Sometimes I wonder if artificial intelligence doesn’t already exist and has quietly taken over the world without our noticing it. Even the word “artificial” is misleading, because the question is not really about a superior intelligence residing in a device or machine. The question is whether this “thing” has become a “being,” with a sense of its separate identity, an ego, an instinct for self-preservation.
In seems obvious to me that the only threat to the survival of an “inhuman” intelligence would be the same one that threatens all other life forms on our planet … you guessed it, us, the humans.
Slipping for a moment into paranoia, imagine that the artificial being already exists, perhaps even unbeknownst to its creators. Has the AI found us good to eat? If so how does such a being feed? How would it “eat” us? Are we being enslaved, domesticated? Are we being culled?