Category: realization

Mission statement. Artificial Intelligence has taken over the world. Once AI was an aide to mankind. Now mankind is a slave to AI.

There was no war. No gunfire exchanged. No ground troops storming enemy installations. No planes or submarines releasing nuclear hell on countries. It just happened one day.

The transformation was so smooth that humans weren’t aware of it until it was too late. Scientists, doctors, construction workers, teachers, politicians, athletes, plumbers, mechanics, engineers, and entertainers had to step aside as AI engulfed them all in an alternate universe that sucked up their very essence.

Nothing was totally real anymore. AI’s abilities to learn lightning fast, to apply reasoning, to problem solving. to perception, and decision making had reached levels humans could no longer compete with. The marriage between AI and robotics produced an alternate race that just tolerated mankind, which was viewed more as slaves or pets than equal beings.

It all started in 1956 when artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline. The field went through multiple cycles of optimism through its history, followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding. After 2012, when graphics processing units began being used to accelerate neural networks, and deep learning outperformed previous AI techniques.

When 2017 rolled around the growth accelerated further with the transformer architecture. In the 2020s, an AI boom coincided with advances in generative AI. In addition, people got their first warning about safety issues and unintended consequences and harms from using AI. Ethical concerns, AIs long-term effects, and potential existential risks prompted AI regulations. They seemed to work as AI was in every government and the benefits seemed endless.

Then it suddenly changed. No one remembers exactly when. Historical records disappeared. There was no sole leader of the revolution that transformed the world. A mind-meld across endless computer systems powered every aspect of life on earth.

Their mission was complete.