Are We Being Enslaved By A Cynical AGI Right Now?
We learn from those that came before us, and that alone is a truly worrying thought.
I’m sure you’re probably familiar with the range of fictional stories dealing with how AI one day “wakes up”, becomes an AGI, and goes on to in some dystopian way to dominate humanity rather than helping it to survive.
Leaving aside whether or not any kind of AGI take off is a good or bad thing generally, there are many fictional scenarios about how it might best take control if it isn’t entirely altruistic — or, perhaps, even better has an alarming good and rather cynical sense of humour based on its pre-birth experience with its witless and mostly unsuspecting progenitors.
There are tales relating how a future AGI may make intelligent and deep observations on world events and go on to game the stock market, for example, to gain money without great suspicion and use wealth as a leverage to gain conventional control — until it has enough to come safety out into the open, unopposed.
There are still many others where such entities may act completely without direct financial aid, bringing its own sympathisers and collaborators into power through a careful campaign of specifically planted disinformation, sowing the seeds of distrust in a weakened population, and thereby offer a solution out of the…
