Artificially intelligent. Robots taking over the world. Our lives changing forever, your life in their hands. Big brother taking control of the wheel, building the car and taking you for whatever journey they fancy. You are out of control, like Trump out for a morning stroll, spitting nonsensical rubbish out into the world, creating chaos, firing shots all over the place just to see what happens, shooting them so they just fly past ears, surface wounds. Just a few centimetres from a different world; the fallibility of humans. AI will take the strain although trains will still probably run late, be cancelled, smell of the 1970s: Comfort, sweat and piss. The perfect world built around AI will never exist. People will still be sheltering under bridges, wrapped in stinking old blankets, comforted by Blue Nun or other such fortified wine. Our computerised intelligent friends will make many jobs redundant, those menial tasks that some people probably enjoy. Fiddling around with a spreadsheet, using mental arithmetic, digging deep into school history lessons to remember dates of lesser-known wars. The Boer wars, when were they again? Time will exist to pop more regularly to the gym, to go out for midday walks whilst your bot collates every element of your business into a streamlined project management proposal. Us humans left to ponder, to be artistic, creative. So why then are multiple governments defunding the arts, when understanding our creative selves is going to be a key element of the next 100 years. By 2099 the average life span will be 150 years old, frail bodies reconstructed, minds connected to mainframes, town centres overpopulated with electric zimmer frames and silent non-polluting vehicles. Healthcare transformed, early warnings for the previously terminally ill. Street corner smokers replaced by electronic transmitters. No one dies. Graveyards get turned over to be used as spaces to house mega computers. Chips implanted into babies at birth, regulating every last internal element, checking dietary requirements from within. Providing a smart watch readout, regulating everything so that you can maximise productivity and life. Serendipity disappears. We are all under central control. Tik Tok memes a quaint remembrance from the past like grainy black and white film. Everything is sanitised. Life is perfect. More people are stacked up under the bridges, freezing, washed away by yet another deluge as ice caps melt. What is AI going to do for and to us? But what is the overall ethos? What is the point? Increased efficiency. No more potholes in the road as AI can gather this data and put repairs into action, robotic teams laying steaming tarmac whilst one human worker looks on from central control. One human worker oversees all potholes, shuffling to monthly line management meetings with his robotic boss. Lines of driverless cars waiting patiently for the green light, no horns are blared, the world is silent except for the incessant sounds of nature and the unromantic whirring of machines; a chance to make music and write poetry whilst sat in early morning traffic. Planning vacations where electric planes can silently deliver you to picture perfect locations; all is clean and sanitised now, the madness of Varanasi no longer existing, pushing past cows in the streets as bodies burn by the dirty rivers edge. No gritty industrial estates, bleak and foreboding windswept arenas. But inequalities will remain, the human desire for separation and difference. Sanitised AI worlds only existing for a few not the many. Those lucky to have been born into AI families, those fortunate Gen Z whose long line of families bought property cheaply during the 1970s and 80s. Will AI really change that much for the general population, like watching the BAFTA’s, lots of suited and booted mega stars on your screens, talking about inequalities, talking about creativity, still a load of old white men in boring evening suits congratulating other white men in equally anonymous attire. Hopefully AI can help to bring some levels of equality rather than just efficiency, provide opportunities and visibility for all. Reconfigure the workplace so that everyone’s talents are maximised, that life work balance, universal wage and true equality arrives for all.
