Artifacialized Intelligence
Let’s see — some 74 million fellow US citizens voted for Trump in 2020, we apparently need legal disclaimers to comprehend that eating plastic marketing toys out of cereal boxes may require more than a Tums to fix it, and most of our college-bound adolescents are hooked on TikTok, Adderall or adulation – — and we’re worried about artificial intelligence? Seriously? I welcome ChatGPT & friends, and hope it’ll do some of the following, in no particular order:
Death. AI should just prevent it — and between us, I think we’re close. Why else would Microsoft invest $10 billion in a stack of OpenAI’s software that produces smooth babble by scraping Wikipedia? Truthfully, no matter your handedness, it would be phenomenal if we all could give cancer finally a gigantic bionic middle finger. The ‘flip’ side, pun intended — this would solve the labor shortage for good, sure, but may flood the sideways with retirees on souped-up scooters with mounted infusion pumps, navigating between nationally televised Bingo events a la ‘Survivor’. Yes, we’d run out of Social Security and Medicare tomorrow (as opposed to in a year) and max out the planet’s dwindling resources much sooner (which would piss off Greta). This, in turn, will make us rely uncomfortably heavy on Elon and Jeff to beam us to Mars in flip flops, assuming of course the Martians don’t hold a grudge for what happened in Area 51, and have space for either all of us, or ideally, just the rich.
Happiness. First off, artificial intelligence does not ‘equal’ artificial sweetener, not if you’re a lab rat (if you, like me, are in middle age you remember the strangely uncomfortable disclaimer on the pink packets). Think of an AI-ed Yoga mat — complete with XR-enabled anti-bacterial layer and guaranteed no-sweat mindfulness. I’m thinking $19.99, shipping & handling included, unless you live in the territories, then you’re screwed. No more gravity-defying warrior poses, chilling Tibetan chimes or lotus infused (non-carbonated) water out of reusable (or reclaimed, I forgot) metal bottles. Happiness streams right from your phone through AI-driven biofeedback via alpha waves into that part of your brain that doesn’t tweet or google. Note that Karma is a bitch, which is why we refrain from name-calling at this point.
Traffic. Deep learning will help predict emerging potholes before your once ‘smart’ car runs into them. Totally possible since they already train on data from Boston where we give potholes names and bet how long it will take to finally pour some tar over it, only to have it washed out in the next New England rain. See, it’s all connected — much like when they close lanes on major roads or in tunnels during rush hour — since night work is too expensive and your time worth much less — and then route the predictably insane traffic onto godforsaken side streets that municipalities decided then & there could do (streaming-traffic-wise) with new fiber-optic lines in the ground, just so to make escape virtually impossible. The resulting gridlock is what you have Sirius radio for once you ran out of Prozac. Thanks to neural networks though, that lack of coordination will be a thing of the past. Of course, no AI will ever “fix” the elderly driver ahead of you in a Buick or Crown Vic with Florida plates who staunchly does 28 in a 30 (no-passing) zone and when you get close to his/her bumper points with an educationally-inclined, arthritic finger to the speed limit signage. Remember, if you get worked up, it shortens your life much more than theirs’, percentage-wise — so, “serenity now”, just gotta love’em !
Social Media. Let’s dream that ‘accidentally’ downloaded, viral AI tech would somehow automatically buzz people’s trigger-happy index finger before they can hit RETURN to ‘proudly’ congratulating themselves or someone else they don’t know, for accomplishments that mean virtually nothing to anyone else but clog up the feed and thus help LinkedIn with marketing. We all know you’re only doing that self-congratulatory sh*te because you read somewhere that being ‘omni-present’ on social media helps with building your online ‘brand’ — but that was pre-pandemic, so now use the power the jabs got you and do something as opposed to writing about it. As a rule of thumb, let’s keep in mind — no one else cares. Use NLP instead to create the effortless fluff pieces that trigger the ‘thumbs up’ (you’re a**) you’re craving for so visibly.
Sports. I love soccer and watch the French top league on beIN Sports. The Qataris own it and use it to sports-wash their relatively minor human rights issues, which we know of since the World Cup they put on, paid for and then gave to Messi, as planned. Some of the games are called by a duo, Phil Sch(o)en and Thomas Rongen. The former gets across as a gigantic windbag, who apparently is suffering from a medical condition that doesn’t allow him to let a single moment of broadcast go wasted in silence, while the latter prefaces his ‘expert’ interjections on a myriad of “quite frankly-s” laced with the Tinnitus-inducing “Maarsayi” — which I come to believe is referring less to an admiration for the indigenous, proud people of southwestern Kenya and more to his damn inability to properly pronounce the French port city of Marseille. God knows how AI would help either one of them, but if the folks at beIN read this, I’d prefer a Chatbot at Middle Grade-level over that doofus combo producing meaningless background noise.
World Peace. From the comfort of my couch, I’d love to peruse an eternally upbeat metaverse of biblical proportions, just without the permanent heat or occasional shrapnel on the Sinai, creeping recession in the US or any of the nasty climate backtalk that makes us so depressed when we see another two Suburbans and a Tahoe in a single-family home’s freshly seal coated driveway. Let’s be fair though: one family’s guzzler is another family’s Chevy. Woodstock meets Paolo Alto, same sandals just now deemed ‘vintage’, and much better 5G tech & free WiFi. Singing Kumbaya ‘a Capella’ all day while looking at Dall-E or Midjourney-generated imagery would make it virtually impossible for any run-of-the-mill dictator to seek out clever ways to screw his people any longer. Technically non-trivial, this would require flying remote-controlled drones up Putin & Xi’s colon, both stealth and sterile, and using NLP commands to drop their therapeutic pay load wherever they’re backed up that day. I can foresee that augmented reality would be quite the experience here, given all the dangerous sh*t that’s going on, and as such, the drone operator does earn hazard pay.
So, as you can clearly see, I am a strong proponent of AI when used diligently to address mission-critical problems.
© Tom Deisboeck, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
