Prioleau Alexander: The Coming AI Dystopia

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As a political analyst, I’ve written tens of thousands of words about my concern for the next generations. Try as I may, I cannot develop a vision on how they will survive and thrive in the decades ahead.

Why?

First, there’s the fact that the Left is the future. While former president Donald Trump might win in November and right the ship for a few years, Gen Z, Millennials, illegal immigrants, unions, minorities, white-guilt elites and suburbanites, huge population centers, people depending on ever-increasing entitlements, and the sheer horsepower of Leftist corporations will soon turn America perma-Blue. In ten years, the late John F. Kennedy will come to represent “the far right,” the Squad will be centrist, and hard-core socialism will be the Left.

This will happen because “Republicans” in Congress will continue to go with the flow in order to secure their personal reelection – which will include doing absolutely nothing to stop this shift to the Left. It will provide them with even more political theatre, and the professional wrestling act we have grown accustomed to watching will be livelier than ever. Those doubting this prediction need only ask themselves this question: In the past four years, on what issues have Republicans prevailed? 

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Even with the White House, Senate and House under GOP control, Trump could not get his already-funded wall built. Republicans will continue to “lose with honor,” as long as it ensures they retain access to insider trading, travel junkets disguised as fact-finding-missions, free meals, free booze and the biggest intoxicant of all — power. 

Leftist rule will include a slow strangulation of the First Amendment, as they decide what’s “disinformation,” then financially fine or imprison the offending speaker/poster. Financial fines will be a simple matter, as future generations will be operating with a digital currency, and the government will turn on/off access to one’s money. (Even without digital currency, look what Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did to the truckers daring to challenge his policies).

If the idea of “imprisonment” sounds like overkill, remember that Twitter user Douglass Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison for jokingly telling Hillary supporters to “vote by Tweet.”

I believe our justice system will continue to rot, and jurors/judges will go even further in expressing their political views via the way they rule on cases. God knows it’s already happening at the state and federal level, and the DOJ has become a group of Brown Shirts for the Left. While some participants in the January 6, 2021 rioting at the U.S. capitol should have been given serious slaps on the wrist, dozens of Republicans were sent to prison for a crime no impartial judge could ever rule to be more than “misdemeanor trespassing.” Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old Christian, was sentenced to two years in prison for praying outside an abortion clinic.

Republicans in Congress have done nothing to impede the spread of the rot, claiming rules and laws and traditions “tie their hands.” If that’s true, and Democrats are bound by the same rules, why do Democrats win at everything?

I believe the split between Red and Blue America is going to drag us into Northern Ireland v. England violence. While the geographics and demographics of America make an actual “civil war” impossible, those on the far right and the far left will begin using terrorism tactics: Bombings, ambushes and assassinations. During the reign of BLM/Antifa terror, they made quite clear their willingness and ability to press their views with violence. 

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If blue-collar Red Americans decide to fight back, there will be hard times. Remember, you may not get involved in an actual fight — but that’s because you have much to lose, financially and professionally. There are tens of millions very, very angry, God-fearing, America-loving, middle-class people who have almost nothing to lose. If you lived a paycheck-to-paycheck life devoid of any type of “fun,” with no savings, and no hopes to retire, you’d understand.

The Left will expand governing by declaration. Joe Biden rewrote or eliminated virtually every executive order of his predecessor Trump, including his wildly successful border policies. Trump will likely, and understandably, do the same thing to Biden’s orders if elected. While Trump’s doing so will feel good to conservatives at the moment, the Leftists will use the media to trumpet “Trump has set the new precedent!” When the Left takes permanent control of the government, each incoming President will increase the Left’s power “with the stroke of a pen.”  

Congressional Republicans will continue to avoid writing laws, ceding more of their power to “permanent D.C.” bureaucrats and Deep State operatives — thus affording them plausible deniability when dealing with angry constituents. They can claim there was nothing they could do, the same way Obama used the “present” voting button to leave no policy or record trail in his wake. 

Their “hiding in plain sight” trick will succeed as they know the SCOTUS’ rejection of the “Chevron doctrine,” will be ignored by the other two branches of government, in the same way the Biden administration is paying off student loans — despite SCOTUS ruling that doing so is unconstitutional.

“I fought hard, but there was nothing I could do” will play like a scratched record in every Republican district.  

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Because of social media and the ever-increasing technology available to those who rule us, a social credit score is inevitable — and even the street-level Democrats will welcome it, because the system will be used to prosecute Republicans. Anyone offending their sense of moral superiority will be reported, and the government will take the steps it deems to be the appropriate punishment: Cars in the driveway will be disabled via satellite. IRS audits will be imposed. Fines will be withdrawn for personal bank accounts. Offending citizens will be added to no-fly lists.

Sadly, I think this will all be possible, because we will continue to hire the wrong kind of people to serve as police and federal agents — men and women more interested in “enforcing the law” than “serving and protecting.” It has become clear that most police will enforce any order, no matter how absurd. During Covid, we saw local police arrest an American for being on a paddleboard 100 yards from the beach because he was unmasked — the lunacy of which was repeated thousands of times across the country. Now, their love of “owning the monopoly on violence” has reached the most elite ranks of the FBI, with their fully-geared combat-prepared teams conducting pre-dawn raids on octogenarians charged with non-violent crime.

The national debt will, of course, be the final nail, as it is now a mathematical certainty that one day the Republic will founder.

But, even during the relentless bombing of London during WWII, citizens had to “get up, get dressed, and go to work.” The human need for food, water, recreation, and validation would, it seems, make the coming troubles unfold in slow motion. Even during the horror of the War Between the States, civilians “got up and went to work.”

Therein lies the rub. The age of AI has exploded into our world, and “going to work” may be impossible for millions of Americans in the very near future.

When most people ponder AI, they think of computers becoming self-aware, resulting in a war between machines and humans. It’s all very sci-fi, and some believe exciting. The current thinking among most is, “Sure, robotics might replace fast food workers, and AI might take over a few jobs, but it won’t be that big of a deal.

Not so, and the first to go will be the white-collar industries. Consider this: Who would you like handling your criminal defense. The local hotshot $950-an-hour lawyer? Or a program that has read, analyzed, and memorized every successful criminal defense case that’s ever been digitized? A program that prompts you for an exhaustive list of the details of your case? Sure, if you want to be cautious you might retain an experienced attorney to spend a few hours to help you with the process, but the result is $5,000 in attorneys’ fees — not $50,000.

Who would you prefer handle the contract regarding the merger of your $89-billion company with a $59 billion dollar company. A team of sharp-eyed Ivy League lawyers? Or a program that has read, analyzed, and memorized the tens of thousands of M&A contracts on the Internet? 

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And when it comes to those M&A negotiations, wouldn’t it be nice to simply pair your program with the other guys’ program, and in five seconds have an explanation of every single area of disagreement, and — based on the program’s complete mastery of contract law — provide bullet points on the way these exact disagreements have previously been resolved?

Architects are another group of professionals we view as “elite,” as it requires both creativity and technical skills. Why will they be needed when data has been input into a program for millions of custom homes, hotels, office buildings, and factories? An AI program will be able to understand, compare, contrast, and analyze the request “I want the specs for a one-half scale version of Frank Loyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel, with his Falling Water House out back as a restaurant, and 500-yards from that I want the Playboy mansion’s grotto and an Olympic swimming pool… centered in a quarter scale representation of the east gardens of Versailles.”  

Engineers may be the first to go, because computers are the undisputed heavyweight champions of technical data. Once the AI program has achieved an understanding of electrical engineering specs on par with 1,000 PhDs, it could provide the electrical plans for a skyscraper in seconds. If you provide a similar program with the data needed to build a $500-million bridge, it’s nothing but simple math.

While many white-collar jobs will be eliminated, some of the Blue-collar professions will also face extinction. 

In five years, self-driving vehicles will be a reality. Why pay a truck driver to transport products from the east to west coast, when a driverless truck can simply travel in the right lane at the exact speed limit, following an extremely simple and safe route via our Interstate system? All that would be needed would be staging areas at both ends, with refuel stations on the way. Farmers will no longer be needed to plow fields or harvest crops, as driverless equipment will do this—accurate to the inch via the use of GPS. 

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Non-passenger transport jets will soon become drones, and air-traffic control will be provided by AI, with a couple technicians to oversee the equipment. Insurance companies will force AI to take the place of cognitive-medicine physicians. Our standing Army will be replaced with remotely operated armed robotics and drones. Actuaries and number-based data analysists will disappear. 

I arrived at my opinion regarding the coming AI wrecking ball when I experimented with the one thing I thought AI was years from achieving: Humorous creative writing. I asked Chat GPT, now in its infancy, to write a humorous story about a kids’ birthday party turning into a disaster. In 10 seconds, it provided me with a story that maybe one in a thousand college students could top.

The only thing between America and this apocalypse is the amount of time needed to input data into the various AI programs, which should keep people busy for a few more years. No, the proverbial architect won’t be willing to participate in his own suicide by inputting the data, but that same architect — before they realize what’s at stake — would sell all their digital files to Google for $10 million dollars. Eventually, AI will learn to gather and input data on its own, even if it means hacking into sites protected by firewalls. There will be no need to pay anyone for their intellectual property.  

In short, every piece of data known by man, throughout history, will be absorbed into a program 10,000,000 smarter than the smartest human to ever live. And it will be accessible via your phone.

From there we’ll reach a tipping point, and AI will explode in growth. It will move quickly from analytical, to predictive, to having the final say in any matter it chooses. 

I wrote at the beginning of this piece that I have been unable to develop a vision for how my nieces and nephews can survive and thrive in the decades ahead. It is particularly troublesome, as they all have their heads in the sand. Every parent I know has their head in the sand. 

If you have developed a vision that keeps the next American generations out of a live of Soviet Union hell, distribute it far and wide. This AI monster isn’t two generations away—it’s maybe a decade away. 

No one is coming. Expect to self-rescue.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Prioleau Alexander is a freelance writer, focusing mostly on politics and non-fiction humor. He is the author of four books: ‘You Want Fries With That?,’ ‘Dispatches Along the Way,’ ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?‘ and ‘They Don’t Call It The Submission Process For Nothing.’ 

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