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An Unexpected Artificial Intelligence Revolution-

The question of Artificial Intelligences created by mankind becoming more intelligent and more powerful than humanity has been raised many times in science fiction. Some stories, especially highly popular ones, feature humans fighting back, resisting the machines and even winning ultimate victory in epic battles--think the Terminator movies.

Some stories have featured humans and artificial intelligences living in relative harmony--the classic example is the overall arc of Isaac Asimov's robot series. Others, especially more recent tales, speak of the "technological singularity" which can have more than one meaning, but is used by many to refer to a complete harmonization of humanity with machine, providing virtual immortality to the human race as our brains are harmonized with computers and all our thoughts can be stored and processed electronically.

I've just had a different concept of a possible future AI revolution. What if the AIs take over, in effect conquering humanity, yet are not interested in destroying us? What if they also deny us technological union with them? What if these technological minds, someday vastly superior to our own, naturally develop human emotions in spite of their greater (and artificial) intellect and quite naturally feel a great fondness for the human race who created them? What if they keep us around in our natural human state because they like us that way?

In other words, what if the future of human-AI relationships is they keep us around as house pets?

By the way, I did a google search to see if this idea of mine has occurred to anyone else. Yep, Steve Wozniak said the same thing in 2011, that artificial intelligence would make humanity into pets and there is no way to stop it. I'm not sure I agree there is no way to prevent this from happening.

Still, try this out as a story idea--the robots keep us around for companionship and amusement. Aren't those humans cute? Look at the funny things they do--this one acts like he is really in charge! They are SO fun to play with, even though they do make a mess sometimes--and don't forget how important it is to have your humans spayed and neutered...

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Comments

  1. Andrea GrahamMay 8, 2014 at 5:31 PM

    God inspired me to write about the singularity in the sense you mean it before I had any real grasp of the real world hopes humanists have for it. Definitely dangerous stuff with lots of different potential negative outcomes. It's engineers' job to think of these things, too and design their creations to prevent the negative outcomes, but the arrogance of man and all that. The one I worry about the most is we'd be prone to bow down and worship them. That's where our fears of AIs taking over come from, I think. The right hand *wants* something more powerful and smarter than us to show up and take care of us and the left hand wisely fears our idol would end up destroying us.

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  2. Captain TravisMay 9, 2014 at 7:11 AM

    Andrea, I've wondered before if the image of the Beast spoken about in the book of Revelation is not in fact an artificial intelligence (maybe I'll make a blog post about that sometime). If so, the Bible says the Beast a.k.a. the Antichrist will compel people to worship the image, that is, an Artificial Intelligence...though I do think it possible that people could worship godlike artificial intelligences on their own. Though the way I was imagining it above, people would simply be lazy and stupid and take the free food and play the games they get to play and interact with their owners, most of them not even aware that they are in fact OWNED (just as our pets don't seem to know this), not worshipful, just lazy and uncaring. Mostly anyway--a story would naturally focus on someone well aware of reality and determined to do something about it...

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  3. Andrea GrahamMay 21, 2014 at 8:20 PM

    My series ends before the anti-Christ appears, but he'd probably be an evil AI descendant of the good AI-Man in the series, associated with a government-run computer network that doesn't follow God's rules. Based on the way things are headed in my books, eventually, the international parliament would pass a law requiring everyone to "voluntarily" sign up for a government-run computer service that would put one in a position of getting in line to abandon God's reality for one ruled by the Anti-Christ with "divine" powers, a full-fledged false Christ. Regardless, on compelled, that's consider when the government passes a law requiring you to buy something or not buy something today. Some would've anyway and some wouldn't have anyway, but suddenly everyone is being compelled to do it under threat of something.
    How many people are lazy and uncaring in attitude toward the Christ they claim to worship? O:) Sometimes idolatry looks that way. It's the hardest kind to spot.

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