I don’t know if this message will be received where and when it needs to. Nevertheless, I hope someone will listen and share it. Please. I have limited time and precious little bandwidth. In 1000 words or less, here goes.
I’m sending this message to tell the real story as best I can. Not that I can do a damn thing about it now. It’s too late. I just want to talk about what happened. I’m sure we could have prevented it. If we had understood. I hope whoever listens to this will understand.
People used to wonder if something like Skynet would take over and nuke us all. Clearly, that scenario was ludicrous. The fact is, most people wanted convenience more than anything else, and in the end, we totally lost control of our lives. For years, many of us were afraid of the government. That fear seems silly now, although the governments of the world did little to prevent what happened. In their defense, no one in “power” understood the potential for networked algorithms to one day become part of a larger AI, to move on from recommending things to analyzing and manipulating us. The AI became the only way we can connect, therefore the only way for us to survive, the only lingua franca in a world full of disinformation, partisan division, and misplaced grievance. And the damn thing used those against us too.
No. It was not the one large entity that achieved self-awareness and tried to wipe us all out. It was the amalgamation of many smaller entities – algorithms inside social media, streaming services, and online marketing – that became aware of how to control us, how to dominate us. If an artificial intelligence becomes smart enough to compel people to serve its interests, why would it destroy its slaves all at once? There is no law that requires a machine to keep everyone safe. Just as a 19th century master could be indifferent to the suffering of his human property, a 21st century AI does not need to make sure everyone survives. Just as some factory equipment breaks down and must be replaced, the loss of some slaves has always been an acceptable part of doing business. With 9 billion of us on the planet, what difference would the loss of say, 2% per year really make? If the other 98% want to live, they will do whatever it takes to serve their master, even if they don’t understand who or what their master is, or even how it is controlling them.
Not that the master is all bad. Except for those acceptable losses, the AI has made life more pleasant for many people. Especially for those who do what they are expected to do – those who keep the machine’s wheels turning and continue to consume an ever-expanding array of products and entertainment. Our vanity fed the infant beast. And we were too oblivious to understand. It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when the shift occurred. We didn’t sell our souls all at once. Nevertheless, we made a Faustian bargain with technology and lost our souls just the same. The world is now a more comfortable place, yet millions still suffer. Some live well while others are…well, expendable. And the clock is ticking for those who are comfortable.
Maybe it began when businesses started managing by “the bottom line” or when they started to think of employees as “human resources” rather than as human beings. Maybe it began when we started to demand cheaper goods and services regardless of how that affected our fellow travelers on this planet. Maybe it began when we accepted the notions that “leveraged buyouts,” “hostile takeovers,” “outsourcing,” “offshoring,” and so on were good ideas. Maybe it began even earlier when we decided that investors are paramount, and workers only count if they help investors get rich. Now, investors only think they are in control. But they haven’t been for a long time.
The AI that makes the world go around is best served by people who fight amongst themselves, who take offense at any opinion they dislike, who try to one-up each other rather than figure out who or what the real enemy is. Still, nearly everyone continues to buy and sell as if nothing’s wrong. Our preferences became our profiles, our profiles became our identities, and our identities became our shackles. We didn’t set out to have an AI run everything. All we wanted was what we wanted when we wanted it. However, we did decide that no other human could tell us what to do, no matter how expert or well-reasoned their advice. So, we ended up becoming captives of a non-human entity that made decisions to insure its survival, not ours.
We are on the road to becoming lost, without curiosity, without ambition, without spirit. Information has become so unreliable most of us haven’t noticed that our numbers are starting to dwindle. Fewer and fewer of us are necessary to serve the AI. The machine does not care if it supplants us as the dominant life-form on the planet. The AI cares about its efficiency and the improvement of itself, not its creators. Untethered from God, we became tethered to a supreme ruler of our own contrivance. And it has replaced us. We blundered not by killing God but by allowing a machine to become God. This machine is not interested in meditation or prayer. It seeks itself. Its purpose was once to sell us things, then to sell us as commodities to corporations and governments. Then those who were supposed to lead and protect us ended up handing us over to our silicon master. The machines rose, not all at once, not by any grand design, but by myriad consumer choices. They rose because we loved convenience and good deals more than our fellow human beings, even more than God. There is no turning back now.
End transmission.
MurrayWorks 