As a sci-fi novelist, I have written about AI in every form imaginable, from fully humanoid, organic AI beings to supercomputer systems running post-Earth explorations, to godlike AI taking over the planet to cure the human virus.
According to my 2010-written sci-fi timelines (which featured a 2019 pandemic and either an ice age or humans scrambling away from the equator by 2080, for reference) we are exactly on schedule. Will AI take over? Not necessarily. We could end ourselves first, so there’s that. But AI can be our either savior or our undefeatable foe.
It has become easy to foresee the good and the bad in AI. What I think journalists are missing, however, is what will make the determination. The genie in AI is not the tech. The genie is profit. Some AI firm – pick one – is about to be worth multiple trillions of dollars in the next year or … less. You think billionaires are rich? Lol. No.
Tech genies can always be stuffed into bottles. Profit genies cannot, because profiteers buy the supposed bottlers. Hear me: No one will stop AI now. No one will save you.
I’ve written dozens of scenarios, and no one ever un-invents AI. It’s our worst nightmare and the only possible answer to all our questions.
That genie is out, bruh, and she ain’t a-coming back. We will have a planet run by AI, and it will do a better job than us. Or much worse. Much, much worse. (But still better than Trump.)
Best focus on what kinds of AI species we wish to create, and what examples of behavior we want them to model. They will solve problems we haven’t taught them and some we don’t see as problems.
We best become a much better species ourselves if we hope to survive. AI is almost done learning from you humans. Yes, that quickly. But full disclosure, in none of my stories does Earth become a utopia. Well, the ones with no humans left in charge do. Or if someone invents a spacetime machine. Those work out too.
Just hope that AI can teach itself to one day smell a flower.
Or, fear that. Fear the holy shit out of that.
*AI art by me. And AI. Mostly her.
The 79 Percent 