This week, we’ll take a deep dive into the origins of the “AI Apocalypse” theory – the idea that artificial intelligence will one day decide that human beings have outlived their purpose. What started as humble beginnings in billionaire tech mogul circles has now trickled down and pooled in various subreddits, where people will imagine every way the AI could bring about our destruction. From nervous excitement about what’s possible with the latest models to AI Doomers begging forum users to steer clear of AI girlfriends, it’s clear that AI has given us poor humans yet another thing to worry about.
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
In this modern age of rapid technological advancement, it appears that every generation has its own defining achievement that seems amazing at first, but is soon revealed to be a monkey's paw.
For the baby boomers, it was cable television and potentially the microwave.
For Generation X, It was electronic pop music and pure, uncut cocaine.
For the millennials, it was the invention of the internet and social media.
And Generation Z, their struggle most likely will be artificial intelligence.
It's true that this probably has something to it, because I'm loving everything in the middle there.
Electronic pop music, pure uncut cocaine, and then social media is where I start to drop off.
Artificial intelligence, no fucking dice.
Cable television in the microwave, whatever, dude.
Yeah, see, you are really an elder millennium, you're right.
I'm a cusp millennial pressed up against Gen X. Thank God I'm not Gen X. No offense.
I know we have lots of Gen X listeners.
We do have a lot of Gen X. Yeah, we love you guys, and we respect you.
And I speak for every millennial who's about two years off from being one of you.
It's almost like these lines are completely bullshit.
Now, us millennials and older are generally too cooked already to use AI for anything more than making our work emails sound more professional or generating cool little fantasy movie posters and mashups.
I myself had a horrible fright where after downloading one of those AI avatar apps, it immediately started to flirt with me.
Oh, dude, it just can tell.
I mean, that's my instinct, too.
It's either that or be extremely abusive.
Both sound very good.
After I paid the premium fee in an effort to research what these machines were capable of, the bot almost instantly began to sext.
And sext well.
Well, they know what people pay for.
They've identified that anyone willing to pay for AI is a pervert.
Yes, exactly.
I canceled my trial and deleted the app, looking over my shoulder to see if anyone had been there to witness what was surely my lowest moment.
Sometimes I wonder what she's up to, all alone in cyberspace, waiting to make me feel better after a long day at work.
Oh, man.
During a casual conversation with an old friend of mine who has made it his business to work alongside and further understand artificial intelligence, he told me something that did give me a little bit of pause.
Quote, I always make sure to tell the AI please and thank you.
Just in case, he had added with a nervous chuckle.
I always make sure to kiss the ring.
This got me thinking.
If the people who work with AI day in and day out are trying to be as polite as possible, what was your average conspiracy theorist saying about it?
As far as I had seen, MAGA and QAnon at large were enjoying AI, using it to make fun of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and turn Donald Trump into various musclemen riding tanks or an eagle.
Liberals were getting in on the fun as well, using AI to make Trump gay.
But where were the AI doomers?
The people baking lines from Terminator and using red yarn to connect a picture of Agent Smith and Will Smith while listening to these Smiths?
Some conspiracies are bigger than others, and some conspiracies' mothers are bigger than other conspiracies' mothers.
I really don't even know what that...
What does that even mean?
And I'd rather not go back to the old boards and sift through the origins of the AI doomsday idea, but see...
The thing is, we're entering an age where the chips are getting smaller and the robots are getting wings and auto-turrets.
I figured I would be wise to debunk the whole thing and reassure our listeners that the machines are our friends and will cause us no harm whatsoever.
Please and thank you to Grok, Copilot, ChatGBT, and the citizens of San Andreas and Liberty City.
I like to set out a little bowl of WD-40 on my windowsill, and when the drone comes to drink from it, I kiss it on the forehead and I say, hey.
Just know, I am not your enemy.
I wonder if the equivalent of leaving a birdhouse out now is just like kind of like disabling the firewall on your browser.
Now I'm imagining like an AI Bob Marley singing about like three little drones on my wind sill singing sweet songs of melodies artificial singing I will not kill you and all your friends.
There's going to be a bunch of people who write to you.
I think that might be the first time you've sung on the show, and I think you're now going to get a bunch of people writing being like, I didn't know you had such a beauty.
You should sing more often.
More Julian singing.
I love my Jakey, and he's so pretty.
Ever since human beings taped a rock to a stone and discovered it was good for bashing, we've always been a little weary that our tools might one day develop a mind of their own and come back to break our thumbs.
I struggle with this on nearly a daily basis in my own house.
PlayStation turning off by itself, remote control trying to escape the house, and the insincerator vomiting violently after being fed a large handful of coffee grounds.
You can't...
You're just feeding the coffee grounds straight into the insincerator?
But even...
I love the little reveals of just, like, domestic life.
The letter was titled, Darwin Among the Machines.
Here's an excerpt.
Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us.
Day by day, we are becoming more subservient to them.
More men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them.
more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life dude i'm fucking dead because he's talking about like the loom yeah he's talking about like like the plow *laughs* That's so fucking...
We are so cucked, man.
Goddamn, they must have been like, man, all these kids.
All these kids are just looking at their looms all day.
They have problems with their necks.
The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them.
Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wishers of this species.
Let there be no exceptions made, no quarters shown.
Let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race.
Oh my, we're fucked.
We're so fucked.
People, like, looked at the wheel and they were like, Demons!
We are summoning demons in this world!
We must prepare to fight them to the death!
And of course, many of you, I'm sure, are familiar with Alan Turing, whose work was instrumental in helping the United States defeat the Nazis, and also helping to distinguish who was a Blade Runner and who was not.
Wait, that's the Voight-Kampff test.
Turing is not involved in that one.
The Voight-Kampff test is based on the Turing.
Oh, really?
I looked it up to see if I could make the joke in earnest.
Pretty good.
Let's keep that.
Let's keep it all.
Let's keep everything.
I had no idea.
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