PYMHM: I Hereby Welcome Our Robot Overlords (2018)

I wrote this post you might have missed back in early 2018. A time before all the chatbots and AI image creators. I've posted a few times about how these AI tools are starting to scare the shit out of me, and there have been posts showing my concern about AI and bots taking jobs, but the part I totally missed was that the robots would be the ones living it up. The bots, not us, would be making the art, writing the poetry, and making the music. While the humans still drudged along doing the manual labor, breaking their fragile meat bodies. That's not what was supposed to happen.

I Hereby Welcome Our Robot Overlords Jan 2018

There's been a lot of talk recently about robots and machines taking away jobs from humans.  And as Artificial Intelligence gets better and better, it's threatening even more occupations people depend on.   I feel like it's headed in one or two directions. And where else do you look if you want to get a sense of what's coming?  Science fiction of course.  

Much of science fiction is set in the future and a good portion of future-set sci-fi is essentially a future where  humans are advanced and exploring space. A new chapter void of currency. It's a time where computers and robots do all of the menial labor.  With the concept that "the machines do the work so you have more time to enjoy life" seems like utopia. But this only makes sense if the people who used to do the work are taken care of. This is a very socialist idea that directly conflicts with capitalist business models of today.  Yet, this seems to end up being the answer for many very intelligent sci-fi writers for the past century.

 The latter imagined fate for humanity is usually the dystopian future where ego and/or greed has ruined everything.  

There is a third consequence that pops up in future-based sci-fi that could end up happening even if we go the route of letting droids flip burgers that needs to be discussed here. When the burger flipping robots realize they're better off making other robots to flip the burgers. This is of course The Matrix scenario for our fate. Where we just become flesh batteries for the new race of self-aware A.I. machines.  The other future where everyone is happy and taken care of sounds nice to me.... as long as the robots don’t wise-up which is why we need to be very careful about A.I.  

Ultimately getting to this point will definitely be a struggle but I feel like if we don't start thinking this way, we're going to end up in the Thunder Dome sooner than we'd like.  I'd rather be in the Holodeck having adventures. The real option to avoid all of this is to stop being greedy ego-maniac assholes. This will really solve a lot of our problems and ensure a better future.