I TOLD YOU AI WAS EATING US!

Ok, so I’m writing today back on my AI soap box, and apparently to plan for the next three years.
This week, a former Anthropic employee was everywhere he could find a damned camera, telling the world he believed, without serious interventions, in three years - we’ll all be dead.
It reminds me of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom where a federal official goes on with Will McAvoy and said the world is doomed because of global warming. Will tries to move him to a place of optimism and the man won’t budge, giving the world 10 years at best.
So apparently now we have three years worst case, but a decade as a best case scenario.
I just want to go on record as saying I’ve been bitching about AI for more than a year. You can point at your screen now and say, “Yep, he has.”
I told you so.
But, at the time I was just ticked off because people were using it as gospel and giving up on their own creativity – a suffocation of cranial expansion. We don’t have a genuine idea so we go to the binary world of autonomous intelligence to create our flyer; or find out how best to run four miles in an hour;  or what makes the best chocolate chip cookie recipe.
I think I even wrote at one point, NO, WAIT! - I did write at one point, AI was eating the world.
Well, now this cute little Harry Potter looking dude just confirmed what I thought – and wrote.
We’re all gonna die.

So, to that end, I think I’m going to switch my finances to cash, because it would take nothing for AI to drain my bank account, which is already drained because it costs a fortune to run a small business.
I need to install a propane tank in the backyard as a backup for the natural gas grid when AI shuts it down because someone made it mad by trying to take away its access to the Internet. By the by, that didn’t work either. Google it.
I need to put a 500-gallon gasoline tank in the backyard - and my backyard isn’t that big - to fire up the new generator I’ll have to install to make sure that I have power when AI disrupts the nation’s electrical grid.
Then I need to electrify my ‘fence-that-makes-good-neighbors’ - fence so no one tries to jump over it and steal my gasoline, or my propane, or my generator.
The cash would also be used to upgrade the F150 with a large metal grate on the front and bulletproof glass so when I have to drive to NYC to get my daughter and possibly a boyfriend, I will be able to fend off the riff-raff that will be trying to steal everything on the way. And I’ll need an extra gas tank in the back to fill up so I don’t have to stop at the gas stations on the way, where I’ll assuredly run into ‘bots that are there to protect and serve. Of course, I could use some of the cash to pay off the riff-raff that want to steal anything, but that would quickly run out, so yeah. I’ll need some weaponry. And you may not be able to pay off a ‘bot because they have all your money anyway.
Of course, this is satire because I’m in a satirical mood. I want to write the damn news, but everything is so entrenched in non-disclosure that transparency is a thing of the past. Do you know that more than 25% of Americans, according to a recent Poynter study, don’t believe in a free press anymore?! I know that’s probably true just from the stuff I catch every now and then on Pen City Current social media posts.
But I don’t really blame them. In news’ heyday, we didn’t wait for permission. We fact checked, double checked, and then went to press. But that’s when he had newsrooms full of people to assist in all that work. Someone calling to confirm facts, someone proofing those facts, and someone backing them up. Then everyone advertised in the newspaper because it’s where all the legitimate stuff came from. It was a damn good system.
Whoooosh. In a sniff it’s all gone. Now it’s just people like Lee and I at PCC with no staff other than a top-notch sports writer, my boss, and some interns who do all they can when they can. I ran a bad headline for about 20 minutes Thursday night because there was so much on my plate I got the boys and girls Central Lee Hawks cross country team, which are really pretty good right now, mixed up.
The point is this. I’m getting cranky. We’re not going to be dead in three years because people are good. We’re freakin’ greedy as hell, but inherently we’re good, and I believe in that. If it’s not too late, we can turn the heat down on this AI thing, if someone hasn’t already built a binary back-door. But it’s a premonition of things coming. And that’s comparable, if not absolutely related to, the demise of the American news product. Far fewer of us are watching what’s going on. And those of who are still trying to watch what’s going on, are also the one’s out shooting ribbon-cuttings, and reporting on HTCs volleyball juggernaut, and telling stories that need to be, and should be, told.
So keep the faith. We’re not going to die, the government’s on the case. But you might want to horde a little cash – but that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.