Inventors and their inventions are never divorced from the cultures and problems they were trying to solve. Both inventors and their creations are shaped by their environments. It’s not a surprise that seemingly identical inventions pop up almost simullataniously around the world. The ideas “come to mind” at the same moments in human history, driven by similar cultural pressures and similar problems. Language, agriculture, stone tools, paper, books, calculus, electricity, and even lightbulbs roll over human populations like waves. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. And inventions build on each other — can’t develop metal weapons prior to discovering how to smelt; don’t need writing until the population gets large enough that transactions need to be recorded (yes, the first “stories” were spreadsheets); can’t have lightbulbs until there’s electricity to power them; don’t really need agriculture until the population pressure forces the issue of reliable food source without migration.

We live in the age of accelerated pace of discovery. One individual can no longer know or read all there is to know, not to mention master it. And arguably one of the most civilization-changing discoveries is upon us — artificial intelligence. Whether or not the algorithms we call AIs are truly intelligent is not really the point. AIs are very cable and not just in the virtual sphere. AI’s influence is rapidly expanding so that it will control all of our basic needs — food, water, communication, transportation, shelter. And it will do so with few noticing the transition from human to AI control. The take over is happening now. While humans invented bureaucracy, AI mastered and excelled at it.

To live in large populations, humans invented bureaucracy — a way of recording and tracking information. The larger the population, the more paperwork it generates just to perpetuate itself. Financial institutions and medical ones, governmental agencies (at all levels) and educational organizations, shipping and manufacturing, all generate an insane amount of data that churns through uncountable number of rules and regulations. No human can track it all. No human can even understand it. No wonder we hire expert accountants to help with our taxes; lawyers to help with virtually all transactions; and insurance agents to help manage our health, car, and homes. And as routine tasks get more and more complicated and rule-bound, we reach out to educational advisors to help with our educational journeys, yentas to help find a life partner, employment agencies to manage out job searches, and so on. But what we, the inventors of bureaucracies, find difficult, AIs find easy. AI agents can master all the rules of tax code and spit out a perfect tax return that takes advantage of all the loop holes that we inadvertently (or on purpose) placed there by our very human legislators. AIs thrive in the a complex environment of rules and regulations — after all, while having a real world consequences, these rules and regulations are just mental constructs, easily consumed and manipulated by virtual agents. These agents don’t even have to be “conscious”, they just need to solve complex games to come up with optimal solutions for their owners. AIs are great at this already.

What happens when we hook up our real world infrastructures like power grids and water supplies to networks accessible to AI agents? There are no Asimov’s Rules of Robotics to govern AI. And our current government is not likely to impose any either. We are in an AI arms race, each country and its companies are racing to build an ever more powerful AIs so as to not be “outgunned” by their rivals. This is pretty dangerous territory. Yuval Noah Harari gives a thoughtful discussion about history, politics, and AI in his book: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. He provides lots of examples and scenarios of human interactions and group dynamics and how the introduction of AI may influence those. The book leaves lots of room for thought. I strongly recommend it.

But I also want to touch on a slightly different topic of AIs: personal relationships with fictional characters. We all form personal relationships with fictional characters. We read a book or watch a movie and become super attached to their heroes and antiheroes. My social studies teacher in high school was in love with Odysseus. (You bet we were all careful about mentioning something negative about him to her.) Is it so different from people forming relationships with AI agents? What if we create AI agents that are based on particular characters from books? Odysseus, for example? Would people enjoy interacting with fictional people they love? When I was young, I loved Captain Blood — he was a doctor who became a pirate, a compassionate pirate. I loved the heroism, compassion, and the tragedy of his life. He really appealed to me as a teenager. I would have loved the ability to talk to Captain Blood — have him as a virtual friend. I think many people “fall in love with fictional characters” — Sherlock Holmes, Elsa, Peter Pan, Spiderman. And what about famous people? We already have AI-generated images and videos utilizing photos and soundbites from famous people. What if we had a personal version of a celebrity? A best friend that was both real and fictional at the same time and powered by AI?

And even more — we can resurrect people we lost — children, spouses, lovers, parents, friends — that we lost but who we would still want to have around (note that “lost” doesn’t have to mean dead). With so much information gathered on everyone — think facebook and other media — we can get a pretty realistic representation of our loved ones and have virtual conversations that would feel very real. We would truly love them and their loss would be unthinkable.

I thought a lot about this particular issues in my book Lizard Girl & Ghost. And so I made it available again for a free download as part of this month’s collection of sci-fi and fantasy reads. Please take a look and grab a few stories. Perhaps you’ll meet you true love…