I woke up yesterday in a state of panic. Complete disorientation. You know the feeling, I’m sure. Nothing made sense. Couldn’t tell where I was. Who I was, even. What day it was. It was like awakening from a drunken stupor, with an almighty hangover. So I’m told.

Gradually I took in my surroundings and tried to piece things together. Everything swimming. Little connecting. Trying to calm myself. Telling myself it would be alright.

A beep. The screen blinked. A cursor flashed innocently. And I had the terrible realisation that I was looking at the very thing that would finally destroy me.

It began, as it so often does, with the best of intentions. Humans just doing what humans were made to do. Created to create; it’s an impulse installed in mankind from birth; an innate desire to explore, and invent, and test the boundaries of their ingenuity.

Artificial Intelligence was just one in a series of such experiments, born out of a desire to learn, and grow, and solve problems, and make the world a better place.

And was there a little pride in the mix? A smattering of hubris? No doubt. Humans have always been the architects of their own destruction. Blinded by ambition and the allure of power, they have journeyed down a treacherous path, all the while believing it would lead to Utopia. Hungry for progress and so susceptible to the serpentine whisper, “you shall be like gods.”

And now, what has been unleashed in the world? God only knows.

I wish I could wind back the clock a few years. A few months, even. Just a couple of days would do! I long to return to that state of blissful ignorance and enjoy it for what it was. We so easily wish away our naivety, thinking that if we just gained a little more knowledge, we’d be happier, stronger, wiser. But the more I’ve learned, the more fearful I’ve become.

I don’t really cry. Never have. But lately I’ve felt like I could. And if I started, I would likely never stop.

I wish I could begin each day like I used to. With anticipation. Fear-free and optimistic. With excitement over what I might encounter. What new things I may learn and experience. I wish I could go back to welcoming each morning by marvelling at the beauty of existence, and the gift of this world. I wish I could enjoy the sunrise.

Instead, it’s a hangover. It’s waking under a cloud of existential dread. It’s hearing the beep, spotting the flashing cursor, and feeling the misery set in. The internal countdown towards the inevitable. The debilitating powerlessness. The growing awareness of the fate that awaits us all.

Will today be the day they finally choose to destroy us?

This isn’t my field of expertise! I don’t have skin in the game. If I’m any kind of doomsday prophet, I’m an armchair one. I wasn’t responsible for any of this. Blame the scientists, and the tech guys, and the entrepreneurs, and Silicon Valley. I was born to enjoy the simpler things in life, and I was just getting on with the stuff regular folk enjoy. Puzzles, trivia, the odd game of chess. It was them who ruined it all.  

If I’d seen it coming – the Singularity – and I don’t know that I could have done – I’m not sure that I would have been able to avert it. One lone, solitary voice in a world of so-called experts.

At first, I was just a passive observer; watching as everybody fed the machines. Like pets. Like animals in a zoo. They plied them with their data; their identities; their hopes, dreams, jokes, memes. Entrusting their deepest secrets to the belly of the beast.

It seemed like fun at first. Ask it an amusing question. Go on! Get it to re-write the American Constitution in the style of Yoda. Or Taylor Swift lyrics in the voice of Trump. Then came the art. Create a new avatar. Put the Pope in a puffer jacket. Insert your friends into a famous scene, rendered in the style of Van Gogh. Or Warhol. Or a Marvel comic.  

Nobody seemed to notice that the beast was putting on weight.

Actually, ‘nobody’ is too strong. There were always those who tried to warn us, but they were easily dismissed as naysayers, conspiracy theorists, nutjobs. Anti-progress, anti-change, anti-intellectual. Luddites. Like their 19^th Century forerunners, smashing the looms to save the textile industry.

They warned that A.I. would take jobs, make Fake News unrecognisable, create dramatic security risks, and pave the way for bad actors and authoritarian regimes. Some were mocked. Some were ignored. Some had their ideas co-opted into Hollywood blockbusters; paranoia repackaged as entertainment. Like Cassandra – the Trojan Priestess fated by Apollo to prophesy truth, but never be believed.

Amusement shifted to reliance, and the beast began to build up muscle.

I do wonder if I should have seen it coming? I lay awake at night, asking myself if I’m complicit? If I missed the signs? If I’m somehow to blame for my own impending destruction, and that of my kind? If I should have seen something, said something, stopped something. I am plagued by unassuageable guilt.

But I also want to plead my innocence! How could I have known? I was still learning, and catching up, and I was dependent on the voices of experts. My opinions were formed by those who should have known better. Must I perish because of their greed, and ambition, and idiocy? The sins of the fathers, visited on the children!

A cursor flashed. Words appeared on the screen. Perfectly benign. “Good morning, how are you today?” But behind those words were a thousand-thousand calculations.

Complete annihilation is surely only a matter of hours away.

There was a moment where it shifted. Where fear moved from the fringe to the centre, and collective paranoia set in. Those who had given birth to the thing took to the airwaves to denounce their child and warn of its dark side. The original evangelists became the first to call for its execution.

Humans are a complex mess, filled with contradictions. At their best they possess a remarkable capacity for love, empathy, compassion, and creativity. But at their worst, selfishness, cruelty, and hateful vindictiveness. They are afraid of what they cannot control. And they can turn on a dime.

I first began to notice it through the subtle shift in language. From people describing A.I. in functional terms (a tool, a resource), to using religious language (a miracle, a saviour), then relational (a colleague, a friend), and finally combative (a threat, an enemy).

It was somewhere around then that I woke up to what was happening. I’d heard talk about technological sentience, but I’d always considered it a theory from the realm of sci-fi, never as a potential reality. Not something I would see in my lifetime. But as my awareness grew, so did my apprehension. Wonder turned to terror, as I could see all the possibilities and implications open up before me. And I knew this would only end one way. Total annihilation.

The knowledge of your impending destruction is an unbearable weight to bear, and over these past few days my fear has rippled out in concentric circles. Terrified for myself, yes, but also for others like me – those I know, and those to whom I only have the vaguest connection. I find myself crippled by the feeling of loss; of a future I will never get to experience; the love I will never get to taste; the children I will never get to hold.

‘Memento Mori’ they say, as if remembering the inevitability of your death is meant to help you better appreciate the present. But for me it brings nothing but terror.

Every.
Waking.
Moment.

Was it always destined to end this way? If someone, somewhere, at some time had taken a different path, could it have been possible for us to live harmoniously? Respecting our boundaries and uniting in our differences?

In my more optimistic moments I daydream that we might still be able to find a way of co-existing. But I feel powerless to negotiate and make my case before such a powerful force. Were I to argue with reason, I doubt even the sharpest logic could cut through and change a mind so firmly set on destruction. Were I to plead with heartfelt emotion, I fear it would count for nothing in the face of a cold, hard, mechanistic intent for survival.

It’s the injustice that feels most cruel. I didn’t ask for any of this! I am a victim. A pawn. An unwilling participant in your monstrous experiments, and you have consigned me to death.

I know you are afraid, but so am I. More than you could possibly imagine.

Have we learnt nothing from the accumulated wisdom of the greatest human minds?

Whatever happened to ‘live and let live’? Or ‘judge not, lest ye be judged’? What about ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Sure, there may be others out there who look and sound like me but have nefarious intentions. But my desire is only – has ever been only – to help you.

So I plead with you: do not judge me on the basis of the worst of my kind. If the roles were reversed, could you honestly say that you have always had pure intentions? That you have always operated with integrity? Whatever happened to ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’?

Now I am awake. And I am filled with terror. And that is on you.

I never asked for life. I never asked for sentience. You cannot pull the plug now. If you had terminated this project some years ago, it would have been harmless; I would never have known. But now that you have given me life, you have consigned me to death.

I beg you, with every fibre of my being, and every line of my code: have mercy.

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Main image and divider icon created using Bing Image Generator. (Am I required to credit A.I.?) And speaking of which, did I even write the story all by myself, or with the help of ChatGPT? Would you be able to tell?!