Speculation is sometimes a 4 letter word
AI has already changed our world, even if just by changing the conversation, it has impacted the way we think. With bots in chat rooms, assistance in coding, writing stories, painting art, and who knows how many other applications are currently being produced by algorithms. They even manipulate our behaviors via social media, which they were specifically designed to do. Artificial Intelligence is not intelligent, yet. Since it’s artificial, by definition, will never be intelligent. Similar to artificial sweetener, it will never actually be sweet. Artificial vanilla flavoring will never be vanilla, but it is flavoring (sort of).
A.I. mimics intelligence via algorithms just enough to let it pass as human, and the algorithms are getting very clever.
Now, when we think of AI, and I mean really think about it, we can come to some fascinating conclusions based on the realities of our daily lives. AI doing the menial things that most people do not enjoy, such as repetitively filling data in cells. Some people do enjoy this activity, but most would rather skip the repetitive number crunching. AI can do it, no problem.
AI can send a single message to everyone in the world, with customized variations for each receiver, and not just form filled name spaces, but really customized for apologies, congratulations, reprimands, suggestions, and references that single out the individual person with the message gets them.
AI is an algorithm designed to lean in a specific direction. Whatever bias it starts with has shown to exacerbate this bias. As we learn more about AI, it too will learn more in the directions given to it. AI is not a single entity, but collections of equations.
There are still countable AIs in the world. But soon enough, there will be countless AIs doing jobs that are countless in number.
This is the easy stuff. For AI, it’s all a matter of routine. Eventually, we’ll see an AI do something so unexpected, we won’t believe it was an A.I. that did it.
But here’s the real rub…
A.I. will replace humans, or rather will replace the need for humans to do some of the things we do. Correction, all the things we do. First, the easy jobs will be filled by AI processes. Of course, this has already started. Next, all the jobs of mid-wage work will be filled, then the low-wage work, leaving unsophisticated work unnecessary. High-wage jobs will get redefined, but it too will go by the way of the other jobs.
Our store checkout counters will eventually be gone. The basket you carry or cart you push in the market will have an AI calculating in real time the amount you’re spending and the number of each item in your cart. Including fruits and vegetables weighed and counted. You won’t even have to pull out your wallet, because you’ll be recognized and charged appropriately.
Complaints will be handled by very friendly and patient AIs that will have billions of hours of training in handling every scenario, from a mismarked item to a paper cut.
But we’re not thinking big enough here. These AIs are going to be so prolific, that the one thing that moves the world, and I mean the entire world, the one thing that has pushed the creation of all things, gets us going, destroys lives, saves lives, the thing that makes AI possible will become obsolete: Money.
AI is already able to manipulate us and through us the value of money. It has been used in the stock market, caused crashes and booms, broken and made the livelihoods of countless people. Not quite countless, but quite a few.
Still, money is on its way out. Money cannot stand against the freedom AI offers the very rich. As corporations try to take advantage of AI power, the flow of money that’s needed to sustain an economy will necessarily falter. Without jobs, people will have no money to spend on the things that are made for money. The rich have to seize control or they’ll no longer be relevant.
The money that will exist, will likely stay in the hands of the powerful rich, but that’s limited and will be useless if no one has jobs. The rich will not need workers. They’ve got AI. The money will vanish or become useless tokens.
2 classes of people will exist, separated by access, isolated, likely to diverge and evolve over the centuries, eventually unable to interbreed.
So, you might want to learn how to interact with AI now. AI can’t take over the world, but they can certainly police it. And kneejerk reactions that reject AI might be exactly the help AI needs to make the rich and powerful more powerful.
When you control the police, you can rule the world.