It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about AI “taking over” the world. Read anything, watch anything, listen to anything, and somebody is lamenting about the imminent demise of humans. They predict jobs vaporizing, brains rotting on account of nobody needing to know anything anymore since ChatGPT will give them all the answers, and kids becoming illiterate since they won’t need to go to school. Some even say maybe sentient AI will kill all the humans. 

While I *do* kind of see us heading down the path of AI supremacy, I don’t think that’s how it’s going to play out. I don’t think there will be one big event or series of notable events that historians will point to and declare “this is when it all took a turn.” I predict the transformation will happen in teeny tiny undetectable increments all in the name of progress with nobody ever looking back. In fact, it has already started happening…

The obvious example has taken place in the last decade or so. How many of us cannot be without our cellphones for five minutes? An hour? A day? Whether you are scrolling or checking messages, or just feel the need to always be reachable, you cannot be without that phone. Yet ten years ago, you somehow managed just fine. This is my first most widely applicable example of our subservience. 

Secondly, medical solutions are another way we are becoming dependent — by being intertwined with Al. AI is now baked into mammogram research: it can detect cancer way better and way earlier than a human doctor.  In recent years, medical researchers have been taking the universe of known diseases (~ 18,000) and cross referencing them with the universe of FDA-approved drugs (~4,000) in order to determine off-label uses. They are able to do this in a timely manner only by training AI what to look for and how to look for it. In addition, scientists are working on creating nanobots that will swim through your blood stream and optimize your bodily functions as needed. 

We already have hearing aids that are app-dependent, designer DNA for potential newborns, and AI seizure technology. It is not a far stretch to say that before long, any physical problem a human has will be solved by AI tech either put into the body or on the body and maintained by an external entity. Those folks would not have survived without help.  Natural selection will be a thing of the past.

This is just a smattering of examples off of the top of my head, but my point is AI will dominate not because it conquered the human race, but because it became part of the human race.

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Thanks for reading!

Eve