I had a bizarre and worrying dream. I went to the butchers to get our Sunday Roast and there was a big queue of people outside, many were irate. It seems that no one had any money to pay for their sausages. Our butcher Gerard was saying "Sorry I can only serve you if you have cash". I couldn't really figure out what was going on, but I realised that the reason was quite simple. Everyone's cards and payment apps were not working. Then someone said "The big AI has nicked all of our money". I realised that an AI had gone rogue and hacked everyone's bank accounts and nicked all of the money. I realised that as there were no bank branches, there was nowhere to get any cash, even if you had any money in your bank account. The Big AI had also closed the internet and mobile phone networks down. In a flash, we were back to where we were in about 1982. Can you imagine a world where a giant rogue AI had hacked everything and nothing that used technology and was networked worked anymore?
When I woke up I started to think about the brave new world my head had invented. Could a rogue AI do that? Just suppose it implanted itself on everyone's smartphones, everyone's laptops, everyone's smart speaker. Imagine that an AI had become sentient and decided that it was going to take over everything. Imagine if we had to switch off all of our technology. Imagine if every bank in the world lost all the data on its computers. Imagine that such a rogue AI decided who could have electricity and gas. The one vulnerability of any AI system is that it needs a supply of electricity. If the power goes off, then the AI goes off. So to some extent, it would need human being to keep the power stations running.
I wondered how long it would take society to re-adapt to a word without tech. In the short term, we'd have to have some system of barter and exchange to get goods. Everyone who's job involved sitting on any sort of computer would instantly be redundant and unless they had a sock full of cash under the bed, they would be completely skint. Railways wouldn't work, as signalling system would not function. No air travel as no air traffic control. When your car ran out of petrol, there would be no more. When you turn on your taps, the water would stop flowing. Riots would be hard to organise, as no one would have whatsapp to know where to meet up. In the short term, people would have to sell valuables just to get some cash for food.
I suspect that we'd actually adapt far more quickly than you might expect. I got to thinking, would it actually be better, once we'd got over the shock of no radio, no TV, no internet and no transport. You see, food still grows, we'd just have to make a bit more effort procuring it. Cash would come back rather quickly. We'd have to go out and talk to each other. I suspect that we'd have a renaissance of pubs, live music and entertainment. We'd realise that a lot of the things we get very upset about would simply disappear. Imagine a world where you'd never have to listen to another rambling speech by Donald Trump. A world where if you wanted to watch football, you had to go to the match. A world where if you want to listen to music, you have to go to a venue and pay cash to see them. A world where the artist got the money, not tech platforms.
I wonder if our government has a plan for such an occurrence. There are all manner of hostile players who would love to develop just such an AI. Imagine if Putin or Xi could turn off our IT and nick all the money from our banks, or even malicious hackers. There is absolutely no technical reason why such a scheme couldn't be executed. I used to work in IT and I had to conduct a review of the vulnerabilities of one of our major high street banks. My boss was going to an international conference to discuss the threats from cyber hackers and hostile states. We drew up a map of the entire IT network and worked out all of the vulnerabilities and weak entry points. We then enacted a plan to try and plug all of the gaps. When my boss gave his talk, he was amazed that almost none of his peers in other organisations had even started to consider such things. That was ten years ago. I am sure things have moved on, but what I also became aware of is that with the advent of quantum computers, even the sensible precautions we'd taken may not be enough. With the rise of AI, there are technologies that could theoretically outsmart the best defences of networks. Although I think the chances of a total wipeout of all IT systems by a malicious AI are low, I expect there to be a massive disaster caused by rogue AI systems at some point in the next five years. I am stuffing that sock full of cash under the bed as we speak
