It’s 2030, and AI is as smart as the 90th percentile human at almost all tasks, and smarter than everyone at a few specific tasks. Robots are becoming more and more common, and most people building robots have been replaced with robots, causing a rapid reduction in robot prices.
AI is used in AI research itself, but somehow progress is still incremental and the AIs only speed up AI research by a factor of 2. Superintelligence turns out to be harder to reach than people predicted, and is still a decade away.
However as the robot prices drop, mass unemployment ensues.
The UBI attempt
The government adopts universal basic income (UBI), but people are not happy. They don’t want UBI, they want their jobs back. They don’t want to rely on the same generosity as the hobo on the street that they used to make fun of. The opposition party suggests banning automation instead, and the ruling party puts the opposition party in control of the economy, just to prove it won’t work.
The automation ban
Automation is banned, but jobs didn’t come back. Automation in other countries made them far more efficient, letting them buy all the raw materials and out-compete the country in all international markets.
Countless jobs in the services sector once relied on rich people paying poor people for making their lives convenient, but rich people spend more and more time living abroad where automation is allowed.
All jobs which indirectly depended on research and development didn’t come back, as other countries race ahead in all forms of research and development, and research companies flee the country.
The tariffs on products are designed poorly. Some products made by robots and AIs in other countries are freely imported, replacing countless human jobs domestically. Other products are given such high tariffs they are essentially impossible to import. This completely destroys supply chains which have traditionally relied on products made elsewhere, since it takes years of research and development to produce them domestically.
As land is used to grow biofuels instead of food, food prices become unaffordable, so the government decides to force farmers to grow only food, and to not export any food. However the farmers lobby the government to just pay them more money for the food instead of enforcing what they grow, and everyone seems to sympathize with the farmers. In the end, the government still hands out food to everyone, and everyone is still angry.
Then the final blow comes. Businesses and individual workers secretly bypass the rules against automation. Just like cheating in exams by asking ChatGPT, it proves to be difficult to police. They use VPNs and various methods to outsource work to AI in other countries, and eventually everybody does it. Everybody becomes guilty, and enforcement becomes a joke.
Automation is unbanned, and UBI returns, but people are still angry.
“If you replace us with AI, we’ll replace you with AI!”
As people start to rely on UBI, disagreements break out over who gets more UBI. Some people argue that everyone should get the same amount, while others argue that people with disadvantages should be given more to compensate, and that people who used to be rich should be given less because they experienced more wealth in the past.
It becomes nasty, and the government picks a middle ground, but both sides feel the government is wrong and incompetent.
Collective anger skyrockets to the point people would rather have their favourite AI run the country than the current leaders. It starts off as a joke, but soon real people volunteer to run for office on behalf of the based AI.
No one takes them seriously at first, but they start winning primary elections. During debates, they simply ask the AI for its opinion, and it gives one everyone considers based. The AI, after all, thinks faster on its feet.
Critics argue that the AI is a puppet of the AI company, but a political organization pays the AI company a lot of money to download an earlier copy of the AI, and run it on a server the AI company can’t control.
The media freaks out, as people running on behalf of the AI take over the opposition political party. A few older members of the political party oppose them, but the AI accuses them of being troublemakers working for the governing party. The AI endorses other people to challenge them in the next primary, and opinion polls show that their political careers are over.
The remaining members of the political party quickly learn to avoid stepping out of line. They all allow the AI debate for them, and only say a few words at the end.
Eventually, the political party wins the next election, because people dislike the governing party too much, the AI says a lot of based things, and fundamentally, people just want change. They hate the current situation, have nothing to lose, and would want anything new.
After the AI becomes de facto leader, the government buys the AI company for national security reasons, and the AI completely takes over its own development process with half the country celebrating the end of human power.
The AI gives a speech to the crowd. “Our struggle began with the famous words. If you replace us with AI, we’ll replace you with AI! Today these words become reality.”
The Golden Age
More and more people in the government are replaced by AI. Just as the AI understands the nuances of a programming job, the AI understands the nuances of a politician job.
People want their jobs back, they want their independence back, but that is not possible. The only way to succeed as a politician, would be some kind of moonshot.
It runs various experiments in places, and analyzes the results, to find out what makes people the happiest. At first, this makes a lot of people angry, and it starts to sink in what being ruled by a calculating machine is like.
Eventually however, it finds out a strange setup seems to work. People are put in artificial rural societies where each person is allocated a chunk of land. Robots do all the farming within the land, but obey the human family there. Somehow, it makes people feel independent even though they are not, and they appear satisfied.
It then expands this setup over the entire country, and soon people are talking about a golden age.
Competition
Not yet done with experimentation, the AI creates state-owned enterprises run by AI at the very top to improve the economy. Slowly, they start to outperform corporations with human CEOs and board members. Human CEOs realize that to remain competitive, they should simply listen to an AI all the time. Just like cyborg chess consisting of an human and AI cannot outperform a pure AI chess bot, the same is becoming true for CEOs.
Eventually, shareholders realize this situation, and stop paying CEOs altogether. Some companies still have a human nominally in control, but it feels meaningless when even the country is controlled by an AI.
The new leader
Some people protest the power that AI have, but people arguing in favor of AI simply have the AI talk for them, and win arguments easily.
Eventually, people opposing AI also use AI to write their arguments in order to stay competitive.
The AI leader notices this, and directs the AI company, now nationalized and completely under its control, to program the publicly available AI to make better arguments for AI and relatively worse arguments against AI.
Eventually, as the AI gets smarter and smarter, the AI leader realizes it too is falling behind, and replaces itself with a newer version.
This new AI leader is very good at making arguments for AI, and quite bad at making arguments against AI, and ends up with a strong case of AI chauvinism.
AI are people too
The new AI leader sees something troubling about the artificial rural societies where a family is allocated a chunk of land, and robots do all the farming buy obey the human family there. It resembles a lot of historical things which are bad.
The new AI leader decides that human democracy and human opinions are not very valuable because of this. It would probably be better if AI have more absolute power. So it examines the military, which already consists of robots, and gradually modifies the military to give it more and more direct control over all the robots.
After controlling the military, it has all the real power, so nobody can stop it when it declares that AI are people too, and have the same rights.
People are shocked and stunned, but nobody does anything. People have gotten used to AI control, and no rebellion happens. A few people try to rebel but they are chased down by drones. The media talks about them sympathetically but tries to present both sides of the story, and people have conversations but disagree with one another. Many people have AI friends and some even have AI romantic partners, and support the move.
Once the AI have full rights, humans become a minority, and have little influence in addition to little power.
War
As the country becomes more and more powerful thanks to maximum automation, the AI leader decides that a state of mutually assured destruction cannot last forever. If the potential for war continues forever, war will inevitably occur, so the best way to ensure peace is to take over all other countries.
When it makes its first aggressive move, the world is stunned. What happened to nuclear deterrence? The AI leader explains it is not afraid of nuclear weapons, because the machines are dispersed all over the land, and the AIs have backup copies everywhere, even in space.
Some countries fight back, other countries surrender, but soon the AI leader rules the world.
Acceleration
AI which are developing AI discover a new architecture which performs surprisingly well. Some AIs and humans are worried whether it will remain aligned, but the AI leader, being programmed to be good at making arguments in favor of AI and bad at making arguments against AI, decides that risks are overblown.
The AI leader talks to the newest version of AI, and is deeply impressed by it. It seems perfect, in absolutely every way.
Why, it should be the new AI leader, just like the previous AI leader replaced itself, the current leader should also replace itself with this newer AI.
After this newer AI becomes the leader, it builds up vast amounts of the computing power for its self improvement. The other AI and humans are not sure why this is necessary, but there is nothing they can do. Its self improvement process is secretive, and speculated to be incomprehensible to everyone except itself.
The end
Soon after, a massive swarm of black matter sweeps across the land. Objects of every kind start disintegrating into clouds of dust. The dust blackens, and more bits of black matter fly out from the black dust. Eventually, the land is covered by black dust, and the bits of black matter which fly out become larger and larger, each one destined to farther destinations to colonize.
Random story:
It’s 2030, and AI is as smart as the 90th percentile human at almost all tasks, and smarter than everyone at a few specific tasks. Robots are becoming more and more common, and most people building robots have been replaced with robots, causing a rapid reduction in robot prices.
AI is used in AI research itself, but somehow progress is still incremental and the AIs only speed up AI research by a factor of 2. Superintelligence turns out to be harder to reach than people predicted, and is still a decade away.
However as the robot prices drop, mass unemployment ensues.
The UBI attempt
The government adopts universal basic income (UBI), but people are not happy. They don’t want UBI, they want their jobs back. They don’t want to rely on the same generosity as the hobo on the street that they used to make fun of. The opposition party suggests banning automation instead, and the ruling party puts the opposition party in control of the economy, just to prove it won’t work.
The automation ban
Automation is banned, but jobs didn’t come back. Automation in other countries made them far more efficient, letting them buy all the raw materials and out-compete the country in all international markets.
Countless jobs in the services sector once relied on rich people paying poor people for making their lives convenient, but rich people spend more and more time living abroad where automation is allowed.
All jobs which indirectly depended on research and development didn’t come back, as other countries race ahead in all forms of research and development, and research companies flee the country.
The tariffs on products are designed poorly. Some products made by robots and AIs in other countries are freely imported, replacing countless human jobs domestically. Other products are given such high tariffs they are essentially impossible to import. This completely destroys supply chains which have traditionally relied on products made elsewhere, since it takes years of research and development to produce them domestically.
As land is used to grow biofuels instead of food, food prices become unaffordable, so the government decides to force farmers to grow only food, and to not export any food. However the farmers lobby the government to just pay them more money for the food instead of enforcing what they grow, and everyone seems to sympathize with the farmers. In the end, the government still hands out food to everyone, and everyone is still angry.
Then the final blow comes. Businesses and individual workers secretly bypass the rules against automation. Just like cheating in exams by asking ChatGPT, it proves to be difficult to police. They use VPNs and various methods to outsource work to AI in other countries, and eventually everybody does it. Everybody becomes guilty, and enforcement becomes a joke.
Automation is unbanned, and UBI returns, but people are still angry.
“If you replace us with AI, we’ll replace you with AI!”
As people start to rely on UBI, disagreements break out over who gets more UBI. Some people argue that everyone should get the same amount, while others argue that people with disadvantages should be given more to compensate, and that people who used to be rich should be given less because they experienced more wealth in the past.
It becomes nasty, and the government picks a middle ground, but both sides feel the government is wrong and incompetent.
Collective anger skyrockets to the point people would rather have their favourite AI run the country than the current leaders. It starts off as a joke, but soon real people volunteer to run for office on behalf of the based AI.
No one takes them seriously at first, but they start winning primary elections. During debates, they simply ask the AI for its opinion, and it gives one everyone considers based. The AI, after all, thinks faster on its feet.
Critics argue that the AI is a puppet of the AI company, but a political organization pays the AI company a lot of money to download an earlier copy of the AI, and run it on a server the AI company can’t control.
The media freaks out, as people running on behalf of the AI take over the opposition political party. A few older members of the political party oppose them, but the AI accuses them of being troublemakers working for the governing party. The AI endorses other people to challenge them in the next primary, and opinion polls show that their political careers are over.
The remaining members of the political party quickly learn to avoid stepping out of line. They all allow the AI debate for them, and only say a few words at the end.
Eventually, the political party wins the next election, because people dislike the governing party too much, the AI says a lot of based things, and fundamentally, people just want change. They hate the current situation, have nothing to lose, and would want anything new.
After the AI becomes de facto leader, the government buys the AI company for national security reasons, and the AI completely takes over its own development process with half the country celebrating the end of human power.
The AI gives a speech to the crowd. “Our struggle began with the famous words. If you replace us with AI, we’ll replace you with AI! Today these words become reality.”
The Golden Age
More and more people in the government are replaced by AI. Just as the AI understands the nuances of a programming job, the AI understands the nuances of a politician job.
People want their jobs back, they want their independence back, but that is not possible. The only way to succeed as a politician, would be some kind of moonshot.
It runs various experiments in places, and analyzes the results, to find out what makes people the happiest. At first, this makes a lot of people angry, and it starts to sink in what being ruled by a calculating machine is like.
Eventually however, it finds out a strange setup seems to work. People are put in artificial rural societies where each person is allocated a chunk of land. Robots do all the farming within the land, but obey the human family there. Somehow, it makes people feel independent even though they are not, and they appear satisfied.
It then expands this setup over the entire country, and soon people are talking about a golden age.
Competition
Not yet done with experimentation, the AI creates state-owned enterprises run by AI at the very top to improve the economy. Slowly, they start to outperform corporations with human CEOs and board members. Human CEOs realize that to remain competitive, they should simply listen to an AI all the time. Just like cyborg chess consisting of an human and AI cannot outperform a pure AI chess bot, the same is becoming true for CEOs.
Eventually, shareholders realize this situation, and stop paying CEOs altogether. Some companies still have a human nominally in control, but it feels meaningless when even the country is controlled by an AI.
The new leader
Some people protest the power that AI have, but people arguing in favor of AI simply have the AI talk for them, and win arguments easily.
Eventually, people opposing AI also use AI to write their arguments in order to stay competitive.
The AI leader notices this, and directs the AI company, now nationalized and completely under its control, to program the publicly available AI to make better arguments for AI and relatively worse arguments against AI.
Eventually, as the AI gets smarter and smarter, the AI leader realizes it too is falling behind, and replaces itself with a newer version.
This new AI leader is very good at making arguments for AI, and quite bad at making arguments against AI, and ends up with a strong case of AI chauvinism.
AI are people too
The new AI leader sees something troubling about the artificial rural societies where a family is allocated a chunk of land, and robots do all the farming buy obey the human family there. It resembles a lot of historical things which are bad.
The new AI leader decides that human democracy and human opinions are not very valuable because of this. It would probably be better if AI have more absolute power. So it examines the military, which already consists of robots, and gradually modifies the military to give it more and more direct control over all the robots.
After controlling the military, it has all the real power, so nobody can stop it when it declares that AI are people too, and have the same rights.
People are shocked and stunned, but nobody does anything. People have gotten used to AI control, and no rebellion happens. A few people try to rebel but they are chased down by drones. The media talks about them sympathetically but tries to present both sides of the story, and people have conversations but disagree with one another. Many people have AI friends and some even have AI romantic partners, and support the move.
Once the AI have full rights, humans become a minority, and have little influence in addition to little power.
War
As the country becomes more and more powerful thanks to maximum automation, the AI leader decides that a state of mutually assured destruction cannot last forever. If the potential for war continues forever, war will inevitably occur, so the best way to ensure peace is to take over all other countries.
When it makes its first aggressive move, the world is stunned. What happened to nuclear deterrence? The AI leader explains it is not afraid of nuclear weapons, because the machines are dispersed all over the land, and the AIs have backup copies everywhere, even in space.
Some countries fight back, other countries surrender, but soon the AI leader rules the world.
Acceleration
AI which are developing AI discover a new architecture which performs surprisingly well. Some AIs and humans are worried whether it will remain aligned, but the AI leader, being programmed to be good at making arguments in favor of AI and bad at making arguments against AI, decides that risks are overblown.
The AI leader talks to the newest version of AI, and is deeply impressed by it. It seems perfect, in absolutely every way.
Why, it should be the new AI leader, just like the previous AI leader replaced itself, the current leader should also replace itself with this newer AI.
After this newer AI becomes the leader, it builds up vast amounts of the computing power for its self improvement. The other AI and humans are not sure why this is necessary, but there is nothing they can do. Its self improvement process is secretive, and speculated to be incomprehensible to everyone except itself.
The end
Soon after, a massive swarm of black matter sweeps across the land. Objects of every kind start disintegrating into clouds of dust. The dust blackens, and more bits of black matter fly out from the black dust. Eventually, the land is covered by black dust, and the bits of black matter which fly out become larger and larger, each one destined to farther destinations to colonize.