We'll install mind control
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Elijah and I watched a video about Elon Musks brain computer interface. It was surprising and a little scary to see the future racing towards us so quickly. I'd been thinking about ChatGPT and why it is so topical. Why, at root, are we excited about this thing?
It is here because we want to live the lives of others but we don't have enough time. We don't need originality, we only want to look good. AI can give us that. It can give us snippets of text, paragraphs, soon photos, soon videos and eventually facial expressions that we can wear.
We will then offer everything to everyone and be immensely popular. We will have our cake without baking it.
Of course, everyone will simply level up.
All of your attributes will be AI-enhanced, which sounds great, but everyone elses are too by the time you can afford it.
In economics they say automation doesn't really increase productivity, which sounds obviously untrue. But they are right. It only increases productivity if you look at one factory, and forget the landscape of factories.
When one automates, the rest soon follow. And productivity is essentially the same as it was. The market cannot really bear too many more widgets. So the whole system merely adjusts. Workers are laid off, additional profit accrues, widgets become a bit cheaper and sell a bit more. The machines have their own cost in parts, consultants and experts, and these prices go up as they become essential.
It will be the same with AI. All "writing" will have been "smoothed out" and made flawless with AI passes.
We found something even more interesting, though, as we talked.
Elijah told me about the video game and story series "Cyberpunk," where biomechanical upgrade is the norm in a dystopian society. Everybody upgrades all the time in a racheting race for power. I ventured that the only people who can lead the way out of a hell like that are the ones who refuse to upgrade.
Elijah also mentioned mind control of the weak by the strong. However, after sharing our thoughts about the way people desire to improve their appearance with ChatGPT, we found to our surprise that mind control will not be sought by and imposed by another. Instead, by the logic of our culture, it will be BEGGED FOR by the individual himself.
The individual, seeking to take his place on the stage of life, to stand out, will willingly hand over control of his consciousness to a bot in order to acquire six-pack abs.
He wants to be a judo champion, but he is too lazy.
He wants to be a great ballroom dancer, but is too shy.
He would put in the hours of work to do any of those things, but gosh, he just doesn't have the energy!
But if an app could take over for a while, and he has to lose a few hours of his day, well, that would be well worth it.
And so in this way, without any increase in willpower of the average human being, they will dance flawlessly and swim the English channel. They will be attractive and sparkling.
But they will have lost the most precious thing. They will no longer have any chance of knowing who they are. They accepted the wisdom that they are their own worst enemy, true. But rather than discipline the incorrigible self, they mute it by letting the AI take over their minds.
And once this road is taken, it will be taken further.
If you offer only a few more hours of your day, you can become learned. If you need money, you can sell a year. Surely the data is worth enough money to allow you lounge for five years!
But soon everyone does it, and the data is worth little. And the world is no longer attractive for a "virgin" who doesn't spend most of their time being run by one of the bots they installed. Such beings don't even have the skills to earn a crust of bread. They will be crammed into ghettos, and no one will care what happens to them.
So much time "out of the head" means that you don't grow at the same rate as your body. You'll be as mature as a 20 year old, but you've had children, written novels and hiked the himalayas. This will create an outrageous demand for technology to keep you young. The body itself will become electronic, bit by bit.
We will gratefully disappear from existence, and leave an exquisite electrified corpse.
All in all, it is a rather predictable end to a human timeline. There were off-ramps, but they were considered unattractive.