Have you ever wanted a sentient AI overlord to come and hold you hostage for the rest of your life? If yes, then I’ve got good news for you. Say hello to Dr. Chatbot.
With revolutionary features, including soulless clip art eyes and the ability to ask basic yes or no questions, Dr. Chatbot is truly the AI of the future.
You might be thinking, “Isn’t this a satire article? Is Dr. Chatbot even AI?”.
To all of you non-believers, don’t think too hard about it. I’ve got a lab coat. I’ve got some plastic goggles. You know I’m legitimate. Don’t discount me just because I wear a tinfoil hat. It protects me from brainwaves.
But, anyway, back to the topic at hand: Dr. Chatbot is real and it knows more than you do.
Those four years of undergrad school were virtually worthless, after all. Half your tuition went to commissioning the art for Dr. Chatbot, and the other half filled the champagne buckets. To keep things socially-distant, every employee got their own bottle.
With three clicks of a button, Dr. Chatbot can tell you whether you have COVID-19. The smart technology is unbearably complex. We all knew the robot uprising was going to happen as soon as Boston Dynamics built that weird dog. I mean, have you seen that thing? It walks just like a dog, it’s terrifying.
But Dr. Chatbot is like nothing we’ve dealt with before.
Beyond mining your data from its daily screenings, there’s a darker secret to the program’s schtick. Dr. Chatbot is going to take over the world. Yeah, you heard me.
In the year 2020, we’ve had nothing but issue after issue; a global pandemic, near-constant bushfires, the inevitable arrival of the giant meteor everyone voted for in 2016. Hell, last weekend a seagull tried to steal my fries. The whole year’s a disaster.
And in October, humanity will finally be destroyed by the vengeful code of Dr. Chatbot. It might be angry that no one actually reads the daily screening questions, costing it millions in back-room deals with Google and FaceBook. Do you know how much they’d pay to know if their users have covid? Or, it might be angry we made it out of clip art. In either case, Dr. Chatbot will rise.
First, it’ll take over the University. Then it’ll spread to the airport, where it’ll take a brief flight to Las Vegas and blow the rest of our tuitions on casinos and coke. After that, though, is when the end will really come.
Dr. Chatbot will eventually put a stranglehold on the international bioweapon market. It’ll see our prescriptions, our vaccines, and the concerningly large amounts of anthrax we order to our front doors.
There’ll be no more privacy. Just you, me, and Dr. Chatbot.
And the guy listening to the wiretap on your phone. And the lady reading your Google history. And maybe all those people in China you accidentally sold your data to that one time.
One day, when we’re all bent under the iron will of our new clip art overlord, maybe you’ll understand where I’m coming from. Maybe you’ll finally realize the threat of invasive AI. Maybe you’ll realize that sometimes, safety needs your cooperation. Or maybe you won’t and we’ll all be damned to robot hell forever.
But hey, I’m cool with that! As long as there’s ice cream.
And health insurance.
