“Now I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Hollywood has a way of imagining the future in a way that is both fun and also deeply frightening. From “Star Trek” we imagined flip communicators although we call them cell phones now.
The newest crop of whippersnappers have dutifully informed me (an ancient crone) that they are actually less “cellular” and really just “phones” now but old habits die hard among my age group.
The “Jetsons” imagined video calling (hello FaceTime). “Star Wars” had drones. There are many other examples where fiction has come to fruition. Now we are in the infancy of Artificial Intelligence in the hands of the masses and it really does beg the question: HAS NO ONE SEEN THE “TERMINATOR” MOVIES? “2001 Space Odyssey”? Anyone? HAL 9000 is literally written to serve as a horrible warning.
Takeover. This is the ultimate irony. We’re worried about Big Brother watching us and Skynet taking over while our computers are spinning into a frenzy just trying to open a shared Word document. This makes me think that an AI “takeover” would probably be less of a Hollywood robot war and more of a series of minor inconveniences we have lost the ability to endure.
I’m not saying AI cannot crack warfaring launch codes, I’m counting on the normal progression of things when anyone on a deadline approaches a computer. The computer senses your need, smells fear and immediately goes into the throes of a mandatory Windows Update right at go time.
At this point, the entire universe will be saved because Barb in accounting does not have TIME for this nonsense and performs a hard reboot despite what Chad in the IT department keeps trying to tell her. There WILL be a sternly worded email cc:ing EVERYONE about this.
In other news, perhaps AI will attempt to take over the government, lose the Wi-Fi connection and just give up because the entire script for world domination is stored in an Amazon server that just went down.
I would like to think we will at least buy some time with a poorly executed yet deviously effective captcha defense. Oh how I loathe a coded security step. I believe humanity ultimately survives because the AI master mind can’t fool anyone into thinking it isn’t a robot by clicking on all the squares containing “traffic lights” or “things with wheels.”
Jokes on us though, I feel like robots might be better than humans at this. I fail these at least half the time and I am fairly certain I am NOT a robot. Not a good one anyway. I feel like a robot version of me would have a MUCH better memory.
Let’s be honest, a good portion of the time a simple search feature cannot even find the email I labeled, filtered and dutifully saved. If AI cannot retrieve a Macy’s coupon email from last week, am I really supposed to believe they can locate government secrets? With any hope, AI will actually send the Terminator to a defunct office that closed years ago because the data hasn’t synced and no one claimed the Google My Business listing to notify the internet that that location is no longer in service.
All of this to say that I keep hearing that AI is going to take over the world one day. I disagree. It won’t be ChatGPT, Gemini Siri, or some other form of programmed superintelligence. It will be autocorrect that takes us down.
Autocorrect has already gaslit me more times than Siri or Google ever has. Suffice to say that texting a friend that you appreciate their “friendship and support” being autocorrected to “fried shrimp and support” is both hysterical and can seem kind of demanding if they weren’t already planning to bring you dinner. If the super intelligence that is going to take over the world can’t fathom that most people never mean “ducking” when they type quickly, I think we are probably safe from AI domination … for now.
Autocorrect already changes what we say, argues with us silently and sometimes replaces normal words with complete nonsense. On some occasions, it really does behave like HAL 9000 with a keyboard. I will type something completely normal and it swaps in a word I never use. Worse, it then acts like I’m the one who went off script. I’m a pretty great speller so this feels less like assistance and more like quiet sabotage sometimes. Autocorrect has consistently misspelled my name and that of GirlWonder for over a decade now. At some point it may be easier to just lean into it and change how we spell our own names.
