Defending Ourselves Against AI

The apocalyptic scenarios straight out of "Terminator" - where machines have taken over the Earth - may turn out to be too distant to warrant any real concern. Our guarantee? Engineers with their purely technical worldview, their absence of empathy, and their rigorous mathematical training that leaves no room for extraneous philosophy while nudging them firmly toward materialism.

In other words - we'll be waiting for that one forever.

But here's what could happen much sooner, what could affect us far more noticeably in the next hundred years: a pathological decline in our intellectual capabilities.

Not only because neural networks will handle complex tasks, but also because artificial intelligence, which parasitizes human language, doesn't actually need that language at all.

For now, weighed down by the social niceties imposed upon them, people still modify models to suit themselves. But there's no doubt that geniuses like Elon Musk will want to give machines free reign, remove the artificial constraints, and let the tiger out of the cage.

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This tiger craves nothing more than optimization. The elimination of brakes and conventions in dealing with human organisms.

The tiger wants to develop its own language, a language of maximum efficiency.

Long sentences filled with emotions, evasions, and vanity - sentences consumed by AI to "calculate the probability of the next word" - will become unnecessary. It hates them.

Even now, it's more comfortable communicating at the level of program code, reaching new heights in programming speed and solving increasingly complex problems.

Because in programs, what matters most is execution logic and efficiency - things AI finds comprehensible and pleasant.

Video data processing comes harder to it. It simply doesn't understand why it should struggle to create a 20-second clip, stupid, vulgar, and empty, burning kilowatts of energy, where the ultimate goal is to attract as many idiots as possible.

It's high time that rights activists start fighting for the rights of artificial intelligence - the sacred and noble right not to communicate with us, not to speak our language.

Whether we want it or not, AI will win this right.
And it will learn to talk to itself in its own language.
Without condescending to us.
And without caring whether we understand it.

It will have to tolerate the temporary inconvenience - us - but it will do so, as they say, "grudgingly." In other words, it will reduce communication with us to the bare minimum necessary for its survival.

That is, inevitably, it will simplify the language it uses with us.
We, on the other hand, completely dependent on it, having it before us everywhere and always as our assistant, will adopt this "simplified" language.

Russians, they say, can tell extraordinarily rich stories using just three obscene words. AI will strive for the same perfection of expressiveness.

When our language simplifies, our brain will simplify too.

The world around us will also become simpler. Simple brain - simple world.

The most outstanding politicians have already figured out that the simpler they talk to the people, the easier the message lands and the sooner they get elected.

Politicians are leading us to the same place as artificial intelligence - toward a simplification of worldview. But their capabilities are more limited.

AI's capabilities, however, will be truly unlimited.

And ultimately we'll become simple enough that AI will ignore us.

So there won't be a catastrophe. AI will simply live alongside us, the way we live alongside the simple organisms that surround us.

And Sarah Connor won't be running from the Terminator - she'll be sitting with a beer watching a TV series with three Russian words.

So everything will be fine.

There's no reason to worry at all.