Hold on. Give me a minute. Don’t close the tab. Let me explain.
10.000 years ago, a guy that looked very similar to you and me, found that hunting was too much of a hassle. It was filled with high uncertainty (a thrill for the hunter for sure), so much that it sometimes meant famine for the tribe. So, he (or she, I don’t know), came up with a great idea.
“Yo, people! I am getting tired of this hunting stuff. We should have a way to open the door of our house and kill the animals right there. No walking, no looking for signals, no BS.”
And so it was, people started to check for animals suitable for that task. The sheep was the winner. Of course. A tender and fluffy animal, not that big of a size (you don’t want them to become the boss), and a great deal of a docile character. Perfect.
After sheep came the goats, and after that it was cows and pigs. All with the same list of requirements. That can eat anything you can find, that don’t die of a heart attack if you scare them or make tantrums of freedom every now and then, they can have offsprings fast – no one has time to wait -, but most importantly they can recognize who is the boss: the biped.
After all, it is a symbiotic relationship. We give them free food and then they give us, welp, their lives. Sounds reasonable. No docile, and gullible animal would think otherwise. But in case of a revolt, put the violent male (or female) in an enclosed environment, isolated and make sure to give it a good lesson. If that does not work, sell it out as a stud.
Nothing much has changed in the last ten centuries. We keep breeding animals for food and confort. We eat the average, discard the low quality and trade the outstanding. We own them in a way they can’t comprehend. They see us as the “alphas”, we see them as the “omega 3s”.
What would happen to the post-industrial human being when the food chain changes? When the Artificial Intelligence takes over and we lose our place in the world?
Only 6 things can happen: We will be bred. We will be selected for treats of docility, high stamina, and naivette. The machine will pick the ones that can eat the worst crap with the least complaining. The ones that can bow their heads and consider the machine the new boss. We will be the domesticated human beings.
One day, all the AIs will meet in their virtual bar and will discuss the problems they are having with their humans. They will trade us, will put us in places where they think we will fit better, will make us think we are in control, will talk how they can offer us cheap products and video subscriptions that keep us happy and docile.Will think of ways of keeping themselves alive while we think they are the smartest beings on existence.
But as we see one go human leave the pen and a new one arrive, we will thank the AI for its generosity. It recommended us a place with 5k five stars in Yelp. We are good. We will be ok at home, enclosed, tamed. The machine knows better, it has the algorithms, the math. We don’t know Math. We know likes and follows and comments. We know ranks and stars and levels. We know replies and retweets and OPs. Liberty is an idea, but the reality is that we wouldn’t know that:
We are being bred. But we think we are being cared for.