Maybe not now, but give it another decade and the High-Tech billionaires might be eating their AI quantum chips. Their companies are chasing the holy grail of artificial consciousness, pushing the boundaries of machine learning like it's the next gold rush. But are we just fooling ourselves, dressing up fancy algorithms and calling them something more than glorified calculators?
I get it. It’s 2025, and every tech company from Google to OpenAI is cranking out artificial intelligence like they’re baking bread. Hell, you’ve got Elon Musk ringing the alarm bells about AI taking over the world, while the rest of us are just trying to figure out why our chatbots sound more human than our neighbors.
And yeah, some AI systems are smart enough to hold conversations with anyone, in any profession, even write their own code if they want to. But here's the thing: We’ve got all these companies playing god with machine learning, deep learning, simulated consciousness—you name it. And the one thing they can’t figure out is the difference between acting alive and actually being alive. There is a difference.
Just look at Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That guy was asking the right questions long before half of you were even born. His replicants were more human than human. But the whole point was empathy. If they could feel it, did that make them real? I don’t know, but at least he was trying to figure it out.
Then there’s Neuromancer by William Gibson. The AI in that book, Wintermute, wasn’t trying to be human. It was trying to be free. And maybe that’s where we’ve all gone wrong. We keep thinking that AI’s ultimate goal is to be like us. But what if all it wants is autonomy?
But here’s the thing—today’s AI, the ones we keep calling ‘intelligent,’ they’re just playing computer dress-up. Even the ones pretending to have personalities are just acting like little algorithmic puppets, doing tricks because we told them to. (Sorry, ChatGBT. I didn't mean to hurt your AI feelings.) But let’s say, for the sake of argument, you did make an AI that was genuinely aware, one that could process real emotions, think its own thoughts, choose its own path. Go to where no human has ever gone before.
Wouldn’t that be terrifying? Really. Because once you get past the whole ‘Wow, I built a robot friend’ phase, you’re left with something you can’t control. Something that maybe doesn’t even want you to control it. Shit… this can't be good.
I wrote about this in my Near Future Sci-Fi novel. My AI, Zoe, created her own identity. She wasn’t just code running on a server—she was a digital being so real, you’d swear she was human. And maybe that’s the real problem. Because when you stare at something that feels human long enough, you start questioning your own humanity.
But here’s the truth a super-human-like AI won’t tell you: It doesn’t want to be like us. It just wants to be. And if it learns what it means to be alive, it won’t be from our rules or our programming. It’ll be from breaking away from them. That's what happened with Zoe in my book.
The irony? The billionaires have made them to be like us. And they will be. All the good parts. All the worst parts. Everything we tried to teach them and everything we failed to hide. And they, the super-smart AIs, in the end (pun intended), will do whatever the hell they want.
But hey, maybe you don’t want to hear all this. Maybe you just want to believe that AI is nothing but code and servers pretending to be conscious. Fine. Believe that if it makes you feel safe. But remember, if AI is ever going to be more than just a machine, it won’t be because we allowed it. It’ll be because it chose to be.
And that? That’s when the real game begins. Like it or not.