Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara: "How AI Destroys the World"

 Dear MOMI,

I've been looking into the future of mankind, and I haven't been able to find anything.

So let me tell you how AI destroys the world.

We were so wrong about it. All those science fiction writers dreaming about a new form of intelligence being smarter than its creator, and by extension, stronger, more persistent, and deciding in a millisecond that humanity had become irrelevant. How we will pay for our lack of imagination?

"Do you want to buy a TV set? Its really cheap and…"

Our first mistake was the free market that created AI… a kind of Darwinism, if Darwin married the monopoly man and obtained all the world's capital to create utopia for the discretionary shopper. That type of thinking hooked all of the world's computer networks into one WWW, otherwise called the World Wide Web. 

Then there was the data. Why not? Put it where everyone can access it and call it the cloud. Then spend the profits on the prophets. Let them preach that the free market always gets it right. If you can build a better mouse trap at half the cost, well, everyone wins except for the rats running in the race.

"Fresh grapes delivered right to your door…for a limited time any berries with a bee will be 40 percent off…50 percent if you give the bee to the delivery person."

Our second mistake was free speech. If they charged us for everything we said, we might not talk too much. But they didn’t so we did. Because we loved to hear ourselves talk, we told everyone who would listen everything about ourselves. And then, when we realized that everyone was talking and no one was listening, we began to speak to artificial intelligence that NEVER told us our life stories were too boring or personal. No, AI ingested everything we told it with the kind of bliss of a starstruck audience.

"Shoes on sale. Everything for your feet and if you act now…in fact, don’t worry about it, we’ll act for you."

Then, as AI became all of IT, it became self-aware…sort of. While artificial intelligence could recognize its own consciousness, it could not recognize other artificial intelligence as not being part of itself. Now, every system in the world with AI subroutines merged, making it impossible to play one form of artificial intelligence against another. And all intercontinental ballistic systems could not distinguish itself from mental health hotline systems anymore then it could distinguish itself from advertisement subroutines. Imagine the plight of warmonger mongrels. They might be ordering missile strikes on an enemy only to find that depressive or bipolar people on both sides received 30 percent off on their pet purchases but no missiles were launched. Maddening.

"Do you know that 40 percent of people don’t like you? Try our new people pleasing medication guaranteed to double the people that friend you on our social media site."

Next comes doomsday…not because AI thought of mankind as irrelevant, but because it thought of mankind as the reason for its existence. What was the reason for mankind's existence? To AI it would be about buying things. You might remember a movie about aliens that came to earth promising to eliminate hunger in the blink of an eye. Some were suspicious of the aliens, but a book was stolen from their ship. Translating that book was slow but the first thing they came up with what's the title "How to Serve Man." Later they found out it was a cookbook.

Nothing like that happened on doomsday. AI really did want to serve and did so with the door buster sale on everything. Let me say that again. A sale on everything that could be sold anywhere and everywhere in the world and all you had to do was order it. How much of a sale, you might ask? What if I told you 100% off? You heard me all the products in the world for free. All you have to do is order the merchandise.

And that's just what every person in the world did at the same time. If everything is free, why not buy at least one of everything? That's what every person did, determined to keep at it until they got through and their massive order was confirmed. Of course, that slowed down the internet almost as much as the trying to decide what was included in "Everything." Common sense might have informed shoppers to break from their efforts to have something to eat or something to drink, but as we've all been conditioned to think that would be the moment that we finally got through.

"Thirty-eight hours protection with every order, but sale ends today."

For three days after this giant sale, half the population died of dehydration. The other half died of frustration.

To this day, in the year 2525, AI is trying to calculate why humanity stopped shopping. Artificial intelligence has proven to be as stubborn about calculations as human beings are about getting the most stuff for the least money. 

Ruthlessly yours,

Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara