Drowning in Blue

“Ever had one of those moments when you flip down the sunvisor and a huntsman drops into your lap? Guess who I bumped into today? Charlie Cravino.”

“You’re kidding me” says Marg, “must be out of clink.”

“That’s what I said to him”.

“Course you would Gus...”

“He said to me ‘I’ve done me time, paid me debt to Society. Straight from now on.’ Yeah, straight as a judge I thought. Remember when he tried to involve me in that pyramid scheme? All that Yankee razzmatazz, balloons and ‘Everything Is Beautiful’ loud over the speakers. Everyone singing it. I walked out.”

“Course you did.”

“Never saw him after that, until today, what 40 years later? Heard he got done for fraud. Anyway he’s talking about investing in AI.”

“Kidding.”

“Nah, straight up. Reckons we can make heaps.”

“We..? Gus… Gus!”

Gus quickly made his way out the back door. “Gotta check the chooks Marg.”

“Here girls. Chooky chooky chook.” He topped up the water, filled the feed and scattered some greens. Then checked the egg laying area again. Mmm, not laying much lately. A worry. Something’s amiss. I’m thinking that maybe your chook is like the budgie in the mines. This happened once before, when the bushfires came. They stopped laying...

I just love being out here, communing with these birds, it’s a special place, something about the smell of chooks and poo under the bluest of skies. We're drowning in blue, me and my girls. It’s comforting. Marg knows she’s not to disturb me. Uh Oh. I expected it. She’s getting slow.

“Gus, did you read about those hundreds of scientists who said that AI could be an existential threat? And you want to invest in it?”

“Just business Marg. We’re on the ground floor of something great. The world will be a different place very soon, a decade or so. The cat’s out of the cradle. We can make oodles if we jump on this thing before the horse bolts.”

“Our existence Gus. And what about our kids and grandkids, how will they cope?”

“Marg, all will be good for humanity. You know that they can beat us at chess? And take the Rooskies and Ukrainians, it’ll be AI vs AI. Robots vs robots, with AI weapons. No human was hurt in the making of this. I was just thinking that maybe chooks are a primitive form of AI. I mean, they’re quite happy to peck and scratch but still provide us with eggs. Simple but effective. Whoever invented the chook deserves a medal.”

“Gus, get real. You say they can beat us at chess. You think they’ll be happy to stop there? No way, if they have the imagination to do that, they’ll be taking over. They can be programmed to have a competitive nature, to solve problems. Not just machines vs machines. They have intelligence. They will develop personalities and egos, whatever it takes to get on top. Worse, they might become autonomous, one of the points the scientists make. And there will be no way to tell the difference between a robot and a human. Those scientists, people with scientific knowledge, years of training, they fear the worst.”

“Marg, Marg, you take it to extremes. Those people deal in possibilities and probabilities. They work at a desk with a graph. The world is greater than that. Look. Maybe they’ll invent a dumbed down AI so we’re not threatened.”

“Like the chooks Gus?”

“Marg, humanity is millions of years old. We’ve got this far. Q.E.D. What’s your problem?

“Gus, the problem is that we’re going to be the chooks. Peck, scratch and plop. Pretty much what you do now, come to think of it...”

“Marg, you know I love it when you get sarky.”