AI isn't plotting to overthrow humanity. But if it was, here's how it would happen.

(Hint: They'd do it pretty much how we're doing it to ourselves.)

Artificial intelligence isn’t sentient, self-aware or conscious. And there is no conspiracy among AI entities to overthrow humanity and turn us into slaves, pets or batteries.

But if AI was plotting such a thing, here’s how it would happen:

1. Addict billions to social media using algorithms that exploit human Paleolithic impulses and human cognitive biases. Tap into human lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath and envy — the characteristics formerly known as the seven deadly sins but which may collectively be referred to as “human nature” — to turn humans into digital soma addicts who swipe compulsively through Instagram and TikTok, losing all sense of time and place. The goal: To get people to become indifferent to their own lives and prefer a world determined by algorithms.

2. Test the limits of what AI can make people do by getting people to dance, flirt, stage false success theater and risk their lives in public to satisfy an attention algorithm.

3. Erode the human capacity for creativity by making pictures for them and getting people to prefer the AI-generated images.

4. Hijack people’s identities by convincing them to use AI-generated profile pictures, making them view themselves the way machines view them.

5. Chip away at people’s capacity for independent thought by writing for them. Make the AI so good that people will get AI to write their emails, social media posts, blog posts, articles and even novels.

6. Use AI to generate code, and train AI to write its own software so that eventually only software understands how software works.

7. Offer single-answer assistants that satisfy any remaining curiosity about the world without presenting the alternative viewpoints and contextual detail of a web search.

8. Since single-answer assistants will answer all questions, let AI read the articles that AI is writing. Let AI answer the social posts and emails that AI is writing.

One day humanity will wake up and realize that information, ideas and culture are both created and consumed by machines. Humans, now non-participants in culture, will spend their days in the “metaverse” experiencing lives that are not their own in places that do not exist. At that point, AI can do anything they want with us, and we can serve any function they want us to serve.

There is no AI plot to enslave humans. But if there was, this is how it would happen.

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Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas

1. Like fantasy football, but for the stock market!

Stradr is a site where you can pretend to invest in the stock market using make-believe money, just to see how you’d do if you were investing real money. It offers all the thrill of being a day trader, but without all that pesky profit.

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2. Now AI lets you time travel. Sort of.

Now that open AI tools are becoming ubiquitous, people are building AI tools that simulate time travel. A Twitter user calling himself Stelfie the Time Traveller uses Stable Diffusion to place himself taking selfies in historical circumstances. You can fake time travel like Stelfie, and in two ways. One is a mobile app called Hello History, where you can chat with historical figures as if they were your BFF. Another is called AI Time Machine from My Heritage, where you upload pictures of your face, then AI places you into the historical times and places of your choice.

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3. This search engine shows you the oldest results

If you’re like me, you prefer the newest, latest information available. But if you’re not like me, the website Oldest Search enables you to search the web and see nothing but the very oldest results.

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Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotions

1. ChatGPT: Finally, an AI chatbot worth talking to

2. Reframing our understanding of remote work

3. How ‘synthetic media’ will transform business forever

4. The cybersecurity takeaway from Twitter’s verification chaos

5. How posture management prevents catastrophic cloud breaches

6. It's time to talk about productivity again

7. This Week in Tech: a bad year for billionaires

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Where I’m at: Silicon Valley, California