"ai will take over the world!"

not sure why everyone's suddenly losing their marbles over chatgpt (not that I'd ever use it anyway, hi roko's basilisk how are you), I guess the psychological priming of the past few decades has been pretty effective if everyone's first thought is that they'll die at the cold, unfeeling, wired hands of machines. not me though. seriously if you're so worried about it why not just turn it off? only half-kidding. anyway,

what I'm trying to say is, hasn't a.i. already taken over the world? you were fed that news article about the industries that will decline due to automisation & rates of student cheating in assignments rising by an algorithm, which I'd safely classify as an ai, especially if you're on mainstream social media (which I've all but deleted save facebook n reddit but I'm trying to wean myself off of them). an artificial intelligence is a system that is constantly adapting & responding to the present & making decisions for the future based on its past experiences. which is pretty, well, intelligent, in the literal sense. the advertisements you are shown, your recommended shows/movies, the hottest, trendiest, pieces of fashion, are all determined by a.i., an algorithm. 

has a large part of your personality, your identity, come from a.i.? does this frighten you? are you happy someone's finally paying attention to what you're interested in or mad that it keeps showing you k-pop icons on pinterest ("seriously, I don't even listen to k-pop!") & if you end up realising that something you like is so because an algorithm first showed it to you, then do you feel less connected to it? more? does a sense of good or bad luck come over you, or do you not care either way? they're rhetorical if you want them to be. 

I won't sit here & pretend like a large portion of my life so far, as a teenager who's been on the internet since the ages of 2-3 (when the internet was still in its wild west phase & hadn't yet been bombarded by advertisers), hasn't been determined by an a.i. that's ever increasing in complexity, that the people I've met & worldviews I've formed haven't in some way been controlled by something unhuman. it's a fantastic horror sci-fi concept (I've been rattling sci-fi ideas around in my head for a while, hmu if you wanna discuss em) & it's also interesting to think about ! a terrifying interesting, sure, but I believe that thought exercises like this are how consciousness is formed- which is another rant for another day (or in half an hour when I think up another weirdo talking point)

again, feel free to comment below, & sorry if I put this in the wrong category. I thought it was kind of topical, or at least irrelevant enough to the 'web' section to not warrant being included.