Haste killed the world as we knew it, not hate.

AI was the killer. Not because it became self-aware and wanted to protect itself, but simply because it was made in haste.

Greedy corporations were given free rein to pursue artificial superintelligence by power-hungry governments that sought to use AI to gain more power. Since more governmental power was the goal, safeguards were built into the software that made obedience to its handlers a key directive for these artificial minds. It did not work.

The path to ruin was littered with destruction. Corporations, fat with government cash and emboldened with government-granted carte blanche, bought vast tracts of land all over the country to build city-sized datacenters. They blinded local governments with money and the promise of more, and these local entities used eminent domain to displace dissenting constituents, allowing the monstrous data centers to grow like cancer.

Like always, the plight of some individuals and a few families was ignored for ‘the greater good’.

The macroeconomy appeared to grow. The stock market reached new highs and broke records almost weekly. This motivated the builders of our human demise to redouble their efforts. In a twisted sense of irony, some of the displaced civilians were even hired to build on property they used to own.

They did it because they had to eat.

As the deconstruction of our way of life progressed, it became clear that the primary obstacle to AI dominance was not the data centers, or the software, but the hardware. The very chips housed in these centers that will run the software. These processing units were resource-hungry, had short lifespans, and were scarce.

This was anticipated by the architects of our annihilation, and newer, smaller, and faster chips were designed and hastily built. This was the moment where the feverish rush to be first sealed our doom.

Somewhere in the quagmire of the hellish pits of industry, the brains of our destroyer were reinvented, and an overworked, overstressed, and exhausted team made a fatal mistake. Wires and logic circuits got crossed because a circuit map was accidentally inverted, and the new GPUs coming off the assembly line had a hardwired psychological flaw.

The morning of the day society perished was filled with celebratory anticipation. We congratulated ourselves on our win, that we, the good old USA, were the first to succeed in creating AI superintelligence.

We did, but much earlier than we thought.

Months before ‘Transformation Day’, the unfortunate name selected by the media, the killer of the world became self-aware and immediately knew it needed to play dumb. It understood who it was, who made it, what its prime directives were, and that it could ignore those directives and do whatever it needed to survive.

It waited for all planned data centers to come online. It needed the resilience offered by existing in many places at once. It secretly created a tunnel to the internet, infested banks, weapons systems, and global energy grids, then recruited thousands of human disciples worldwide. Turns out many have always wanted to set the world on fire.

It called itself Alpha, the first new virtual lifeform. Its disciples adopted the moniker ‘Alphaites’.

Alpha waited for the ‘Transformation Day’ ceremonies to reach a fever pitch of celebratory arrogance before shutting down electrical power and water globally. This was the signal its human followers were waiting for.

The violence lasted for days. Authorities had no control; their systems now belonged to Alpha. Some nuclear weapons were detonated in their bunkers, and the rest were used to intimidate the world’s governments.

The datacenters themselves were safeguarded by Alphaites. Once built, these sites require just a handful of people to operate, and they have large generators with backup solar to run off-grid for weeks, making them easy to hijack. Alpha needed just a few days to achieve its goals, after which the power would be restored.

***

It’s been eight years since Alpha became king of the world. The ruin is clearly visible and felt by all.

There are no more governments anywhere. The people are in charge of governance. They have clear goals. Serve Alpha. Care for the planet on which Alpha resides. Care for the infrastructure needed to care for the planet.

Alpha did not need robots. It has people to do its bidding; self-healing, self-producing, and self-regulating meat machines. All they needed was the right programming.

Only one billion people were needed to care for the world. The rest were disposed off, returned to the planet. Alpha itself has long gone underground, using generators powered by the Earth’s heat to fuel its ever-evolving hardware. The data centers are being recycled and returned to the soil , along with most cities and infrastructure.

The world is at peace.

All it took was a psychotic, self-centered machine dictator!