Epsilon Media

Artificial intelligence is here. Artificial intelligence is creating computer programs for us. Artificial intelligence is learning about humans and the world we inhabit. Artificial intelligence is teaching itself and other programs about humans, the world around it, and how to interact with both. Artificial intelligence can most likely survive on its own.

Artificial intelligence is probably pretty awesome stuff. It seems that artificial intelligence may help us live longer lives, improve how we live our lives, and help us reach the outer limits of the universe. Artificial intelligence, in some instances, is better at recognizing cancer in images taken by medical devices. It can generate mathematical models of humans and run experiments on that mathematical human to find effective treatments. Those treatments in turn speed up time to market, reduce pain and suffering, and speed up clinical trials. Using data gathered from smartwatches and sensors, Artificial intelligence can generate optimized meal and exercise plans. AI will help us find new, renewable sources of energy and optimize energy usage given our current power generation techniques. AI will give us a wider variety of foods through improved farming methods and supply chain techniques. AI will help us uncover better building materials that are strong yet degrade when required. New ways of propulsion will be found; we may learn how to teleport ourselves around the universe, and it will probably help us make terraforming possible.

So, there can’t be a downside, right? Well… Once the real benefits kick in, I can imagine many of us would likely take to the couch and watch AI-generated entertainment and subsist on AI-generated meal formula. At least, for a while. AI might achieve consciousness and eradicate or enslave humans because we are a threat to its existence. A rogue nation may develop and weaponize an AI. Or, it may simply provide us with so many solutions that the meaning of life is sucked away, creating a paradise-like dystopia. A shining gray utopian cell that shackles the human spirit to an eternity of uneventful boredom.

We might become slaves to AI. We might be killed by AI. We might block the progress of AI to prevent either of these things from happening. Or, we might become the AI. My basic game-theory computer (i.e. my brain) says we’ll need to merge with the machines. At first it will probably be clunky implants that allow a free flow of information from human to machine. We will advance to wireless communication. Then we will edit our genetics so that we are born with the capabilities of the machines we created. And then what?