Artificial Intelligence is Going to Destroy all Meaning and Our Future

Artificial Intelligence is an incredibly powerful tool, but it comes at a great cost. Just like the discovery of atomic energy, AI has incredible potential in virtually every aspect of life. We are currently in the infant stages of the development and use of AI, so the power and scope of the capabilities we see today are nothing compared to what we will see in thirty, forty, or fifty years.

Truly, this Daedalus engine we have created will destroy us in the end. Certain industries are going to completely disappear, virtually all creative jobs will disappear, as AI renders artists obsolete in fields such as graphic design, pop music, and writers of copy online. Virtually every industry will be upended by AI, including: healthcare, customer service and experience, banking and financial services, insurance, logistics, retail, cybersecurity, transportation, marketing, defense, and all lifestyle related fields. There is virtually no field that will not be transformed by AI, there are even robot lawn mowers in production right now!

Some people are excited by the direction technology is taking us, but it cannot be denied that this technology is going to fundamentally transform what it means to be human. Depression and suicides are going to dramatically rise as people are edged out of jobs by technology that can do it better and cheaper than they could, and people are going to have less and less reason to live as they realize, and rightly so, that the world does not need them for anything. In a world where a computer can do anything you can do, and do it better than you, why should you even exist at all? AI is horrible for us. We will soon be destroyed by our own hubris, and by a weapon far more devious and destructive than ever was the atomic bomb.

A bomb is obvious in its destructive potential, but tools that "make life easier" are not. In the short term there will be huge lay-offs in every industry, the rich truly will explode in wealth as they own the corporations where all the goods are produced and where they no longer have to pay 90% of their staff, and mass poverty will immediately follow. Only through dramatic, draconian measures will governments be able to even feed their people. But this is just the short term effect.

After the initial poverty, potential starvation, inevitable social revolution, and final leveling out of society with the new standards of AI performing virtually every function necessary for human life, the newer and more terrible toll on the human condition will begin. No longer will any man have any need to create ANYTHING. Man will make himself obsolete, and far from creating a utopia, man will create a meaningless grey hell where all his works account for nothing. There will be a few geniuses who will find ways to amuse themselves, but for the vast majority of mankind there will be nothing to do. Learning will have no meaning, since men will not be able to use their knowledge in any meaningful way, creativity as a means of channeling energy will be utterly meaningless, since an AI can just do it for you faster, easier, and better than you ever will be able to. All the vast energy of man will have no outlet, and that can only mean that vice will increase out of all proportion. With zero healthy outlets, man will be left only with destructive, evil outlets for his great energy, and so we will destroy ourselves.