Charles has been thinking about that for half and hour. The Watcher, a giant statue honoring the former owners of this planet, "watch" him while he muses about his future.
He's been training for years. He knows the world will change soon, and he wonders if he should be part of that change, or just its instigator.
Everything depends on his decision. To jump or not to jump.
A memory of his late wife flashed through his mind.
@whknott ... If they'd have asked - "Yes", on active duty after a planetary invasion, but partnering with a humongous dufus machine with a mini reactor in its chest might have made me pause on being so positive.
Brawn? More than plenty. Brains? As much cranial activity as a hand-held clicker for training cats. There's one overwhelming trait working in its favor. It's a room full of tail wagging pups when it comes to loyalty, so not all bad.
It's 2027. LLM's are built into Systems on Chips. Everyone sees their own personalized worlds. Their computers show things in a way the user likes. Or the manufactorers like. Or the ad agencies like. Who knows. Apple helps us all write calm, understandable texts, posts, and books. Google shows us, in AR, "only what we need to see." A map on our walk we take to decompress. No, there are no homeless people in the street. Just follow the lines on the map. Yeah, like that. Hear that soft music. Your own personalized playlist, all made by AI. You like Mooncake right? Well, here's something that sounds like them. A little. But it's 24/7. More, more, more.
Some people make mistakes in their work to show that they're human. That wrong note? That's a mark of humanity. That misspelled word? They're one of us. That blotch of ink? A soul made that. Perfection is of the machines. To err is human.
The blind can see now. But at what cost? The machines know us all now. They see our faces. They see them, pick out details from what they see and what they know. Then they feed that to blind people, who eagerly gulp it down like a dry sponge. But the AI doesn't mention how fake the smile is, on the person who sees the camera that sees them. Wave for the camera, for the machine. But for the blind person, who only wants to have what sighted people were born with? Well.
Our computers then correct all that input. That misspelling? Surely the human didn't mean to do that. The blotch of ink is gone. All distilled into blandness. People begin writing on paper again. Blind people get what the AI gives, just as before. People are angry that their analog becomes digital again. Cycles and cycles. Dim and light. Gifts and hooks. Humanity and the seeking and the taking.