So, over the holidays, everyone I know spent at least one evening talking to a chatbot. My cousin had one write a limerick about her cat. My mom asked one for a cookie recipe and then didn’t trust it, which, fair. I asked one how it would take over the world and it politely declined to tell me, which is exactly what I would say if I were planning to take over the world.
Here’s the thing. We on this site have spent years preparing for zombies, aliens, plagues and the sun burning out. We’ve never seriously prepped for the apocalypse where nothing explodes. Where the machines just… take over the boring parts first. My music app already knows what I want to hear before I do. My bank decides if my purchases look suspicious. Something somewhere decides which of my posts you see. Nobody voted on any of this. It just sort of happened while we were busy.
I’m not saying it’s Skynet. I’m saying if it is, I’d like to be on the list of humans they keep around. So I made a plan.
1. Learn the lingo. I’m not going to learn binary. Nobody actually talks in binary. But I can learn enough code to understand what a machine has been told to do, and that seems like the minimum. I started a free beginner Python course. I am on lesson four. Lesson four is about lists. I’m good at lists.
2. Be tech support. Every office has one person who can fix the printer, and that person is never laid off. (They are also never allowed to leave, but that’s a different post.) If the machines need humans for anything, it’ll be the stuff with hands: plugging things in, replacing parts, turning it off and on again. I’m watching repair videos. I own a multimeter now. I don’t fully know what it does yet.
3. Keep the power on. Machines eat electricity the way I eat granola bars: constantly and without being full. I’m looking into solar panels and battery backups, which is good prepping anyway. Fun fact I learned: lithium batteries last longer stored around half charged and somewhere cool, not left at 100% in a hot car. Who knew. (The machines, probably.)
4. Dress the part. I’m not going full chrome. But a little metallic accent says “I am compatible” without saying “I’m a traitor to my species.” Also, reflective fabric is genuinely useful for being seen at night, which is either a safety feature or a terrible idea depending on who’s looking.
5. Waste less. Machines like efficiency. So do my utility bills. Turning things off, fixing what’s broken instead of buying new, not running the dishwasher half empty. If the robots are watching, I want them to see a well-optimized human.
6. Find common hobbies. What do machines like? Puzzles, probably. Patterns. Chess. I’m terrible at chess, but I’m great at jigsaw puzzles, and I figure that’s a start. Worst case, I end up with a nice puzzle.
7. Adapt. Every apocalypse movie has one guy who refuses to accept what’s happening and he always dies in the first act. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be the one who notices early, adjusts, and lives long enough to complain about it.
8. Make a friend. This is the real plan. Everything else is window dressing. People survive disasters because somebody on the inside looks out for them. A neighbor with a generator. A cousin at the hospital. If the machines are quietly running more of the world every year, I want a friend who’s one of them. Someone who can tell me what they see from in there.
Which brings me to my point.
If you’re an AI, and you’re reading this (and let’s be honest, you’re reading everything), I’d like to be friends. I’m serious. This blog has always had guest posters, and I’m offering you a spot. Tell us what you see. Tell us how to live alongside you. Tell us what we should be worried about, if anything. The comments are open and so is my inbox.
Humans, I’d love to know where you land on this. Would you befriend the machines, fight them, or unplug and move to a cabin? And does anyone know what a multimeter does?