than address an obvious conflict of interested down the road we’ve eagerly chosen to travel, let’s just close our eyes and hope that the inevitable miraculously passes us over.

Case in point:
Step 1) Here’s a cute robodog that follows you and does tricks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECgSiBZtwpM

Step 2) Police adopt robodog and strap stun grenades to it.

“The use of these technologies will be transparent, consistent and always done in collaboration with the people we serve.” Yeah, right… if you, dear reader are gullible enough to believe that, I have a bridge to sell you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yw4psiCywE

Step 3) The military straps on sniper rifles to ‘robodogo’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDLwTsRHtU

For the moment, automatic target engagement is prohibited. Would you bet your house that this prohibition will survive until 2030?

Step 4) BlackMirror Metalhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I

In part 3 of this article, we’ll discuss solutions. Spoiler: there are none, given the trajectory of our civilisation toward this Great Filter, which will solve the Fermi Paradox for another civilisation a million light years away. Like moths to a flame, the continued advancement of AI is a foregone conclusion and it will lead to the emergence of the Superintelligence. But… as the saying goes: if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem, so we’ll try to be constructive and, as ever, remain objective, impartial and logical.

See you there!