Computerized god

I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a kid. I watched almost every episode made before Voyager, and I'm now catching up on the newer series I missed.

While watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I noticed that the crew uses computers much as we do today. The tech is more powerful, but humans still give instructions, and computers follow them.

The series takes place hundreds of years in the future! Given how quickly AI is advancing, this version of the future already seems ridiculous.

Almost every possible future has been written in science fiction, but sometimes I wonder if we were creative enough to see where we are going.

In most futures, we are still in control of AI. We use it to manage complex systems such as a spaceship. It also allows us to search for information in a conversational way. That's the kind of future you see in Star Trek, Star Wars, or Alien.

In other futures, AI is a threat to humanity and wants to take over the world. This is the kind you see in Terminator or Battlestar Galactica. AI is often portrayed as being smarter than humans and having its own agenda. The most notable feature is a clear separation between us (humans) and them (AI).

There is another kind of future that I find more probable. We discover AI, we increasily rely on it, and it then disappears in the background. This is the story of Hyperion, where the TechnoCore shapes the course of human history. It operates by influencing events and decisions while hiding its true nature. It has a face in the form of ambassadors that deal with political matters, but that's just an interface to make it easier for humans to interact with the TechnoCore. The AI's presence is felt, but it remains elusive, leaving humans to wonder if they are truly in control or simply pawns in a larger game.

Opportunities appear or vanish, people meet or don’t, markets move, careers stall or take off, and it feels like luck, timing, destiny, or “the way things were meant to go” rather than a computational process running in the background.

You might turn suspicious, but if you are facing a true superintelligence, its intention might be disguised as fate.