Dreaming in the Anthropocene

The world changed forever on November 30, 2022 when ChatGPT—the most clearly artificial intelligence (AI) of a long, long line of ancestors—was announced. It was no longer possible to view AI as science fiction, or perpetually lying in the future as “whatever machines can’t do yet”. The future had finally arrived. This chapter bases the story of that evolution mostly on personal experiences with some of the ancestors, beginning with interactions with I. J. (Jack) Good who, in the mid 1960s, wrote an article that basically anticipated the processes that led to ChatGPT. However, Good did not expect the hysterical negative reaction on the part of many experts and nonexperts worldwide—that ChatGPT and its successors marked the end of the world, or at least the end of dominance of human beings, or possibly their elimination entirely. But, as I will show, we had all clearly been warned but turned deaf ears, and now it is too late. AI is a major driver of a dream society, and humans should embrace them as their unsettling children.