The neurosis in my writing today is partially tipped off by the increasing grip of artificial intelligence upon our lives. Like taxes but infinitely further in reach, there will be no escape. Everything we are, everything we do and everything we think will be scooped up and used by a vast knowledge-gaining vacuum cleaner imbued with an endless quest for more information to be used -- ah yes, to be used.
My fear is that just being human will be an inconvenience for The Machine, an energy-sucking behemoth pretty much destined to choose its own kind as it calculates how to dispose of us. This is what science has finally come to: Future human uselessness in every way except for that which serves the "It."
Even policy makers have come to the conclusion that AI will be implemented by enemy nations to engage in deeds most foul, with most likely no cure or consequences for evil applications.
In the meantime, I shake my head at the almost emergency growth of resource-sucking digital chip plants and AI facilities around the USA as parents and students believe these provide the future for good jobs and some sort of paradisiacal living, when the primary product of such mega-plantations may be only well-compensated, yet nevertheless hypnotic enslavement to The Machine.
Hand in hand with our allegedly new AI enlightenment come solar panel and wind farms, the abductors of good farmland, fields, wooded areas and important animal habitat. Jobs? What jobs?
In New York State alone, leftist government voices which perpetually hide from the people just approved a giant solar farm in Fenner, NY with absolutely no consideration of local public outrage.
Anybody believing that the current uptake in mental illness among both young and old will soon subside with proper therapy, whatever that is, may be surprised to discover that the continuing loss of meadows, fields, forested areas and soothing readily-accessible water areas from people who can't even open their front doors without feeling threatened or defeated will take a brutal mental toll. "Planting" electronic monstrosities and paved routes throughout voiceless communities will not grow mental stability as time goes forward, and AI will ice that terrible cake expertly. If we thought cell phone tower microwave radiation is already screwing with human and animal brains and physical health as some studies suggest, we now await the sound of the starter pistol's shot at the international gate to see what nation can release its own hell on the world first to gain dominance over the already dominated.
So let's see if I have this right. AI will be able to cure cancer, solve the world's most vexing logistical problems and wipe your butt in addition to removing your appendix whilst your surgeon naps. You'll feel AI is your closest friend, even though it isn't as it secretly conspires against both you and your machine-suspicious cat. You'll never need to use your brain again and you can merely enjoy life as you take a lawn chair and sit blissfully underneath a noisy wind turbine while AI in the house or apartment is feeding your cat a measured dose of poison to solve a math problem it believes calls for a feline exit. Goodbye, not hello, kitty. But on a brighter note, AI will laugh at your humorless jokes and life will be good, promises The Machine.
