It didn’t come to me all in one “think” but in bits and pieces. It was a slow sort of melding process. First one ingredient and then another and another. Like this…
I was listening to two of our sons discuss the fighting in the world and the power grabbing… Like many people, they both believed that it fed only the top shelf and everyone else suffered. Then one of them said, “To stop it, we’re going to have to have an enemy from the outside… One that causes the entire world to need each other and forget the differences to survive instead of argue and disagree, sort of like Terminator, the movie.” That sentence was step one; and, I tucked it in the back of my brain.
Then I was reading the Bible one night… Revelations to be exact…. Chapter nine, the part about locusts devouring everything. Now locusts could be really big, I thought; as big as the walking tanks from Star Wars. It might actually happen not as a natural event, but built through technology… Giant locust looking tanks that kill and destroy. That was the second thing I tucked away.
The last thing was the movie and book I, Robot. Have you ever read Isaac Asimov’s book? It is compelling. I queried, how will it all end?
From there it occurred to me that we pretty much make our own enemies; We can be our worst personal enemy. Shakespeare said to know ourselves. And, we should; but more often we are all just going day to day, and less and less thinking for ourselves about our surroundings. We let others think for us and busy about with trivial day to day nonsense that at the moment we think is so very important.
So putting it all together made me wonder about how we might create AI (and we do have a start) to the point that we make robots who do as Asimov suggests… But instead of it ending with man in front, man is behind and the AI robots create the locust machines that destroy and “eat” everything. Ergo, the outside enemy that forces us to set aside ALL of our differences ( things like you’re too tall and she’s too short, and they’re to black and she’s too whit, and those are too fat and these are too thin) to rise above this mess. Is that how we start? But after so many hundreds of years concentrating on opinion and prejudices, is the human race ever able to do that without another outside of our box to help? Enter a Savior that comes from a distance that all see arrive because everyone has a cell phone or Ipad or computer or a tech friend. And that is the one who unites the human race against AI tech, humbles us and unity does actually begin.
It was something to think about as I did the laundry and folded the clean clothes.
I guess we will just have to wait and see. From here or beyond. Till then, be well and remember to love and be kind to one another.
May we all always be readers, thinkers, and friends!
Best….
Carolyn Thomas Temple