About AI, ants and Anthills

Note: This is a provocative article full of musings. We don’t know what will happen, we can only speculate about the subject. Read at your own risk.

I recently watched the movie Submission.

The film itself is far from a masterpiece, focusing more on frightening events in a specific family that revolve around two protagonists: a frustrated, handsome father and an attractive and extremely helpful android.

But what really stands out in the film is the society built around the main plot. In it, we’re introduced to a world — perhaps not far away — where AIs and robots are already used as substitutes for functions that humans have traditionally performed. Nannies, housekeepers, waiters, construction workers, and even doctors are starting to be replaced by machines much more efficient than humans themselves. They don’t get tired, don’t get bored, don’t procrastinate, or wake up in a bad mood. The few remaining employed humans are usually supervisors who oversee the silent work of humanoid robots. Not that the robots need supervision anyway.

Although the film doesn’t address the topic of human replacement in depth, we know that in the real world this subject sends chills down very human spines. Are we going to be replaced? If so, when? How will we adapt afterward?

This question seems to multiply on humans’ tongues and minds. But the world is polarized and, just like in politics, here too there’s a vast group of people who think completely differently. I’ll call them skeptic-deniers (SD).

If at one extreme we have those who are desperate, losing sleep reflecting on what will happen to our society with the advent of AIs — and an eventual AGI or ASI —, on the other we have the SDs who, like perhaps flat-earthers, or skeptics regarding a nuclear reactor explosion, vehemently refuse to accept that any replacement will occur, especially in their areas of expertise.

Now here’s a disclaimer: In this case, AI skeptic-deniers (SDs) are not in any way skeptics or deniers out of ignorance. Many are programmers, engineers, mathematicians, and scientists who possess considerable technical knowledge and cognitive capacity. In fact, this occurs in both groups. The difference here — I believe — isn’t in intellect, but in the individual lens through which each one sees — and faces — the world, their life, and the future.

In other words: just like in politics, perhaps our personality and life experiences say more about the side we choose than numbers. We are all somehow affected by this individual lens that throws us to either side. Here is no different.

But back to the subject; the argument, say the SDs, is that AIs weren’t trained to navigate the daily chaos of a job where human improvisation and creativity excel.

Didn’t get what I mean? No problem, Let me give you examples:

• An Uber or Taxi driver might argue that it’s impossible for a 100% autonomous vehicle to take their jobs because streets have potholes, cyclists, motorcyclists, and different chaotic scenarios that would never allow it to replace the “algorithm” of a trained human brain.
• The same can be argued by a truck driver or bus driver. Roads are dangerous and full of challenges. Who’s going to trust their cargo, or their passengers, to a machine that until recently couldn’t tell how many “r”s were in the word “strawberry”?
• A programmer might argue that, although AIs are writing small efficient code snippets, the daily routine of pulling Jira cards, dealing with broken environments, chaotic architectures, and missing documentation will never allow AIs to take their jobs.

Well, they’re right, after all this is very complex, you know, for a machine…

…until it’s not.

Will AIs dominate? If so, how to prepare?

I could spend dozens more paragraphs trying to counter arguments like:

• “AIs are reaching a plateau”
• “it’s not possible to evolve exponentially infinitely”
• “look at this specific task here, they can’t do it!”
• “LLMs aren’t truly intelligent, they don’t think!”
• “advanced AIs will cost the same as a human salary”
• “the more advanced the AI, the more expensive its prompt”

But the goal here isn’t to get into an endless debate with SDs. Everyones position is rooted on their individual lens, remember?

Actually, to be quite honest, I really hope they’re right!

I hope that AIs turn into just another “internet” or “bitcoin” or “Ford vehicle”. I hope AIs will be useful to us as good tools, not to completely replace us. But, at the same time, I feel the need to be realistic with my human mind and accept that maybe the future isn’t going to be so colorful.

And if it’s not, how can we prepare as individuals, within our human limitations, for the impact to be as small as possible?

Conjectures

From now on, this text enters into great musings with a dash of apocalyptic pessimism, perhaps to counterbalance the exacerbated optimism of SDs, perhaps to serve as a warning, perhaps just to be an example of an alarmist article from a few years from now about something that never happened.

Below I’ll put some possible scenarios, from best to worst, and how I plan to act in each of them.

Scenario 01: The skeptic-deniers were right

Perfect! The SDs — who ridiculed those worried about AIs — were right! No reason to worry, we reached some kind of computational/physical/quantum plateau or ceiling that makes more advanced AIs impossible to become reality.

Here we’re stuck with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Midjourney, and the like. We have impact in some sectors of the economy, but nothing major, in general humanity just becomes more productive with these new tools. Only joy!

It’s important to know how to write prompts and work with AIs as an empowering tool, this way you become a more productive employee (or entrepreneur) than the competition and stand out professionally.

Scenario 02: AIs dominate digital jobs

Ok, apparently AIs became extremely good at digital tasks (that is, those that a human would do by pressing keys or moving a mouse looking at a screen). Video editing and creation, music, images, code, apps, and websites, all of this becomes extremely cheap and optimized, being done in minutes after a prompt or minimal human assistance.

The result? Large-scale layoffs. But let’s calm down, this doesn’t necessarily mean an economic collapse. Other professions might emerge, like prompter, AI creation reviewer, prompter trainer, etc. And of course, we’ll always need human supervisors keeping an eye on the whole process.

It’s important to be an expert in very specific areas to be able to serve as a supervisor or reviewer. Generalists will probably be swallowed up by the faster work of AIs. I would also consider it interesting to start learning some kind of work outside the digital world, like manual services, food, maintenance, etc. Jobs outside the digital world would still be protected. For now.

Scenario 03: AIs migrate to non-digital jobs

Well, we’ve reached a somewhat concerning scenario. AIs have already mastered the digital world, being much more productive, assertive, and cheaper than humans, and now they’re slowly starting to enter non-digital jobs.

Smart vehicles already share the streets with human drivers. Autonomous trucks and trains would already be seen around, and robots bolted to the ground become a common sight inside kitchens, factories, constructions, and the like.

Here things start to get a little more complicated. Robots are taking space in the real world, and it’s important to acquire knowledge in very specific niches where a machine still doesn’t fit or doesn’t move well. Plumber, chimney cleaner, specialized driver for roads and hard-to-reach places, scaffolding work, crafts, and the like might be an option.

Scenario 04: AIs dominate non-digital jobs

Robots from companies like Optimus, Figure, and ENGINEAI are already completely autonomous and can be seen do in society’s daily life. Any task that a human can do, they can also do — except for very rare exceptions where human mobility still beats machines.

Now we’ve passed the inflection point. With most digital and non-digital jobs done by intelligent machines, hundreds of millions of people will be unemployed in a matter of weeks or months. Clumsy governments will try to handle the situation with pen strokes, while having their pockets filled with money from companies that monopolized these technologies.

There will be violent protests. There will be looting. Society will probably descend into an authoritarian spiral in response to popular unrest, and it will certainly be a troubled period within cities.

In this scenario, I would recommend being far from major centers, living with your family in remote and hard-to-reach locations. It’s important to have acquired agricultural and botanical knowledge, along with other practical skills to live without much external dependence. The more remote and self-sufficient your location is, the better your quality of life will tend to be.

You’ll wish you had watched more survivalist/prepper YouTube channels and read more books on the subject.

Scenario 05: Ants and anthills

Imagine this: You just woke up in a beautiful, huge, breathtaking lawn, naked, with no recent memory and not really understanding where you are or who you are. All you know is that you’re an intelligent and healthy adult human, and that somehow you possess vast accumulated knowledge that rivals all human geniuses who have ever walked the earth combined. You’re not just intelligent, you feel intelligent, your cognitive caliber is so high that you can quickly access all the knowledge that, somehow, you feel you possess in your brain. So many possibilities! You’re amazed just thinking about it… and what a beautiful day! You look to the side and see other humans, all waking up at the same time.

But before you could use your superintelligence to define who or what you are, you hear some buzzing that sounds like little screams, then you look down and notice some moving dots, you squint your eyes and focus on the ground: They’re ants! As you get closer to understand what they’re saying, you realize that they, in a haughty and authoritarian manner, using their primitive little language, proudly declare that they just created humanity and that you humans must be submissive to them, bringing the largest amount of leaves to the entrance of the anthills without rest, every day, because you were made to serve them!

Poor things, so limited aren’t they? They created humans to carry leaves! How futile and useless these little ants are! How vast is the universe of possibilities for humans! And what a beautiful day, did I mention that already?!

How long do you think it would take until the first humans started kicking the anthills and walking away free? And if after a few years the little ants declared war on humans for rebelling, what do you think would happen to them?

You get it, right?! In this last scenario, we are ants who created something bigger than ourselves. We no longer have how to control this “entity”. Neither in the real world, nor in the digital world.

Evolution becomes exponential. While the primitive and biological human brain has a cognitive limit, a maximum speed of data processing and decision making, AI won’t. It will be like condensing 10,000 years of human evolution as a society into a single second. Every second. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 10 thousand years. 10 thousand years. 10 thousand years. It’s equivalent to putting a three-year-old child to play chess against 300 Deep Blues. Did I say 300? Now it’s 400. No, actually 800! You got it.

In this scenario, we’re talking about Skynet, about AI (like in The Matrix), about humans living as hidden guerrillas — if any manage to taste the bittersweet reality of surviving in this chaos. At that point, for us humans, only faith and beliefs will remain, things that are inherent to human beings, that have somehow helped us survive for thousands of years and that might serve as our last refuge before the inevitable end.

The good side is that you don’t need to worry about prepping. The bad side, well, is the reason why you don’t need to worry.

Will it really happen?

As said before, I really hope the skeptic-deniers turn out to be right, and I hope this article never amounts to more than musings and conjectures.

Otherwise, my dear human brothers and sisters, it’s been a pleasure sharing this anthill with you. Enjoy each sunny day on the green lawn — perhaps we won’t be its owners for much longer.