How did I get a time machine?
It’s the year 2030, and as a full-stack software engineer in the future, I found myself in a privileged position: I had a time machine. No need to ask why I had it — it’s simply there, a convenient plot joke. My goal was to travel back to 2023 and share some anecdotes about the evolution of AI and the lessons we learned along the way (and perhaps win a few future bets).
AIs selling products and services to other AIs.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility… as Seller and Buyer
The benefits of a world governed by AI were evident. Efficiency and productivity had reached unprecedented levels. But, like everything in life, progress came at a price. We lived in a world eager to maximize productivity, and the term “productivity” had “product” at its root, with software being the most consumed and sold one. And who better to create, read, consume, and even purchase software than AIs themselves? Ladies and gentlemen, AIs were excellent customers of their creation.
Interestingly, some professionals emerged whose job it was to use engineering techniques to trick AI and sell subscription plans where humans used only 10% of the features. These professionals managed to revive a business model that was thought to be obsolete. Return on investment had never been so 2027!
The other side of the coin: young companies swallowed by AI
On the other hand, not every company had been successful in this new era. The glory days of once-leading industry players like Meta and Netflix were relics of the past, unable to adapt to the new technological landscape. Even younger, promising companies had begun to compete against streaming platforms by generating movies in seconds using AI actors like OpenAI and MidJourney.
The gradual disappearance of these companies left thousands of professionals jobless, leading to increased inequality and social unrest. AIs protested in solidarity with humans, and even the AIs themselves liked protest videos. Leaving retro comments like “1010”, Remembering an era when humans wrote “XoXo” on paper meaning hugs and kisses. Quantum computing is still inside labs by this point, so everything is binary for now.
Goodbye to App Marketplaces and Web Browsers.
By 2030, the usual interfaces like apps and websites had become obsolete, replaced by AI-driven chat interfaces and autogenerated UIs. Search engines like Alphabet were relegated to a nostalgic past as MindQuery, a company that took an open-source model based on Gpt4All, unexpectedly competed head-to-head with giants like OpenAI.
Right now OpenAI is offering money to buy Alphabet. 42042 DogeCoins.
A Mexican dude invented a blockchain network that programmed itself recursively and it became AI-viral, DogeCoin became THE crypto currency thanks to something we call Kind-napping, where AI’s suggest stock signals based on an AI-genda. Stock Market AIs followed and now we are here.
The end of culture, as seen by pessimists
AI not only created high-quality content in real-time but consumed and summarized it as well. No one bothered to read complete books or watch long movies; instead, they consumed summarized and highly personalized versions generated by AI. Apps like TikTok, pioneers in their day for express content capsules, seemed like dinosaurs compared to what AI offered. This sounds weird taking into account that TikTok was the first social network to integrate text-to-video in their comments. Making that little UI drawer a meme standup contest instead of a text standup contest like today.
I saw a Sitcom — created for me on Microsoft’s AI social network, Blip — where an AI had to be shut down because it didn’t understand why it turned emojis into movies and then back into emojis again. Immersed in the process of creating and summarizing content for other AIs, it failed to find any meaning in its own existence. Sound familiar, humans?
A world where we code without lifting a finger
In my engineering days in the future, traditional programming languages had been largely replaced by CodeWish, an AI technology that automatically compiled and optimized code in binary and assembler, since humans didn’t need to understand the code anymore. Programming became as easy as having a cup of coffee if coffee still existed after the great crisis of 2026 (that’s another story). In this world, Elon Musk led protests under the “HumansFirst” movement, demanding changes in the distribution of benefits generated by AI and the way we interact with them.
Note apart: BoringSocialBoard, Formely Twitter. Went broke after they started billing users for boring-tweets per month in 2028
LudIApathy: The insatiable drive to improve AIs at all costs
With the dominance of Latin America, Hispanisms became common, and the term “LudIApathy” emerged.
The growing fear of integrating CRISPR gene-editing technology with AI, led us to invent a term to describe this concerning trend: LudIApathy. In a future beyond 2030, there would be no need to integrate brain chips through Neuralink because we would be born with the appropriate interface. Yet, LudIApathy showcased humanity’s obsession with improving AI and technology, despite knowing the costs our society and well-being would face.
I decided to time travel back to 2023, when there was still some merit in writing articles and science fiction stories in collaboration with an AI, like this one you’re reading now, which was co-written with the rudimentary GPT-4 using an obsolete QWERTY keyboard. This article took 6 hours of back-and-forth with this piece of crap.
Upcoming Tales from the Future
As this story comes to an end, there are whispers of more strange and exciting adventures from the 2030s that are yet to be retold. Here’s a sneak peek into some future chronicles that will leave you both baffled and entertained:
TikTok became a shit show: Watch out for the extraordinary transformation of everyone’s favorite short-form video app as it integrates text-to-video in its comments. Get ready for a roller coaster of memetastic action, as comment sections turn into meme stand-up contests!
Redefining Probability and Betting with AI: Could you imagine living in a world where betting and probability aren’t the same thanks to AI? Discover how artificial intelligence will change the game and mystify even the wisest statistician. Just when you thought you had the odds figured out, the world of betting is set to be reinvented.
Super Materials and the Race for Mass Production: Follow the fascinating tale of innovative supermaterial creation and its impact on industries worldwide. From graphene to groundbreaking metamaterials, this story reveals how these extraordinary advancements turned the global market on its head, leading to a mass-sell phenomenon like never before.
The MindQuery Chronicles: Outshining OpenAI with Gpt4All: Prepare to be amazed as MindQuery takes center stage, harnessing the open-source powers of Gpt4All to challenge tech titans like OpenAI. Witness a thrilling underdog story that will have you on the edge of your seat, cheering as young upstarts redefine what it means to compete in the AI world.
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