The
Year : 2020 AD
I
am a 30-something old guy. (yes, I will be 30 then too and I will be 30 in 2030
and thereafter too .). Coming back to the year 2020, a lot has changed in this
world. Web 2.0 has become passé. The world has advanced much more than what
people had envisaged in the year 2008. Internet too has evolved so much that
broadband, wi fi, wi max, GB and TB (gigabytes and terabytes) are long
forgotten. We have grown much more than that.
I
don’t know whether the meek will inherit the world or not.
But the geeks have definitely managed to do so.
They
have inherited our world.
And how.
So
much research and development has taken place in the AI (Artificial
Intelligence for the uninitiated) space that, we the people need not have
intelligence of our own. We will have all these digital devices which will make
our lives easier. I am letting you into a peep into a typical day in my life so
that you will get an idea of what to expect in that year, now.
6am
sharp:
No alarms need to be set the previous day. My bed will give me a vigorous kick
on my you-know-where and yell at me, “time to go to work u moron. What are
you gonna do the whole day? Sleep? Go, get on with your work.”
Left
with no choice (like mumbling some reply to mom or wifey and then going back to
sleep), I trudge my way to the bathroom. I pick my brush up and slap some paste
on it and start the dreary work of working on my teeth. Within a few mins, I
hear a voice. Ouch. Softly you nerd. Is this how you deal with your wife? Cant
you be a lil soft and gentle on me? That was the brush speaking to me. Bed tea
has been done away with coz some nerd researcher had found that bed tea is not
good for health. Sigh. Why cant these geeks leave some things untouched?
I
soon find myself doing my morning duties of attending natures call and having a
bath etc. The Flushing cistern determines how
much water is needed and uses exactly only so much of water to dispose of the
you-know-what. Now thats real intelligence. 
The
most important chore for a man everyday is shaving. It is just like sex for a
married man. No matter how well you do it today, you have to do it tomorrow.
Even as I am getting rid of my stubble another voice yells at me, softly you
moron. You are just shaving, not mowing the lawn. So do it Oh-so-gently..
otherwise i am gonna rip your chin apart. sigh.. i definitely needed this from
my darned razor.
My
shower has already been programmed to release me fixed amount of water for my
bath. It will tell me in the beginning how much water I will get and in between
my bath, a robotic voice will announce, You have last two litres to your
credit. Before I can do anything about it, It shuts itself down. Darn. Cleaning
half the left over soap with the towel, I curse myself and move on.
i
cant have any breakfast as i please. my refrigerator is now intelligent enough
to allow only that food that i can have and that which is good for my health.
it gets online instructions from my doctor. sigh. i wanted to eat a cheese
sandwich with loads of extra cheese. But alas, my darned refrigerator wont
allow me.
its
getting late for me to reach my office and so i press on the gas pedal rather
hard. But heck no. My car just refuses to move any faster. it is now
intelligent enough to recognize the road and the surrounding traffic and it
will ‘decide’ at what speed it will move. Darn. by now, i am missing the good
old days terribly.
Wait.
theres still a lot more to come. it ain’t over yet.
The
main gate in my office is intelligent enough to know that i am awfully late for
work. i had previously been reprimanded a couple of times by ‘it’ and now i
have exhausted my warnings too. so this time around, it refuses to allow me to
enter at all. i then call up my boss, who then intervenes and takes necessary
steps so that i am allowed entry. sigh. what a day its turning out for me !!
i
boot my workstation. As my boss still has not asked me to work on anything
specific, i thought i may as well have a peek into my blog. But i was in for a
shock. Instead of seeing the screen ‘windows is starting up’ (howsoever dreary
it may be.. its fine), i get a screen which displays, ‘Go to Hell, I am not
going to boot up.’ I press F8, and delete and F12 and wot not, but to no avail.
Another screen pops up saying, ‘what do you think you are doing? Do you think
that by doing all that I will start? Just give up loser. I have already told
you in the beginning and now i am saying it to you again, i dont want to work
today and i wont start up. Period.’
Nope. I wont give up. I still have a whole day in front of me and i dont want
any of these darned devices dictating terms to me.
i stroll out of my office. i thought lemme draw some money from my ATM and head
for some shopping. I am still wary of using credit cards, coz lots of
fraudulent transactions had taken place.
As soon as i inserted my ATM card into the slot, i was asked for my password,
which i promptly fed it like i have done a zillion times before. A new screen
comes up before me. This time with an audio too. A gruff voice announces,
“So you want money? Ok, I’ll give it to you smartypants. But on one
condition. You think you are smart, is it? Well, then i am giving you a chance
to prove yourself. Beat me to a game of tic-tac-toe and i’ll give you double
the money you asked for and if you lose, forget your card too.” Darn, that
was the last straw…. It was ages since i played tic-tac-toe and for the
record i never won a single game even against my nieces. Suddenly i remembered
the newspaper vendor who has been sitting outside the ATM for ages who used to
play tic-tac-toe all by himself. i pulled him over inside and without doubt he
won. i kept my money and gave the other half to him. I kept thanking my lucky
stars that these guys have only managed to install AI into devices and not
‘common sense’. The day they do that too, will be the beginning of the end of
the world.
So on and so forth.. I managed to reach home with my sanity intact. Just
when I thought that it was all over, my wife came and stood in front of me. Darn
!! Any reference about her and this blog
on Artificial Intelligence, and I am gonna get the couch treatment.. so mums
the word friends. But I would just like to add one line here . Before they do
anything to those darned devices I want them to do something about
re-orienting women's minds. Lols .
Well friends, fun apart, I am a bit sceptical about the way science is
progressing, esp in the Artificial Intelligence arena. I would be happy if all
this remained within the realm of Sci-Fi and does not enter into our real
lives. Artificial Intelligence actually to me is an oxymoron. I dont know who
coined the word, but whoever did so, dint have any himself i guess. But one
thing really puts a cunning smirk on my face. Even if those nerds did manage to
do well in AI, they can never put ‘common sense’ into anything; and least of
all ‘wisdom’.
And
that makes me relax and have a good night’s sleep friends.
