Why I’d rather be a Median Human than Sub-Human (or Who Can't You Trust During an Alien Invasion?)

What’s the best way to unite the whole world? Negotiation around a table in the United Nations? Nah, that’ll never work. Pacts and treaties? Tried that. Fail. But what about an aggressive alien invasion? That would force everyone to unite to repel the unwanted extra-terrestrial invaders wouldn’t it?

Well, yes, but no, not everyone. You see, while most of the world would surely unite to fight for the human race’s survival, there would be one group of people that would likely welcome the alien invaders with open arms. 

Because this is a group that right here, right now is actively creating an alien force that could have the power to take over the Earth and destroy the human race without having to travel light years in advanced space vessels to get here. 

A group of people going all-out to risk the future of the human race so they can fill their pockets and impress their fellow geeks, while destroying a few million livelihoods along the way.

Yes, that group is AI developers who seek to create machines that are superior to humans.

It recently came to light that some such AI developers regard the rest of us as ‘median humans’. It’s a bit of a dull, moderately offensive, middle of the road, catch-all classification. Clearly, they think we’re all below them. Disposable. A bit of a grey area getting in the way of their obsessive desire to shun the real world and live in a virtual world.

This breed of AI developer seem geekish to us medians. Perhaps they were outcasts at school and harbour a bitterness against humans that’s as deep seated as the toilets their heads were likely forced down during break times back in the day. They see AI as their way of getting their own back on us Average Joes and Josephines.

Now with their oh so clever ideas, and finally with friends (albeit virtual bots), they see people as an expendable amorphous mass. And the more powerful the robots they develop, the more havoc, revenge and misery they can heap on those they never could understand or befriend. 

But while they might think their obsession with AI and virtual everything makes them superhuman and above the rest of us, their stance, their work, their approach to life actually puts them several levels of humanity below the rest of us in the murky realms of sub-humans.

AI developers, by continuing to develop technology that they know has a good chance of wiping out the human race, are failing to demonstrate the minimum level of morality or intelligence that’s required to be associated with what’s known as a normal human being. In this sense, they meet the criteria of what makes a sub-human.

By their very insistence that their work must continue regardless of the risk, they fly in the face of what any normal human being would do. Any normal human being, if they knew their work had a chance of destroying the human race, however small that chance, would stop that work, take a long hard look at themselves and go and do something more constructive, less destructive.

But not these AI developers. Oh no. They laugh in the face of Armageddon. They smirk with pride at the fact that what they do sitting in yesterday’s underpants in darkened rooms could actually end civilisation as everyone else knows it. 

They stare at screens all day, desperately hoping for a job-stealing breakthrough that will impress their fellow geeks and earn them untold wealth at the expense of hardworking medians.

But they are not the superhumans they think they are. Nor are they the median humans they so readily mock. Instead, they are degenerate sub-humans who should all be held to account should the worst fears their work threatens to visit on the world be realised.

So who’ll destroy the world first – aliens from faraway galaxies, or the aliens in our midst who are developing AI without the first idea where what they’re doing will lead the world? 

The race to the bottom is on and all bets are off, unless median humans take a greater, more critical interest in what these faceless techies are up to.