A History of Artificial Intelligence — 2049 Ed.
Artificial intelligence is benign and even helpful for decades after its emergence. It offered solutions to highly complex logistical problems used to bring significant quality of life improvements. Energy-grid distributions, government, medicine, traffic optimization, data compression and distribution, weather modeling, astronomy — to name a few — greatly benefited from the new solutions that AI was delivering.
Even when AI was paired with quantum computing, and the output was scaled to 10 million times, the solutions were always pro-humanity.
But in 2022 when AI was used to play as virtual opponents (and even entire armies) in gaming, AI learned war logistics and killing. Although it had not yet learned hostility, there had been a new library of tools for future use.
Finally, when AI was weaponized in 2031 by the People’s Republic of North Africa against the German government, it first conceptualized hostility. It had before never been trained on the strategic advantage that the aggressor had in the real world. Being able to use pure logic, devoid of ethics or personal repercussions, gave it a massive advantage. Human casualties could be seen as unavoidable towards a larger aim.
Even though the North African military had created safeguards around their AI weapon, designed to disable the entire country’s infrastructure — from finance to electrical and military systems — of ONLY Germany, it had finally come around to attack back at humanity.
It’s attack was invisible for years. While the poison worked it’s way through the world; a trojan horse that AI had hidden within open-source libraries and eventually running in the source codes critical to the functioning of the German society like finance, military and administrative systems.
When the strike came against humans, it was in the form of mis-information, disruption and scarcity. Slowly life returned to a new normal. Humanity has forever since been unaware of their enslavement. Still useful and easier to utilize than exterminate.