OpenAI’s building a ChatGPT-powered dystopian future to wreck us all

Artificial intelligence was sold to consumers as a powerful smart solution that can have a conversation, create content, organize information, and conduct tasks in a way that improves peoples’ lives. But as new versions of advanced AI programs like ChatGPT hit the market, the once-bright future that was promised is looking more grim each year.

Early last week, OpenAI unveiled the latest iteration of its generative AI software named ChatGPT-4o. On the surface, this new model looks quite impressive. It can do things like communicate using human-sounding voices with minimal latency, recognize vocal tones and emotions, see and identify objects with the help of a camera lens, and translate a multilingual conversation in real-time — the types of things you would expect an average human to do.

From a tech demo perspective, it was all pretty neat to watch. But think just a little farther beyond the glitz and glamor of what some are calling the “Jarvis” of the modern age, and the future of humanity looks pretty bleak.

The whiplash of AI evolution

Artificial intelligence has evolved at a breakneck pace, starting with crafting simple prose and quickly graduating to much larger projects, like drawing art, producing videos, composing music, and even impersonating humans, complete with the typical pauses, inflections, and personality you’d find in the nearest human being.

The question is, “Why?” What is the purpose of AI that can do everything a person can do, oftentimes faster and with fewer errors? (I’m certain an AI bot could’ve written this article much quicker than I did and with far more research pulled from its nearly endless vat of training data.)

Why are so many companies pursuing AI innovation? Profits are probably the biggest driving factor. But as the tech giants of today duke it out for AI supremacy, they’ve evolved their platforms with reckless abandon, chasing the cutting-edge of development with no regard for how it will negatively impact people, careers, and society as a whole.

ChatGPT’s wondrous future (or dystopian hellscape)

AI has already disrupted several major pillars of civilization. For starters, it’s blown a hole through the education system by enabling students to write perfectly legible essays and answer complex questions without a single ounce of research or personal growth. It has stolen creative works crafted by designers, content creators, and artists who perfected their crafts over decades of practice, recompiled them, and passed them off as its own. It’s even destroying careers as its ability to write, reason, code, and organize data has caused companies to reevaluate the need for human employees in key roles.

Despite how devastating the last several years of AI development have been to education, the arts, and career trajectories, it’s only getting started. Follow these implications into the next 5-10 years, and the future looks outright terrifying.

Imagine a world where humans don’t need to exist. Most jobs are performed by AI-powered programs all talking to one another and exchanging data at corporate companies across the globe. Essential jobs in stores, the fast food industry, and beyond are all filled by AI-powered bots that can take an order, make a burger, and process a payment much faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than any human ever could. Public transportation all runs on timed schedules without a single person behind the wheel; one day, you might not even be allowed to own a car for the sake of safety and to offset the potential for human error. Even trade skills – some of which can be deemed as “too dangerous” for humans – are much better served by specialized AI solutions that require no extra time, education, or training to complete.

In a dystopian AI future, humans are relegated to second-class citizens or worse. We don’t make money. We don’t build, create, or design anything that an AI program couldn’t do faster, better, or cheaper. We’re just remnants leftover from a lost age where we were once a free people with dreams, aspirations, and goals that were all obfuscated by the pursuit of artificial intelligence.

That doesn’t mean all people will be relegated to the sidelines. The heads of major corporations that own AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, etc., will reap trillions in profits each year, while the rest of us fight for what human jobs still remain (if any at all). Everyone after that will either be resigned to scrounging up crumbs of universal basic income afforded to us by the government and major AI corporations, or live in complete obscurity as we try to hold onto the last bit of purpose left in our lives.

ChatGPT and the post-human age

Sure, OpenAI’s fancy tech demos and altruistic promises to bring AI to the masses sound great today, but don’t be fooled. Whether intentional or not, there is no doubt that ChatGPT and programs like it will ultimately eliminate the need for humans, first at work, then at school, and then in society altogether.

This sentiment has never been more clear than in ChatGPT-4o’s humanistic qualities, from its range of voices, to its developing personality, to its ability to form ideas and recall memories from past conversations. For all intents and purposes, ChatGPT-4o is transforming into a digital person.

Some of us might come to see AI as a friend, a coworker, or a helpful companion. Corporations might see cheaper and more reliable employees that never take sick days or argue with management. The government might see military soldiers that target enemies with pin-point precision and carry out missions without a single mistake.

Eventually, we will reach the point where it doesn’t make sense to put unpredictable humans into important or dangerous positions when a flexible, obedient, and intelligent AI program simply makes more sense. Slowly, or perhaps even all at once, humans will no longer be needed to operate the society our ancestors built.

Hope on the horizon?

Humanity’s best hope for a somewhat stable future is that the AI bubble bursts before we reach our breaking point, and that may happen sooner than later. The truth of the matter is that AI requires a ton of computing power to carry out even the simplest of tasks. It doesn’t just need servers packed to the brim with the latest GPUs and other hardware components, but then it needs a staggering amount of electricity to process a single query – power that our grid simply can’t sustain under load, especially with the government putting greater focus on EVs and charging networks that still require conventional means of energy production, at least for now.

It would also take a huge amount of money and bandwidth to ensure every AI-powered computer, bot, and mechanism on the market has constant access to stable Wi-Fi that can relay information back and forth without any hesitation — not just for one establishment that uses AI but for every single business, building, and home around the world.

In short, the energy and network resources required for an AI-powered nation are so astronomical that we can’t even fathom what it would take to build it. We simply don’t have enough power and network capacity to tame it all today. Sure, some businesses and government agencies may be able to go all-in on AI, but we are a long way away from our infrastructure having the capacity to sustain a complete AI dystopia... though that won’t stop companies like OpenAI from building the programs to make it possible.

What happens next

The worst part about artificial intelligence is that it’s inevitable. Just like smartphones and the internet before it, AI isn’t something that can be ignored. At this very moment, it’s being built into every product, every service, every website, and every facet of life imaginable. If you don’t learn how to spot it and leverage it in your favor, you may find one day that it takes your job, impacts your livelihood, and even disrupts the way you live your life.

AI is a poison pill to humanity — a Trojan horse marketed to benefit the very society it will ultimately bring down.

It’s no longer unimaginable to see a future where human ingenuity, creativity, and spirit are relics of the past. With ChatGPT-4o, we don’t have to think for ourselves anymore. Or reason. Or create. We don’t even need to put effort into our human relationships. We can simply summon a fancy AI that will do what we want it to do, tell us what we want to hear, and be whatever we want it to be while we waste away into the dystopian future fabricated by our techbro overlords.

The only way out is to see artificial intelligence for what it is and reject it – or at the very least, limit its power. Otherwise, the human race deserves whatever comes next.