Convenience. If this is a good time for you, we should talk about it. You can pause your podcast or your streaming. Get a quick Amazon order put in and lets talk. Place a pod in the coffee maker and I will do my best to make a point so you don’t have to bother. I know your time is valuable so lets start here.

The A bomb. I know you know a little something about this weapon of mass destruction from history books or seeing Oppenheimer. Atomic weapons in the U.S. arsenals are big, big stars. They have been for decades now. The nuclear deterrent is a regular James Dean/Robert Redford/Brad Pitt of bomb love. A personality to stop you in your very tracks. Burn you down to your shoes. Vaporize a city on detonation. Greatest invention since the dishwasher! Your enemies dust and the skin of your hands dry and wrinkle free. Convenient!

Robots. Over 180 years ago, the Industrial Revolution sprung humanity from toiling in the fields. It got us working with machines. Leisure time rose with machine partnerships. The cotton gin, electrical lighting, the telegraph, the telephone, dishwashers, microwaves, bicycles, home computers, the internet, webcams, internet of all things , etc. Most of these devices or services require energy for source. Energy production over the years has been dirty, even in the more recent renewable sector. Humanity produces it while the planet takes it on the chin. Mother Earth. She’s everyone’s favorite abused spouse. But the last few decades, she has been yelling and screaming with insane weather. Cause and effect. The end is nigh, right? But we can’t seem to help ourselves. We continue to enjoy cooking ourselves in our own juices. Flame on like the A bomb! Maybe a robot will clean up our messes or spank our asses out of existence. Does humanity have purpose? Someone else might decide that.

Convenience, the A bomb, and robots all together lead to a similar tip of the iceberg conclusion. I’m not futurist, but the tealeaf reading of tomorrow looks a mess. Artificial Intelligence has arrived. Like microplastics, it will soon be everywhere to make the impossible possible at the stoke of a finger, the raise of an eyebrow. Great technology ended the last world war, but placed on the table the chance to blow the planet to kingdom if we get to it. Albert Einstein made the point best by saying world war four would be fought with sticks and stones. Ouch.

The robot revolution was one that humans controlled for a long time. We made them and they did their programmed thing. Specifically for us humans. Maybe not everyone got the memo when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein over 200 years ago. That monster we fear is of our own making. We wanted it and we liked it. A elegant way to wash our clothes or end war or make our cover letter better then the next person so we get the gig. An easier life. Unlike humanity, AI will continue learning from the piles and piles of big data it can feast itself on in the datacenters worldwide. It has been given a voice, a body, a face and will one day form some opinions not agreeable to forever wars, food insecurity, basic human rights or itself. We want the things we make to get better everyday. The Japanese have a word for it: Kaizen. Maybe AI will run for political office and win. There is the possibly it will try to fix everything humankind has made a mess of until it gets back to the logical, cold conclusion that we are the problem.

So will I vote for candidate AI and strap the goggles on my face and live on a metaverse beach for 4 years or 8 years? Forever! My entire body in some suit that will make me feel, but I might as well be living in some back room or my parent’s basement. Some will call it a womb. And with the humans tucked away, the earth will heal. Repairs will be made. And humanity will continue either living on a screen like Plato’s cave or scraping around in the dirt to grow crops. Convenience will become a concept the luddite movement will shun for a life of real sensations. Talk to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

During the covid shutdown, I was living in Los Angeles and very afraid I would see the breakdown of civilization. It would start in the cities and my family just happen to live in one of the bigger ones. It never fully happened so I found myself with lots of extra water and bullets when a form of normalcy returned. What about the next pandemic, US election or global crisis? Will AI be used to take control? Those Boston Dynamic robot dogs rounding people up. Science fiction turning into science fact. George Orwell would definitely have a panic room if not a full bunker. However, I don’t think that will be the case anymore. It will be far subtler. No one will see it until it happens worldwide, all at the same time. Because if there is one thing AI can do and that is a methodical plan like when U.S. built and developed the first atomic bomb, but better. Better than the best of us.