We’re Creating Our Own Overlords

This is part two of a set of reports on where exactly these artificially intelligent digital assistants are taking society in the very near future.

Ever heard of the “conscious home”? A “smart home” looks stupid by comparison.

As computers become more integrated into people’s decision-making processes and into their lives period, and as people become more and more intimate with these devices and what personal data we share, it’s being suggested not just in fiction films like “Her” where a man falls in love with his operating system but in actual reality – and there are some studies with chatbots to back this up – that people will eventually fall in love with their AI which will also become an assistant, a friend, and a parent.

This sounds insane at first, but think about it – sophisticated algorithms are being created to ensure the AI will know more about a person than they probably know about themselves, let alone what any spouse or significant other ever could.

The generation of children born in 2010 or later are actually being referred to as “Generation Alpha” in a very “Brave New World” kind of way. What sets these kids apart is most of them, especially in the developed world, will never know a time without ubiquitous smart phones and smart assistants. That will just be the normal way of their world.

And while many of us may look at the smart horizon and go, yeah no, there’s no way I’m putting all of these cameras and sensors and “smart” assistants in my house and spying on myself 24/7 so I can live in some kind of convenient Orwellian digital panopticon, you can see how, eventually, later generations will think it was silly to ever live in a time where that wasn’t the case.

Society is being programmed to not just trust but irrevocably merge their lives with these machines.

This will change us.

Patents

US Patent Application 2017/0323645 A1 Keyword Determinations from Conversational Data
US10276188B2 Systems and methods for identifying human emotions and/or mental health states based on analyses of audio inputs and/or behavioral data collected from computing devices
US9998803B2 Generation and implementation of household policies for the smart (read: conscious) home

Part one: The Infallible AI “Oracle” and the Future of “One Shot” Answers