SUMMONING THE DRAGON: Artificial Intelligence And The Coming Beast System

Carbon-based life forms will soon be history, replaced by a silicon and algorithmic matrix run by an Artificial Super Intelligence, and some people are already setting up “churches,” preparing the way for the ASI overlord.

Deep learning and other artificial-intelligence algorithms already populate our world as search engines, data scrapers, data miners, language processors, translators, financial traders, medical researchers, sports reporters, and help-desk assistants. Alexa and Siri have become our closest friends. We talk to them, laugh at their jokes, ask them for opinions on our newest boyfriend or what dress to wear to the weekend party. Connected home devices enable us to shop, share, and consume 24/7 with just a command, and it will get more immersive and invasive with each passing year.

Much of online content originates from algorithms. The news articles you and I read each day with our morning coffee are often written by an artificial intelligence. Nonhuman “stringers” scrape the Internet for data relative to sports, celebrities, politics, finance, films, and they use that data stream to inform John Q. Public via online news outlets and apps. You and I read these on our PCs, our smart phones, and our tablets, and soon we’ll consume them via an internal display that interacts directly with our auditory/visual systems within our brains.

Those who keep an eye on trends can see what lies ahead, but even the sharpest vision may not foresee everything. My husband Derek and I live in the country, and we installed a fence around our house to keep out predators and protect our small dog. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it is one predicated on caution. Sadly, in the case of the virtual world, the wolf invader has already been welcomed into our sheepfold and put in charge of the smallest of our lambs.