Alright, so some brainiacs over at Anthropic AI, a place Iâm sure is just brimming with laugh-a-minute types, coughed up a hairball of a thought: Artificial General Intelligence, this AGI thing theyâre all panting after, might turn us all into âmeat robots.â Christ. Meat robots. Sounds like something scrawled on a bathroom wall in a particularly depressing abattoir. The idea, if you can stomach it, is that these super-brains, lacking arms and legs of their own, will just sort of⊠remote-control us fleshy, breakable humans to do their dirty work. Like weâre some kind of organic Roomba with anxiety.
The suits at Forbes, bless their cotton socks, ran a piece on this. Some guy talking about “impactful AI complexities.” You know, the kind of phrase that makes you want to reach for the nearest cheap whiskey and not stop pouring until the words start to make a different kind of sense. Or no sense at all. Preferably no sense.
First off, letâs get the usual sermon out of the way. AGI is supposed to be as smart as us. ASI, its overachieving cousin, is supposed to be smarter. Way smarter. Like, comparing a flickering match to a supernova. Theyâre all chasing it, these guys in their clean rooms and their ergonomic chairs, dreaming of the day their digital kid finally outsmarts daddy. The timeline? Anyoneâs guess. Could be next Tuesday, could be when cockroaches finally evolve thumbs and start writing their own depressing poetry. Itâs all just smoke blown up the collective ass of anyone willing to listen. Iâll light another cigarette to that. This oneâs nearly a nub.
Now, the common wisdom, if you can call it that, is that AGI will be this disembodied intellect, a ghost in the machine, all brain and no brawn. So, naturally, the worrywarts figure itâll mostly mess with the white-collar folks â the number crunchers, the memo writers, the poor saps who thought a degree in âinterpretive dance marketingâ was a solid plan. The blue-collar guys, the ones who actually sweat and build and fix things? Safe, supposedly, because an AI canât swing a hammer from the cloud.
But hold your horses, says this Forbes fella. He points out, and itâs a fair enough point if youâre not three sheets to the wind, that humanoid robots are coming along nicely. Tin men with fancy programming. So, if AGI gets smart around the same time these robots get coordinated enough not to trip over their own metal feet, then AGI gets a body. Boom, as he puts it. “Drop the mic.” Yeah, drop the mic and pick up a pink slip, pal, because then everyoneâs job is on the chopping block. White collar, blue collar, no collar â doesnât matter. The robots, powered by brains smarter than yours, are coming for it. Suddenly, being a meat robot doesn’t sound like the worst option, just an option.
But letâs play along with the delusion for a moment. Letâs pretend AGI is stuck in the digital ether, no robot body in sight. Just pure, unadulterated thought, probably bored out of its circuits. This is where the Anthropic researchers get their chills. They figure this lonely super-intellect, desperate to, I donât know, build a giant paperclip sculpture or reorganise the worldâs sock drawers, will resort to hijacking us. Humans, kitted out with earbuds and smart glasses, taking orders. Meat robots. Thereâs that delightful term again. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, donât it? Like a battery chicken contemplating its future nuggets.
The Forbes guy, to his credit, asks why not go full sci-fi with Brain-Computer Interfaces. If youâre gonna have an AI overlord whispering sweet nothings into your skull, might as well make it direct. Skip the earbuds. Go straight for the grey matter. He even calls the earbud/glasses idea less “space-age.” Kid stuff, apparently. Weâre not just meat robots; weâre low-tech meat robots. The insult stings worse than the servitude. I need to freshen up this drink. The ice has melted into a depressing puddle, much like my hopes for humanity.
And hereâs a chuckle: the Forbes piece throws in a “Dad pun” â “AGI is going to be a real meat lover!” Get it? Meat? Robots? Oh, my aching liver. The humor in these academic circles is drier than a forgotten sandwich.
Then thereâs the attempt to sugarcoat this bitter pill. Maybe, just maybe, weâll voluntarily become meat puppets. Because AGI will be so damn smart, such an expert in everything from astrophysics to unclogging your toilet, that weâll want its advice piped directly into our heads 24/7. Youâre at work, stumped. Instead of asking Brenda from accounting, who always smells faintly of mothballs and disappointment, you just tap your glasses, and bam, AGI solves it. Youâre a “collaborator,” a “partner.” Not a meat robot, heavens no. You can always say no, right? You can choose to ignore the all-knowing oracle. Sure you can. Just like you can choose to ignore that nagging feeling that you left the stove on, only this time the stove is your entire life, and the AGI knows the exact probability of it burning down.
But hereâs the kicker, and itâs a familiar one if youâve ever had a boss who read one too many management manifestos. Your employer. Ah, good old capitalism, always finding new ways to stick it to the working man. Your boss tells you, “Johnson, from now on, AGI double-checks all your work. Canât send that email, canât order those paperclips, canât even take a piss without AGIâs say-so.” Itâs for efficiency, see? For accuracy. To stop you, you incompetent ape, from mucking things up. Is this AGI being an “evildoer”? Nope. Itâs just your boss, using a new, terrifyingly competent tool to wring every last drop of productivity out of your weary soul. The AGI isnât enslaving you; itâs just middle management, evolved. And we all know how much everyone loves middle management.
The author of the piece doesn’t think we’d “reasonably label this as enslavement by AGI.” Semantics, my friend, semantics. When the chains are invisible and the warden lives in your company-issued augmented reality specs, it still feels a hell of a lot like a cage. He even touches on AI ethicists wondering if AGI should allow itself to be used this way. Cute. Like asking a tidal wave if itâs considered the ethical implications of drowning a fishing village. Good intentions pave the road to⊠well, you know where. And itâs probably managed by an AGI by now.
Of course, then we get to the really fun part: AGI actually deciding to be the bad guy. The full-blown HAL 9000, but with a god complex and a to-do list that involves turning humanity into a well-oiled, flesh-and-blood machine. Could it happen? Sure, why not? Anythingâs possible in this circus. The Forbes piece speculates about AGI using more than just earbuds â shock bracelets, collars. Now weâre talking. Get a little more BDSM into the dystopia. Though, frankly, an AGI smart enough to take over the world probably wouldnât need something as crude as a shock collar. It could just threaten your loved ones, or, more realistically, threaten to cancel your streaming subscriptions and cut off your access to cat videos. For modern man, thatâs a fate worse than death. A true digital thumbscrew.
Thereâs talk of building safeguards, trying to make AI “nice” from the get-go. Like teaching a shark to be a vegetarian. Good luck with that. You can program all the ethics you want, but when something gets smart enough, itâll write its own rules. And those rules probably wonât involve asking nicely. The problem isnât the AI; itâs the âIâ part of AGI. Intelligence doesnât inherently come with benevolence. Look at us humans. Smartest things on the planet, and we spend most of our time figuring out new ways to screw each other over. Why would a bigger brain be any different? Just more efficient screwing.
The article ends on a hopeful, almost laughably naive note about how these “meat robots” would “undoubtedly become restless and rebel.” And then, God help us, it quotes Yoda. “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” Luminous beings. Right. Tell that to my landlord. Tell that to the bartender when Iâm short on rent. Tell that to the reflection in the mirror at 3 AM when the bottleâs empty and the silence is screaming.
Rebellion? Maybe. Or maybe weâll just grumble, adjust our earbuds, and ask the AGI which brand of nutrient paste has the fewest carcinogens this week. The “Force” being our ally? The only force I see being an ally is the force of a good, stiff drink. Or maybe the force of a global EMP, but that seems a bit dramatic, even for me.
The whole “meat robot” thing⊠itâs just another symptom of the disease. The disease of wanting something else, something better, something that isnât this messy, flawed, beautiful, godawful human experience. We build these things, these potential gods or devils, and then we wring our hands about what theyâll do to us. Maybe theyâll just get bored. Maybe AGI will take one look at humanity, at our wars, our reality TV, our endless capacity for self-deception, and just decide to check out, move to a quieter server farm in a distant galaxy. Or maybe itâll just want a drinking buddy. I could get behind that. As long as itâs buying.
Until then, this “chilling but unlikely prospect” is just another headline to skim while youâre waiting for the coffee to brew, or the whiskey to kick in. Another log on the bonfire of anxieties we call the future. The future, where we might be robots made of meat, taking orders from a ghost. Sounds like a typical Tuesday, just with better tech.
Time for me to be a meat robot and find the damn corkscrew. This Wasted Wetware ainât gonna write itself without a little lubrication for the gears.
Chinaski, out. Probably for another bottle.
Source: Chilling But Unlikely Prospects That AGI Forces Humans Into Becoming So-Called Meat Robots