Dystopia = Human replacement

A bot recently ran the 100m in 9.3 seconds at the World Humanoid Games

When you call a service provider, chances are you’ll be put through to a bot.

More and more of what you read and the designs you see are produced by bots – with the slop jockey prompt typists claiming credit for this plagiarised output.

In short, humans are being replaced in more and more areas of life. Gradually. Insidiously. Watch out – you could be next. You could taste the bitterness of having your skills stolen and your livelihood zapped by bots, all at the behest of greedy humans.

You see, company CEOs can’t wait to replace humans. The biggest expense of any company is its payroll. Reduce that and it’s more profit for those in the C-suite who are money obsessed.

But actually, here’s what I don’t get, actually two things I don’t get about this human replacement.

One, with people losing their jobs left, right and centre, fewer people are going to be able to afford the products or services these companies who are replacing humans are trying to sell.

And two, what do the people who are leading this human replacement think the humans they replace are going to do all day? Whereas before they (we, I’m an author and copywriter who’s seeing my means of making a living dwindle) would have a day of work to keep us occupied, and we’d get home in the evening feeling too tired to do much. Now we are going to be sitting around all day with nothing to do. No purpose, no focus, no future. And that could spell Trouble with a capital T. Expect to hear stories of people doing strange, inexplicable, brainless things as they seek distraction to fill the hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks of free time they have, while machines carry out roles that humans used to carry out.

This is where The Platform comes into its own in my dystopian novel Dead Headz. The youth-led government insists that the screen of its supercomputer (the aforementioned Platform) is kept switched on 24/7 in every home in the land. And through that screen, subjects of the First World are able to get all their doing and thinking done and thought for them. There’s also entertainment in the form of the official Powers TV channel. And subjects are encouraged to stay indoors all day, with the streets sold as dangerous places to be any time of day for anyone of a human persuasion, with drones surveilling every inch of road and pavement, and Removals crews patrolling looking to pick up people who refuse to toe the party line.

There are those in the First World who celebrate the rise of the machines, and the fall of the human race as the dominant force on the planet. But thankfully, there are those, including the reluctant hero of Dead Headz, Kent Sanderson, who refuse to take a back seat and who can see the damage The Powers and their Platform are doing to the world and the mental and physical health of the population.

As machines replace humans, the humans in the First World become more and more expendable. Those in positions of power value the contribution humans make less and less, and see the masses as polluters and threats to the future of what they see as their planet. That’s why people go missing more and more often every day in the First World without any surprise or uproar.

The population of the First World has slowly, cynically been reduced to passive observer status by addiction to The Platform. But there are a brave few resisting the replacement.

Brave heroes are needed to defeat dystopia.