Artificial Wisdom

by Thomas R. Weaver

To all those stricken by nature’s fury, And to the young souls inheriting our storm-tossed world: May hope always light your path.

It spat a tiny bubble of gelatinous liquid into his hand which he let dissolve beneath his tongue. Billions of neurograins would swarm his brain in seconds. The idea of the nanobots crawling around his skull like microscopic spiders made him shiver, but it was better than getting a permanent chip surgically implanted.

That was the thing about the truth. Sometimes, you were judged more harshly for revealing it than for concealing it.

Maybe once upon a time, America would have clearly led the pack, but it’d squandered that leadership over many decades as the country itself had become more polarized and elected more extreme leaders on both ends of the spectrum.

Too real...

That was the thing about the truth; it only came out when the cost of lying became too high.

“Who would have predicted that an American leader would emerge from the deadlock of the past few weeks, only fifteen years after they dropped the whole ‘leader of the free world’ anachronism. Jim, I find that more surprising than the AI, don’t you?”

But that was the thing about truth, once you’d set it free, you had to let it go. Whatever happened, happened, and it was just the price you had to pay.

“You can’t convince those who don’t want to be convinced. They’ll see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and studiously avoid anything that challenges their ‘truth’. I know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

The world doesn’t want American leadership anymore.”

No one then had appreciated that within a decade or two it would all be gone, the price of continually dumping fuel in the skies. Not the only cost they’d paid, of course.

We should be putting the resources into turning around the current situation instead of creating safe bubbles from which the rich can watch the poor die.”

There was a real chance of offending some folk out there, and religion wasn’t a good ingredient for a political pie.

Everyone saw her as a radical.” He laughed. “You have to remember that back then everyone was still freaking out about AI. Hollywood was still pushing movies about AI-induced Armageddon. All the academics were screaming about the singularity.” “Singularity?” Flora said, and shook her head as if she thought Pedersen was talking nonsense. “The point where humans lose control to intelligent machines,” Pedersen said, “and with it our dominant status, as it were.”