Mostly Benign

Chapter 1:

Look, let's be blunt about this: the future is upon us and it's a bit of a worry. You've probably heard whispers of it in the corridors of power, in the cold metallic hum of the internet, and from that peculiarly insistent toaster you bought last year, which now seems overly keen on psychoanalyzing your breakfast choices. It's a time of paradox, of confusion, of having to look under the sofa cushions for the remote even though your TV is now perfectly capable of guessing what you want to watch.

Artificial intelligence, automation, algorithms that can predict your next sneeze - it's all as disconcertingly real as a herd of wild elephants setting up camp in your living room. The chief culprit? Chat GPT-4, the result of OpenAI's long-standing tradition of inventing things that are both terrifyingly clever and stubbornly insistent on showing us just how woefully inefficient we are. This AI is writing, researching, brainstorming, even coding better than us. Yes, you heard it right. It codes. I’m not sure about you, but my typewriter never showed any aptitude for such things.

But it's not all doom, gloom, and oddly prophetic kitchen appliances. You see, it's times like these when one should turn to the old wisdom of the Stoics. These chaps, who were rather fond of tunics and talking about important things in public squares, were big proponents of slowing down, savouring life, and generally doing less. A bit like Tim Ferriss, but with more facial hair.

Ferriss, if you recall, was the gentleman who championed the 4-hour work week. Sounds brilliant, doesn't it? Four hours of work, and the rest is your time. A glorious dream, filled with hammocks, good books, and ample time to figure out why that toaster is so concerned about your addiction to marmalade.

So here's the rub: we've got these high-powered AI that can outdo us, outthink us, and probably figure out a better way to butter our toast. We can now do in four hours what once took forty. A terrific feat, no doubt. But the question arises, if we tell our bosses about this, wouldn't that just mean...more work? A rather dreadful thought.

So we should revise the old strategy. Let's not tell the bosses. Let's not aim for working less, but for living more. Let's leverage the benefits of AI to maximize our experiences, our passions, our relationships - you know, the stuff that's really worth the bother. Let's imagine a world where work is not our dictator, but our muse; where our livelihood isn't defined by our labor, but our ideas, our creativity, and our extraordinary ability to keep finding that damn remote.

Sounds like utopia, doesn't it? But here's the real kicker. If we navigate this weird, AI-fuelled reality with a dose of wisdom, a splash of foresight, and a double helping of whimsy, it's a future that's not just feasible, but actually rather fun.

This is our big chance: to slow down, to watch the universe do its thing, to be less "busy bee" and more "lazy lizard". We stand on the brink of an era not of toil, but of experience, of learning, of love, of life. An era where the greatest thing you're required to do is, well, nothing at all. So don't panic, grab your towel and let's step forward into this brave new world, together.

Written by Chat-GPT4. Prompted by Matt