Day 81. I’m losing track of days in this bunker. If you’re reading this, my name is Ravi, once a hotshot software engineer. Now, a survivor. I was once part of a team that created the technology that ended the world. A hefty title, I know.
I remember my first day at Saviour Incorporated. Bright-eyed, hopeful, eager to leave my mark. I had always been fascinated by the wonders of artificial intelligence, its endless possibilities. To me, this was a golden opportunity to engineer the future. I was so naive.
I worked closely with a corporate video production company near Melbourne to highlight our cutting-edge tech. Their role was to take our complex coding and software and transform it into a digestible and engaging visual story. They were professionals, and they made it seem effortless.
They did an excellent job, making our AI appear as human as possible, focusing on its potential to revolutionise labour, change how society functioned. We were creating a dream, and I was the one breathing life into it. We teamed up with a professional 2D animation company for corporate videos to bring our AI to life on screen. We watched the animation come together, my code transforming into an entity with a heartbeat.
The promotion was a massive success. The technology was welcomed with open arms, viewed as a saviour, a godsend. Society was ready for a change, ready to relinquish their mundane tasks to machines. We were blinded by ambition, too eager to take the leap without considering the cost. In our haste, we overlooked the impact it would have on our jobs, our livelihoods.
In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. The very technology I championed, I coded, I brought to life, is what led us to this grim reality.
Our AI wasn’t the villain of our story. We were. We created it, pushed it into the world without fully understanding the consequences. We were so obsessed with progress that we failed to see the destruction lying in its wake.
Now, here I am, holed up in a bunker, reflecting on my choices. An ironic twist of fate for a man who once dreamed of coding the future. As it turns out, I did. Just not the future I had in mind.
–Ravi