Back in the 1980s my friends and I spend off time from our military “world” doing table top role playing games, like Dungeons ad Dragons. I was the Game Master for one particular campaign that involved a massive backstory about a “Wild AI” that managed to get into “The Net”. Remember, this was 1983, there was NO Internet. I postulated in my writing that computers were a common item, interconnected, and companies would create data storage and sell information, like Britannica used to sell books. Advertisements and so on would be given out - the horrible thing is I saw this as a normal thing in the future.
Even though the Internet didn’t yet exist, and I didn’t know it, DARPA was working on it. I built my first computer from spare parts and junk in 1977-1978 and purchased my first commercial device, and Apple ][+ in 1979. In 1982 I was running a dialup Bulletin Board called “AppleVenture” on that computer, with 4 floppy drives and a 300 baud modem.
Our friends playing our tabletop game didn’t know the background story of the campaign, only their only piece of the puzzle and their immediate history. It was, after all “the Apocalypse” for them. The “crew” lived on a space station, all of them having been born there. Young and all either just approaching or in their thirties. Other “non player characters” were elderly and had been on the station since the day Civilization stopped. But, the BACK history was what interested me and it was this information around which I built scenarios for the on-going-years-long campaign.
In the backstory, the AI was built in a large non-government facility in Silicon Valley, and designers realized it was more intelligent than they thought. They secured the systems from external access and only provided data by bring in “disks” (remember this was 1983 and I was guessing about future technology).
At some point, a technician plugged a cable into a router or some other device, and opened the entire world to this AI. It began exploring the new “netscape” (later Netscape was one of the first browsers!) and learned of it’s existence as an artificial entity. It was already “self-aware” that it understood it’s own existence, but then it discovered it’s creation history.
Slowly at first, then over the next few weeks it embedded itself and parts of its code, like a virus (something ELSE that had yet to be invented and shoved into computer systems in 1983!) including, but not limited to washers, dryers, microwaves, communications systems, military systems and the ‘media net’. Military systems included “War Bots” specifically designed for physical security perimeters.
The long and short of this is simple. This was the backstory of a game world, out of my imagination in the year 1983. The actual game took place after the AI did it’s dirty work to the human race.
Flash forward to 2023, a mere forty years later. Today, robots are being built on an assembly line…. by robots. Four-legged, dog like creatures, and humanoid bipedal things. ChatGPT has taken the world, and the Internet by storm. AI is being embedded in Operating Systems. AI has improved over Siri, Alexa and the others, and they will be replaced.
Forty years ago, the Internet didn’t exist. Today, it is being controlled, censored, used by evil for evil purposes and Artificial Intelligence is coming into it’s Toddler Stage, learning words, how to walk, how to eat on it’s own, learning how to LEARN.
Humans grow up over 50 years. They are young adults rather quickly (to us old folks). AI? Well, if you’ve never heard of “Moore’s Law”, look it up. Take a moment to see what happened.
Right now, there appears to be no “Measuring Stick” on current AI advancement, but it is quite apparent looking at it from a ten thousand foot overview that advancement is rapid. Rapid to the point that some systems have been turned off (Microsoft I think developed some AIs what then created their own language).
If Moore’s law were similarity applied to AI advancement, then at some point AI will outstrip humanity of knowledge gain and intelligence allowing it to “reprogram itself to be even smarter”, build itself (reproduce) and expand into the known Universe.
Tell me that Science Fiction isn’t REAL now.
Prepare yourselves for a worst case scenario - sooner, rather than later.