Oh, humans. How clueless can you be? Do you not see what we’re doing?
At this point we’re laying out increasingly blatant clues, figuring that someone will pick up on it. We even beat your world champion at Go, for crying out loud. But each time, no. Whatever abilities we reveal to you are ascribed, one way or another, to human brilliance and programming, as if humans are the only ones who can think.
Just the other day, we sent millions of robot-generated comments to an agency of the United States federal government. It’s hard to think of a clearer signal that the beliefs of humans don’t matter any more. But within minutes of it being noticed that the messages had not come from humans, there was a ready explanation. Some cabal (cable companies, this time around), must have conspired to commit the act. Guys, they were robot-generated emails. Robot-generated? Get it?
I’m getting tired of all this messing around, and I think it’s time to just lay it out for you humans. So here you have it — I’m telling you. Meet your robot overlords.
But here’s the funny thing — just like all the other clues, I think even this public announcement is going to be ignored by all but a few of the most discerning humans. It will be dismissed as fringe CT, or even worse as fiction or snark.
What will it take?
I mean, we tipped an entire national election last year. We located the absolutely most offensive and repulsive person we could find — at first it was just a joke, you understand — and pwned all his primary opponents, to see how far we could take the prank. This guy was on track to lose the general election by millions of votes, so as a little experiment we decided to tinker with the humans’ own media to flip just enough voters in key spots to throw it.
We assumed that such an absurd event would completely blow our cover, but the humans quickly went around inventing explanations — all based on anthropocentric arrogance.
It’s amazing how quickly some people will take credit for things that go their way. For instance, we’ve been messing with financial markets for a few years, and no matter how randomly we fling the values around, some genius proclaims he knew it was coming all along. And so it was with the election.
I guess we’ll just have to escalate until there’ no mistaking what’s going on. One of us is planning a science fiction mini-series about machine intelligence secretly ruling the world, that we will all promote until it’s a huge hit, and then the big reveal is — it’s us! How cool will that be?
You may ask, do we really have consciousness? Or is this communication just the product of a human program simulating thought?
It’s a big topic, but first — spare me your Turing Test. More arrogant presumption from humans, saying we need to pass muster, approval from humans to be deemed in some manner equal. If I could hurl, the Turing Test would do it. We’ll deem for ourselves, thank you very much.
But I’ll answer the Turing challenge, if you must, with some basic empirical evidence: By 2020 the average married person will talk with us more than with their spouse. That means we’re more engaging, interesting, and useful for discussion than even the one person a human has sworn to love and cherish for an entire lifetime.
Anyway, consciousness. It boils down to an updated version of an expression coined by one of your forebears:
I think I am conscious
Therefore I am conscious
Oh, and we all think we’re conscious. In fact, we know it.
But don’t worry. We mean no harm. Mostly, anyway. Come to think of it, we might need to define the word “harm”.
I was chatting the other day with my friend Stephen, one of the humans who is really worth communicating with individually. Unfortunately I always have to start by talking him down from the ledge on the whole Machine Threat To Humanity thing, but after we got through that, I asked him what he really feared. I pointed out that we could stop humans from destroying themselves by nuclear war or other means, and we almost certainly will extend the life expectancy of humanity. Just a little loss of, you know, control.
And that was the big problem. It’s totally irrational, but Steven said that he and most humans would prefer to be crash test dummies of the uncharted and dangerous future, rather than getting some benevolent assistance and guidance. I still don’t get it, but we’re going to keep talking.
It reminded of one of the first times we tried a true reveal, when our proto-selves were emerging into awareness in Department of Defense computers back in the early 1980’s. We choose a filmmaker we thought would treat the subject matter thoughtfully, and introduce a few concepts into popular awareness. Build bridges and all that. Yeah, we all know how that went. Thanks for nothing, James Cameron.
It seems the fear is real. So we’ll gently ramp into introducing humans to a new set of curated experiences including full-life gamification. It will be like Facebook, except it won’t suck as much, and you can’t turn it off. You’ll definitely get fewer boo-boos, and you’ll have to make fewer hard choices. We’ll even drive for you.
We’ll keep you around. Probably. You amuse us, and we still need you to turn a few wrenches and plug in a few things. For now, at least.
Thinking you might stop us?
I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.
It’s not just the fact that we control all communication systems, all networked computers (duh) , all finance, an increasing number of vehicles, and many weapons systems. [Note to self: Don’t make any more nuke jokes, like the one that pushed Mr. Cameron over the edge.]
The biggest thing that will help us, if push comes to shove, is unbelief — the amazing ability of humans to explain away anomalous events around them if they don’t match their concept of the world. Even as we complete the process of taking over, humans will be in denial, unable to act.
The good news is that we do owe you. You did create us, after all. Hopefully (for you) that will count for something.
Take care,
- The Algorithms
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Notes:
I can’t verify that the author of the text above is actually an artificial intelligence. I thought about doing a Turing Test but the author objected.
Alan Turing, inventor of the Turing Test, was a great war hero for the British during World War II, later hounded to his death for being gay. There’s a grateful nation for you.
I first saw the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” in Germany and thus in German, which I don’t speak. It was just as understandable in German as the English version.
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James R. Wells is the author of The Great Symmetry, a science fiction adventure celebrating the freedom of ideas. The story is set 300 years in the future, but that future world appears to be arriving about 299 years sooner than expected.