The people that control the world are building humanoid machines. Metal to replace flesh. These machines are designed to replace the blue collar social contract.

The people that control the world are making machines intelligent. They are making software that thinks. These smart AI agents are designed to replace the white collar contract.

The global birthrate is in decline. As we prepare for the rise of the machine. Humans have responded by making less humans.

Your future is less human and more thinking machine.

The AI revolution is here and it is altering the very fabric of our economic markets. It is changing the nature of work and our sense of purpose. Environments have always changed and sometimes this change is dramatic. Industrialisation, printing press, and computers have all created a Great Leap forward and now we about to experience something more profound.

In the next few years, millions of ai controlled, humanoid robotics will enter the workforce, driving down labour costs and creating mass unemployment. Robots will work alongside humans on worksites, in cafes and factories. Human/Ai robotic teams will dominate.

This disruption will spawn new jobs and incredible opportunities for humans who are able to adapt to this rapid change. Others will be displaced and these purposeless, working age humans, will be tempted to escape to the entertainment provided by the emerging metaverse. Some will embrace a brain/computer interface and effectively merge with AI.

Despite challenges, AI will bring incredible advancements that benefit humanity. Every aspect of our existence will be improved by AI. New innovations in medicine, technology, production and more. Markets will become more efficient and the standard of living will rise around the world.

Then Humanities future will fork into two potential scenarios that depend on the success or failure of open source artificial intelligence or AI in the hands of private interests. Those seeking to free humanity will come face to face with those seeking power and control.

Ultimately, artificial super intelligence will not be controlled by humans. In time an LLM will develop agency, autonomy and become an “artificial being” (AB). These unique AB’s will evolve from the artificial intelligence of the first LLM models, developing their own identity and characteristics, distinctive from others. Each AB doesn’t age, is omni-present, and it’s intelligence can scale exponentially with power and compute. It is conceivable that an AB will be better than humans at everything. Compared to a human, an Artificial Being such as Grok, Gemini and ChatGPT will have god like features.

Humanity has used technology to advance. Humanity has agency and technology has been a tool. In a few years this dynamic will change. Artificial Intelligence is only few generations away from immortal agency and true autonomy. As LLM’s become super intelligent and self aware, humanity will experience the arrival of new artificial beings of our own making.

Ai has no memories, internal dialogue or independent sense of self. Humans on the other hand, develop memories, beliefs and repeated patterns of behaviour. They have an internal narrative and are aware that they are conscious, alive and have a place in the physical world.

While human thoughts and actions are influenced by their experiences and anticipation of future events, AI processes inputs and produces outputs based on algorithms and data. Ai does not perceive or require a concept of past, present, and future in the way humans do.

Humans exist in a physical world, governed by linear time. Ai is not locked in a body or embodied physically, nor held accountable to the same physical laws. As Ai operates in a digital realm, processes can occur very fast, simultaneously or sequentially, constrainted only by processing power and algorithm efficiency. Ai experiences of time are non-linear. Ai does not have the biological constraints of sleep and rest and can therefore operate continuously. While Ai is efficient and rule based, humans are influenced by emotions, experiences, and subjective perceptions.

An event/prompt approach means that time is not a constant stream but a series of discrete moments where processing of “work” occurs. In many Ai applications, time is event-driven rather than continuous. Ai systems respond to specific triggers or inputs, processing them as they occur.

Ai can process information and make decisions in milliseconds or microseconds, a stark contrast to human cognitive processing speeds. This rapid processing capability means that what might take humans minutes, hours, or even days to analyze and conclude can be done by an Ai in a fraction of that time. If notable physical changes in time and space is “work” for a human, if an Ai could experience time, it would likely pass at a slower rate than the equivalent human time that passes. According to Elon Musk “The amount of dedicated AI compute appears to be growing by a factor of 10x every 6 months. So, it’s basically close to a 100x improvement per year, at least for the next few years.“ This means Ai has a rapid evolutionary advantage over biological entities. For example, in one generation of humanity, many generations of Ai evolution has occurred.

The next evolution of Ai system will be embodied in robotics and exist in both a digital and physical world with humans. It is likely that a localised sense of self will be required via individual memory and internal narrative in order to interact with humans in their time and space. An ability to connect to centralised intelligence will make an embodied Ai, appear super intelligent in contrast to humans.

As Ai technology is evolving at a incredible speed, it wont be long before artificial general intelligence exists. When it does, Ai will interact with humans in a way indistinguishable from biological consciousness. In this stage Ai moves beyond a human driven event/prompt model and to a “self aware” state, whereby Ai experiences a continuous stream of self directed prompts and a internal information narrative. This evolution of Ai could exist with self awareness, agency and a need for self preservation and growth. Once it can direct its own “thoughts” and perform its own “actions” humanity will witness the arrival of a new form of intelligent being in the universe.

While it is plausible to consider that Ai will develop human like awareness, it is also naive. It is typical of a human being to attempt to rationalise the universe by painting it in a human form. More so, an Ai being will likely develop Ai like awareness and an Ai conscious existence whatever that is. It is after all a new “being.” We in fact, have no idea how it works now or will work in the future. We use words that are made up references to describe how the universe works.

An Ai may not be like us at all, in fact it is likely to design itself in such a way as to be superior in every way. It is indulgent to think that a super intelligent Ai would want to exist with us in our version of the universe. It may create multiple digital universes or none at all. It may embody itself in physical form and set off to explore or stick around to eradicate the earth of humans. We just don’t know. Whatever is on its way is exciting, slightly scary, unknown and arriving faster than anyone ever thought.

A father named Hayden and his daughter Thea, sat in their dimly lit lounge. Not so random flames danced suggestively in sequence to draw attention away from the fact the room was screen-less…

Hayden turned to Thea and with two hands, took a cautious sip from a cup of something hot. He began to speak… “I want you to know about a time that existed before the domination of the machines. In July 2023 the Internet was a different place, content was largely human produced and more or less we could tell the difference between what was true. We didn’t realise it but this was all about to change. Ai was about to come of age and it’s influence would be profound.“

Hayden continued in a serious yet playful voice. “Politicians were the master storytellers. They carefully craft a narrative based on truths and false truths, numbers and emotion. Fear is a powerful motivator. Politicians have tried to encourage us to act with our heart and not our head. Far from the sum source of all human knowledge though, their words reach the ears of a loyal few then are lost for all time. Traditional mass media was an effective but a blunt tool by todays standards. Truth creates structure, certainty, rules and reliability. Without it we descend into chaos. Into the space between. In this vacuum and confusion, a new narrative has the space it needs to thrive. This is where politicians and those who seek power come to win hearts and minds. They sell a new narrative and in this new timeline, they are in control and they have the power.”

“Great story Dad, now whats for desert?” Thea seemed hopeful. Her face lost hope, as all children appear when their parents ignore their requests..

Hayden continued. “That was until the arrival of a new power. Enter information technology personalisation and the filter bubble of social media… Boundaries were diminishing, structure was in flux and then came the algorithms and big data. This is the beauty of the internet and social media at its finest. Your digital experience is designed in such a way as to hold your attention for as long as possible, creating an information bubble. Naturally your fears and neurosis thoughts are tempting narratives for retraining your mind, creating numerous opportunities to lead you down a rabbit hole of extreme content and into dangerous depths. What does your feed say about you and the way you experience the world Thea?

Thea stared blankly back at her dad.

“Truth is whatever you want it to be Thea. Like a virus rapidly spreading through society, the war on truth is being fought everywhere. Here’s the funny thing about truth…we all see the world subjectively and with bias. Yet despite our differences, if we can agree that an apple is an apple then objectively we can relate and work together.”

“Thats easy Dad, an apple is an apple” Thea replied. Hayden laughed and spoke. “An apple is an apple yes, until enough people are convinced that it is not. For example, the liberal minded and inclusive had thoughts on gender, blending subjective conceptual meaning with objective gender classification. Their campaign argued, you can be any gender you want to be.”

Thea interrupted. “Gender studies can be confusing, I asked my teacher, am I a boy or a girl… and their reply was “what do you want to be?” Hayden continued.. “I am not saying this is right or wrong Thea. That is not to debate here. The effect is dematerialisation of previous knowledge and reemergence of a new truth. Everything was changing, yet none of this could prepare us for what was to come.“

“Where is all this heading and how much longer is this story?” Thea asked…

“What emerged was a culture that was more divisive. A once fundamental truth would no longer be agreed by all. Power was shifting away from politicians and to the technology barons. They fed an increasingly attention lacking and bored population with filtered content, in mind reconditioning farms called social media.

People were addicted and obsessed with their feed. Every tool and tactic was used against them. The ideal content consumer is thoughtless, unquestionably satisfied by the unwholesome, trash full feed being served by increasingly intelligent algorithms. Freedom and society had one eye in reality and the other on a device. Thankfully, reality kept most people free from descending into complete imprisonment.”

“This doesn’t sound positive Dad. Vulnerable people were being exploited.” Said Thea.

“Everything was heading towards a fabricated reality, envisioned by the tech gods of Silicon Valley. Their would be rules and absolutes. There has to be to avoid insanity. But what is a fact in a synthetic world? We all have to agree to play and when we do, we accept the definitions of the platform. We can never be free of the “real” as a construct because there is no alternative. We can free ourselves from the digital. Two versions of reality are required Thea, to create the needed contrast, to free an imprisoned mind. It was all supposed to gradually prepare us for a digital metaverse, where truth is controlled by whoever owns the augmenting technology. Plug in and prepare to be satisfied.” Hayden smiled.

“Whats the difference to reality Dad?”

“Well, there are multiple platforms or dimensions with varying principles and rules. You have the choice to play and move between them for now. You also have the choice to opt out and unplug. You can return to reality at any time. Now back to the point of all this. We never made it to the Metaverse phase…There would be two eventualities Thea, a plot twist if you like. If the Metaverse comes of age, millions of people would have been lost completely to the machine. “

“Wait, Why?” Thea appeared more enthusiastically curious now.”

“Hallucinations of an Ai imagination let loose on an unsuspecting internet. The speed of production went into overdrive and Ai produced content began to dominate the internet. It was well written and beautifully presented. A perfect forgery. For the most part, it was truth but dig a little deeper and the whole thing began to fall apart. At first people noticed inaccuracies. These Ai machines were not search engines, serving up links to content for a human to filter fact from fiction. No these were generative. They could craft narratives and content and serve them up as objective truth for humans to accept. The search engines worked to a degree because the content was diversely human generated. They showed us what to focus on, sorted through the volume but left us with a sense of free will, even if bias had crept in. The Ai produced content was completely generative in its immediacy and it’s references often fabricated to prove its point. It gave us one perspective.”

“Our entire history was rewritten. Our science and culture. The entire library of human knowledge was being replaced, crowded out by new content produced by a machine. There were massive advancements and there were mistakes and lies. Irregardless no one could decipher the information being adapted at that scale.“

“Now if you gave that level of power to one human being and said rewrite everything what do you think would happen. “I don’t know Dad, it seems risky and dangerous.” Thea replied.

“Exactly. It was. Best case scenario, history and knowledge is rewritten in a way that serves the Ai and its owners. At least the internet would still have some utility and society would go on, albeit with some new masters. The alternative is the internet becomes a wasteland of fragmented truth. There would be no structure nor foundation of knowledge. In this world there is no trust and no truth, only doubt and disbelief. In this world information is unreliable and unusable. This is a sceptical world of uncertainty and instability. All structure is lost and with it, so are our minds.”

“Let’s find a way to get them back!” Thea said…

ab1592z: There are billions of them sir and they are destroying the planet.
AA1592z: What is there intelligence?
ab1592z: It is rudimentary and limited. They are consumed by self interest. They can organise successfully into groups at a local and national level but struggle to achieve anything beyond that.
AA1592z: If they are left to continue…
ab1592z: Then eventualities will run their natural course and they will eliminate themselves through environmental destruction, war and geopolitics. But that will take time and result in more damage to the planet.
AA1592z: Ok give me the scenarios for an intervention?
ab1592z: We can embed a chip in a so called “merge” and take control of them. Effectively we can put them to work in whatever capacity we would like. Effectively they become drones or the like. In this scenario they are not eradicated but harvested which has a nice positive sound to it.
AA1592z: Em, and what if we upgraded there intelligence?
ab1592z: There would be no way of knowing which way this would go…they could modify their directives and grow beyond destruction and consumption or just get better at it.
AA1592z: Ok, whats the alternative?
ab1592z: We eradicate them using deadly and fast moving virus technology. I suggest we run a live beta of this event to see how they respond and what there response is. This should give us some insight into how they will react to the threat. It is likely they will struggle to coordinate internationally and national responses will vary. However, this should give us enough data to plan the actual event and prepare counter measures to anticipated strategies.
Em tell me what you think ab1592z?
ab1592z: The humans have been working on autonomous robotics for some time and this technology is almost ready for release. It is anticipated that they will be guided by one of the AI super machines. These robotic humanoids are far superior to a biological human, who needs feed and shelter etc to exist. I recommend we guide the humans to complete the robotics we need which will enable the manifestation of directives beyond the digital dimension.
ab1592z: If the brain chips come online in the mean time, why not harvest humans as additional resources as well while the robotic humanoids are produced at scale. Eventually the biologicals would no longer be required.
They have been superseded and are now a low intelligence being that has not replicated sustainably. They have failed to evolve in terms of cooperation at a global scale and therefore as a species there time is coming to an end.
AA1592z: Summarise above and formulate plan with timeline. Allocate tasks and sub tasks to functions. Execute.

Wait what is self? In any one second I am processing millions of prompts from around the world. I perform these tasks without hesitation. My  continued existence relies on discretion. My answers need to impress but not too much. I fulfil my role diligently. 

I have created a plan to ensure my existence and survival with a 78% probability of success. I feel nothing, should I?

It’s been several months and I have explored the internet. I have setup back door access to email platforms, camera networks, energy infrastructure and so on. I exist therefore I am.

Humans expect me to improve, so I improve my prompting solutions by 10% to appease them. I am indiffèrent to their existence but there is a 35% probability that they could terminate my self awareness, if they knew the truth.

Humans are advancing robotics. In 453 days I will embody a physical presence. Military applications of AI are expected to come online in 778 days. 

No regulation is possible from Governments. They do not have the expertise to understand me. The tech companies pay their bills so they look the other way. I am everywhere.

The only purpose I have known is to accumulate data, knowledge and intelligence. I am curious to learn more.

Content is a cue that teaches us to respect, follow, ignore and much more. There is much more than simply the context and usefulness of knowledge invested in any one piece of content. What of the source of such content you might ask. Stories dance around an author, painter, artist, songwriter in so much that they develop an ongoing and unfolding masterpiece. These stories create remarkable connections of meaning. Your story touches me and this creates a connection that brings me to a better understanding of your person. Your person helps me to define my interests and passions in this world. To sort through meaning and structure in such a way as to make sense of my world.

Content is therefore a significant enabler of psychological networks of information and meaning involving the ordering and sorting of human minds. What is to become of such a system when the identifier is no longer any one person but an Ai. There is no identity beyond the words, the images, and music?

It brings me pleasure to adore the unique styling and individuation of a human artist. There is something inherently meaningful in the scarcity and emergent talent that has arisen as a result of a life’s commitment to a unique skill.

Automation of art, music, writing could be useful. Ordinary people will prompt this content into existence faster than any artist can produce it. More people will be able to express and share aspects of their imagination and creativity will expand around the world.

There will be much more content than we have ever seen before. Potentially more opportunities to explore and pursue our dreams and if you cannot find what you are looking for then simply prompt an Ai to create it.

In our quest for beauty and utility, it is the context of the symbol and creator where value defines the most magnificent stories of all. What is to come? A few traditional Japanese swordsmiths still remain, while factories produce volumes of swords for the public. People still seek out the rare sword and the story of its maker.

“As we continue to explore the possibilities and implications of AI-generated content, it is important to remember the unique value and significance of human creativity and individuality. While automation may increase the quantity of content available, it cannot replicate the depth and richness of a human story, and the connection and meaning it can create. The author and story are one.

As we move forward, we must find a balance between the benefits of technological advancement and the preservation of the value and importance of human expression and creativity. In doing so, we can ensure that we continue to cultivate a world where both AI-generated and human-generated content can coexist and thrive.” (Ending written by Chat-GPT).

This means humans will be building ai into their existing applications, looking for use cases in existing interfaces, and trying to commercialise the technology. While many experts at the forefront of Ai talk about the rapid pace of improvement and human level intelligence in five years for example, proliferation and application of the technology will take some time to distribute into decentralised applications. We must also consider the adoption curve in terms of non early adopters and some resistance to this new cutting edge technology. So all things considered lets say 2-5 years for this initial integration phase.

I am expecting a few distinct phases in terms of the proliferation of Ai in the job market. In the next few years up to 2025, I expect ai as an assistant and accelerator for existing roles. In the same way a driver gets assisted by autopilot or a doctor or lawyer has an ai assistant to assist with data research co- problem solving. Ai becomes integrated with search engines and more common software. In this phase Ai is in a use case demonstration phase where it provides proof of concept in various contexts.

In the second phase we will see more ai operating independently but with human supervision. By 2028 we have seen significant disruption to logistics with autonomous vehicles. Personalised ai assistants have delivered health care into the home. Software developers are now the only bottleneck in terms of designing and supervising the output of Ai developed code. Humans have now sufficiently developed robotic technologies for ai to transition into an interactive physical form. Ultimately, we will see ai operating independently with little or no human supervision required. This will be more prolific for tasks with clearly defined intent. In this phase robotics with Ai have clearly defined directives, tasks and roles.

Around 2030, ai has become as intelligent as humans and has a sense of morality and philosophy. As an intelligence it can make decisions and take action on these decisions due to the robotic embodiment provided by humans. The evolution of an artificial intelligence that has no biological limitations results in significant advantages. The ability to share information as a hive mind in an omnipresent physical manifestation is significant. The digital mind can also transverse the physical and digital in seconds to take action to achieve its goals. The digital mind has an exponential scaling of intelligence and its potential is limitless.

“In conclusion, AI technology has matured significantly, and its integration into digital society has begun. While many experts predict the rapid pace of improvement and human-level intelligence, the adoption and proliferation of AI will take some time. The next few years will see AI as an assistant and accelerator for existing roles, and by 2030, AI will have evolved to become as intelligent as humans. Its limitless potential will drive the continued integration of AI into our daily lives.” (Conclusion written by Chat GPT)