We currently live in a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) has daily advances. We are at a stage, myself included, where AI has become a part of our daily lives to help increase productivity and manage multiple and laborious tasks. I subscribe to a YouTube channel called TheAIGRID and almost every day there is a video about some advancement or update in the world of AI. I also follow some AI enthusiasts/pundits on X (formerly Twitter) and it is the same with daily updates.

AI is being utilised by almost every industry and, believe it or not, even the sex trade is already fully entrenched with AI. My eldest brother Kwesi, who lives in New York City, shared an article with me about a sex robot brothel in Japan which followed similar openings in Russia, Spain, and Italy.

I also recently learned of the rise of “companion programs” powered by AI, that allow users to input data to simulate conversations with friends and loved ones that have passed away. As someone who has lost their father, and more recently mother and other close friends and family, I could not even imagine being able to cope with such a scenario emotionally. Playing back voicenotes that my mother sent me before she passed is so hard, much less to immerse myself in a scenario in which I am actually “talking” to her. To each his own, though, right?

Implications

Will we lose our jobs? Will we be replaced and/or substituted? Will the machines take over? These are all questions being hotly debated over the world. If you were to set an open Google Alert and subscribe to receive publications on ‘The fears and dangers of AI’, your inbox would be like a tsunami!

In terms of the job question, I read an article in which the author essentially said that people won’t lose their jobs to AI, the people who don’t adapt by learning to use AI/AI tools are the ones that will lose their jobs. A headline I read said: ’10 ways artificial intelligence is changing the workplace, from writing performance reviews to making the 4-day workweek possible’.

Conversely, there are already reports internationally (particularly in the US) of people losing their jobs to AI, where another headline read: ‘I lost my job to ChatGPT and was made obsolete’ or ‘I was out of work for 3 months before taking a new job passing out samples at grocery stores’. The debate is far from black and white and has the entire spectrum of the colour wheel.

Already we see people opting for intimate connections with AI and striking up ‘relationships’. AI already has the ability to flirt, give compliments, etc. Many people have great challenges with social interactions and forming connections of any kind with other humans, and this has certainly provided these individuals with a much easier pathway to relationships and managing them. In the movie The Stepford Wives, husbands replaced their wives with compliant robots.

There are obvious emotional and psychological risks, and close to home within the Caribbean Community, even the Jamaica Psychological Society has been seriously discussing AI, based on a recent newspaper article I read. However, I think some positives can come from AI that can simulate conversations. These types of simulations can help the same people who have problems interacting and forming connections to practise for real conversations with humans; they can also help persons to prepare for things like interviews and presentations and such. We must never lose ourselves to technology; however, we must utilise technology (carefully) for advancement.

Will we see the dawn of the likes of Skynet, the AI antagonist in Terminator — the movie which inspired this little article’s headline — where AI advanced to the level of taking control and making military advances/strikes against humankind. Look no further than today’s Ukrainian and Russian conflict. One British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) headline read: ‘Ukraine rapidly expanding its ‘Army of Drones’ for front line’. The current conflict has supercharged talks about the application of AI for military use, and already heralded are days soon to come when machinery powered by AI will fight wars instead of humans.

I started to write this article on Emancipation Day (2023) and I wonder if we have to worry about a future like in The Matrix, where human beings are unconsciously enslaved and become the fuel that AI uses to power things. These things, these possibilities, are hopefully very far away! For now, we need to future-proof ourselves by being aware and learning what we can where AI and advancing technology is concerned. We must be prepared and start preparing our children now for the different scenarios that may play out.

I can half-jokingly imagine myself,, like so many movie characters I’ve seen, as the father (I have two boys) who has been training his children for an invasion everyone said would never come. I risk being written off as crazy, until that invasion comes, and then I get to tell everyone that I told them so.

It is better to be prepared than to be caught off guard. Science-fiction has long prepared us for what has become and is rapidly becoming science fact! I love to mention in these types of conversations an image I saw on the Internet of a bookstore that had a sign in the window: “The science fiction section has been moved to current events.”

If the machines do indeed take over, as AI and technology are already intertwined and entrenched in daily life, then like protagonists John Connor (The Terminator) and Neo (The Matrix), we will have to fight for our emancipation and will have to promulgate a second Emancipation Day when we attain victory.

Nicholas McDavid is a Creativity Consultant with a track record of advising companies, brands and individuals on how to do things more creatively, as well as helping them to manage and execute a wide variety of creative initiatives and projects. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or nicholas.mcdavid@gmail.com.