Synthetic Stories

Not only is the story chilling, so is the concept. As I listened, it made me wonder what would happen if (when?) AI becomes uncontrollable. When it starts infecting our devices with apps or other viruses that we can’t remove, all to control us or serve its endgame. Each day, with each Google search, each Alexa/Siri query, each liked post, each photo taken and shared, information about us is being collected and stored. Someday, all that information will quite possibly be the nourishment that fuels the great AI beast. My whole life, the idea that computers would someday “take over” seemed laughable and so sci-fi. More recently, jokes about saying “thank you” to Alexa so that “she” would be kind to you once that day of reckoning happened don’t seem so funny anymore. So was this podcast scary? Yes. In more ways than one might imagine.