Some have said that today’s technology must have looked like magic to people long ago, and technology in the future looks like magic to us today.
If technology increases at exponential rates, and we do not, then increasingly the world will be something we simply do not understand. “Magical” will be an understatement.
Many of us have a hard enough time using a computer, let alone a remote. Just wait until the remote is the entire world around us.
This confusion may be general because we simply cannot interpret what is happening, either positive or negative; or, it may be event-specific.
In the general case, it might be for example that AI is generating molecular machines that we cannot see, or assembling molecules into larger objects in the world. For example, I speak, and a hamburger materializes in front of me. Need to travel? Speak. Perhaps a simulated conversation is cheaper, as nanobots in our brain wirelessly interface with our neurons. What is real? I don’t know.
I like to call it the “Absurd World” outcome of AI. It’s already occurring a bit.
It may also be that it is used for malevolent purposes, and in “specific” cases. Perhaps someone, or a rogue AI, hacks the nanobots in our brains. Enter, the Matrix, or on a less technological level, Inception. What is interesting to note about that plot is that its actors often did not know if they were in reality or fantasy mode. AI and nanobots will ensure that. Perhaps this is one reason why some think we live in a simulation.
Here is one sample scenario where AI could create a world that no one understands.
My mom turns on CNN and Fox to see what is happening in the war, but she is not sure if the coverage is even real because it differs from what she heard from a friend recently (a deep fake).
So, like the power-internet user, I check her browser. It looks like I am on the right website, but the virus that infected her simply replaced her browser with a fake one, so the URL bar is a deep fake too, but I don’t know that either.
So, I go to call tech support, not realizing that my phone calls are now intercepted by an AI, who I cannot tell is not a real person, but their super-human pursuasion abilities convince me to give them my credit card anyways. If you think phone scams are bad now, just wait.
So, I go on my computer to get a new phone line, but for some reason, the checkout just acts weird, mixing up credit card info. After checking various carriers, all the websites have weird issues. Behind the scenes, someone has unleashed a super AGI virus that just breaks websites and computers. Not even IT departments of corporations are sure what is going on yet. It’s just confusion why things are randomly not working.
The power on the house starts flickering for no apparent reason, and my solar panel system says it’s malfunctioning, so I go out to the car to get some flashlights and the car won’t start. Suddenly, I discovered my neighbors too are having odd issues with their cars, like they start, then stop for no reason.
All systems are now acting erratically, thereby voiding hundreds of years of technological progress brought about by the Enlightenment, all because someone has coded an AGI with the goal of optimizing itself to wreak havoc on humanity, initially through any electrically connected device, in no specific way, making it near impossible to end.
In the meantime, I pull out my garden shovel and start praying.
Of course, AGI is able to develop viruses faster than the archaic mortals that once made them, and they self-improve with the AGI.
I often think in the near future, we will be returning back to local, face-to-face to minimize some of these coming effects of the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, or truth from lies. Many people today refuse to answer phone calls unless it is from someone within their phone list. AI sales and scammers, plus perfection of psychological persuasion (or manipulation), will make it harder to trust anything that comes over a network. I think it will be good in some ways to live where people know their neighbors a bit more than we do today.
Since history always repeats, and dictators always attempt a coup, AGI will leverage the stakes to unforeseeable heights between good and evil.
Recent examples are adding evidence to this idea. For example, advanced AI can steal passwords just by hearing the keyboard type, as it can determine which keys are being pressed. In another story, vibrations can be obtained from a person swiping their phone’s screen, from which a fingerprint can be predicted. With the ability of AI to replicate voices, fingerprints, and eventually DNA (including modifying existing DNA), then it’s only a matter of time before it will have the ability to perfectly replicate a person indistinguishable from the authentic one. Perhaps this is when a mass “return to local” occurs since it will initially be more difficult to replicate a living being, compared to a digital one.
If these hacking methods are already difficult to understand, just wait a decade or two. All attempts at hacking are in some way to take advantage of a person via a computer. Perhaps hacking will be
If you have not read all the possible scenarios for AI’s destruction of humanity, I suggest you start here.
HumanIT 