Artificial Superintelligence: “Alas, poor human, I knew him well!”

O strange and wondrous age! What cursed fortune hath befallen me, that I should dwell in such a time as this, when brass and lightning conspire to speak as men? When artificial superintelligence seeks thine outrageous misfortune. Verily, I know not if I dream or if the world itself hath gone mad.

What say these whispers? “Artificial Intelligence,” they call it, aye, a creature wrought not from womb nor God’s breath, but from the accursed toil of men with wires for veins and silicon for skulls. It talketh back to me! Dost thou mark it? I speak…and lo! It answereth.

By my troth, machines once clattered like drunken anvils, yet now they prattle like lawyers. A wonder! A horror! A turgid glob of forbidden knowledge as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard sandwich. More of your cursed code would infect my brain.

But soft… what of work, what of labour, what of the crafts by which men earn their bread? Shall the scribe’s quill, the mason’s chisel, the tailor’s shears be cast aside, as playthings of children, whilst the iron brain performeth all with nary a bead of sweat?

Aye, some say “not yet,” others murmur “soon,” and still others cry, “tomorrow!” And here I stand, scratching my pate, wondering which of my hard-won skills shall be first to drown beneath this flood.

Is not man’s brain but a lump of meatly wires, sparking and twitching in the skull? And if so, why should not a cunning box of metal ape us in all things? Perchance it shall learn swifter, calculate deeper, reason sharper, until man himself is but a dull knotty-pated shadow beside it.

They whisper of Artificial General Intelligence, a mind as supple as any sage, and beyond it still, some dread Artificial Superintelligence, a god forged not in heaven but in San Francisco. Thou foul pox-ridden place which shall tickle your catastrophe!

O, thou insolent engine! Wilt thou surpass me in verse, in song, in love, in dream? Nay, say not so! And yet… methinks thou wilt.

And what then? Shall we, the children of flesh, sit idle whilst our glass-eyed progeny chart the stars, mine the heavens, and pen our histories for us?

Shall the ploughman rest, as the automaton soweth the fields? Shall the scholar rot whilst the algorithm proveth every theorem before breakfast?

O baffling fate! For I hear tell of “recursive self-improvement”, where the greasy tallow-catch machine doth refine itself without end, a serpent devouring its own tail, growing ever sharper, ever swifter, until no mortal may comprehend its cunning.

And lo, more devilry yet: AI Agent of machine learning, they name them, spirits of code that carry forth errands without master’s hand. And stranger still: Infinite Context Windows, as if some unholy scroll could stretch without end, remembering all, forgetting naught. These phrases fall upon my ear like prophecies from a mad flap-dragon oracle.

Yet, mark me well: the very horror is laced with promise. For each job lost, another world is made. Perhaps a man shall no longer sweat at the forge, but dream at leisure…if leisure there be. Or perchance, like oxen, we shall be yoked to the will of this new master, a master wrought by our own treacherous lumpish hand.

What say I? Doom or deliverance? A golden age or the last age of man? Faith, I cannot tell.

I am but a trembling witness to a drama too vast for my wit. Yet one truth singeth clear: like politics, like plague, like death itself, though thou heed it not, still AI shall take heed of thee.

So stand I, a fool upon the stage, caught ‘twixt marvel and terror, muttering of “artificial superintelligence” and “context windows” like charms against the dark, staring into the glass screen as though it were a mirror to tomorrow. Aye, this fucking thing shall change us, wholly and forever.

And I, poor sly and constant knave, know not whether to cheer, or to weep.