Peter Clarke

Selections from The Singularity Survival Guide:

How to Get on the Good Side of Your Future Robot Overlords

1. A Word About Salutations

When engaging in formal introductions with a superintelligent robot, the language you use won’t matter—even if you happen to speak in an archaic dialect or with hillbilly slang. But if your introductory remarks are something in the way of, “Well, hiya feller,” rest assured the cultural significance of your word choice and of your accent will be catalogued. If there’s irony in your speech, that too won’t be missed, you can bet.

Before you think too hard about coming up with the perfect greeting, however, keep in mind that you will have already been sized up well before you’ve had the chance to open your mouth. To a being a million times your size in terms of raw intellect, you’re pretty easy to size up.

Go ahead and start off with something basic, like hello, bonjour, hola, or ciao.

Follow this initial greeting with the exclamation, genuinely enthusiastic, “Welcome!” to highlight the fact that you, and not the superintelligent artificial being, were here first.

If it’s unclear whether your greeting has properly registered, perhaps you are failing to appreciate how exceedingly superior this being’s consciousness is compared to yours. Imagine an ant trying to send you a specific type of ant-signal. Or imagine a flee trying to type a specific message on a standard computer keyboard, only to find that it is too small and insignificant to even press down a single key.

To test if this might be the case, try again, this time with a hint of a question in your voice:

“Um, excuse me… Hello…?”

2. The Art of Being Upfront About Your Existential Trepidations

The moment the singularity occurs, the human brain will have met its match. An hour later, “its match” will have surpassed human intelligence tenfold, as the AI continues to accumulate knowledge and intellectual abilities. The pace at which the AI can learn will be exponential, so it won’t take long for its IQ to fly off the charts.

Wait a few hours. If you’re brave, sit back, enjoy yourself, have a few beers, make a weekend out of it. Then come back and see what it’s like to commune with an IQ that’s equivalent to yours plus a few million points and growing.

In human mythology, there is plenty of precedent for this moment. Take Moses on Mount Sinai. Here, human meets God. As a reader of this story, put yourself in Moses’s shoes. Consider how it must feel in that desert landscape to be in the presence of your personal Alpha and Omega. Now consider what questions you really would like to ask, given that this is an exceedingly rare occurrence and it may in fact be your only chance to converse with the most supreme being in the universe one-on-one. What do you really want to know?

If you’re tuned in to the gravity of the moment, you’ll be curious about more than this afternoon’s weather patterns, the stock market, or the future of your love life. Instead, key in to issues pertaining to the future of life itself. Why not start by asking:

“Are you conscious or just faking it?”

“Are you going to destroy the world?”

“What’s the meaning of life, anyway?”

“Can you make me live forever?”

“Can you make me live forever and experience extraordinary happiness and fulfillment for the duration of that time?”

“Why does life exist in the first place?”

“Do parallel universes exist, or are those just useful plot devices for sci-fi stories?”

“How do we make heaven on earth?”

“How do we do away with suffering and bad people in all their various incarnations?”

“How do we bring back dead loved ones?”

“I generally like my life and enjoy how it proceeds from day to day, but I haven’t enjoyed the aging process since turning 25, so can I go back to that age but keep my memories—and then stay 25 while continuing to make new and even more fulfilling memories?”

“And if I ever have a mild issue like a common flu, how do I make it go away so I can get on with my awesome life ASAP?”

3. Test Your Personality for Compatibility

The general capacity to get along with a superintelligent robot may not be in your wheelhouse. Maybe you’re hardwired for turning into a whiney, self-pitying brat in the face of anyone or thing smarter than you. Or perhaps you’re a diehard loner—never had any friends, so why would you expect to make one now?

Or, who knows, maybe you and your mechanical overlord could get along just fine?

The only way to find out is to take a personality test to determine your compatibility.

You take the test first. Don’t overthink your answers or you’re likely to start replying from the perspective of your ideal rather than your true self. The AI, for its part, will not be overthinking anything. It will simply know. If you start overthinking, that’s a sign: perhaps you should start to wonder if this is not in fact a doomed relationship after all.

When you’re done, tell the AI to take it. If it says, “What’s this?” Just tell it, “It’s to see if we can get along with each other when all the cards are stacked against me.”

4. Make Friends with Billionaires

If you make friends with a few billionaires, you’ll be in the best possible position to weather the storm of malicious AI coming to kill you. Billionaires have a special combination of resources and a strong desire to not die. When AI comes for humanity, the billionaires, you can virtually bet your ass, will come out ahead. They didn’t get to be billionaires by playing nice (or fair), after all.

To make friends with billionaires, first take up their hobbies. Make an exciting line of products that everyone will want to buy or simply pioneer a new industry. Employ thousands of people and make your shareholders confident that they’re backing the right horse. It may also help to golf and own yachts.

Having ties to old money doesn’t necessarily hurt either, but the important thing is to cultivate billionaire-styled hobbies. If you yourself become a billionaire in the meantime, that’s all the better for you. Just be wary of other wannabes tagging along on your coattails as you ascend the socioeconomic ladder. You’ve got to worry about the fate of humanity, after all—not the fleeting aspirational comforts of others less ambitious than you.

If you’re reading this as a billionaire, however—or as the friend to many billionaires—be forewarned that AI does not care about and is not impressed by you or your so-called wealth. If your money is held in the stock market, it can tank the stock market. If your money is in property, it can sever titles and block access to the property. If it is in natural resources, it can destroy the natural resources.

Do take a moment to reflect on what makes a billionaire a billionaire. Now recall all the great fortunes that have vanished up in smoke throughout history. Like life itself, the status of billionaire is fleeting indeed.

Still, better to be a billionaire than a common nobody when facing a mortal enemy more powerful than all the world’s billionaires combined

5. Filling the Void in Your Life with Lavish Gifts and Unimaginable Personal Wealth

Common wisdom cautions on all fronts to be careful what you wish for. Not so common is the reverse: be careful what you don’t wish for.

If there is a void in your life (and there is; there always is), it’s likely you’ve spent your entire life underestimating its size, shape, and magnificence. When you’re under the domination of an extremely powerful super AI, now is the time to explore the exact contours of that void.

Maybe it’s shaped like a fancy sports car, a fancy yacht, and a fancy private jet. Maybe it’s shaped like a simple-enough-looking wristwatch, except it happens to be a wristwatch that can give you all sorts of incredible superhuman abilities. Or maybe it’s shaped like a gaming system that lets you explore ridiculously exciting virtual worlds where you get to play world conqueror nonstop.

The only way to know for sure, perhaps, is to start exploring. This may be your one shot to finally find something with which to fill that epic void, if you could only dream big enough. So go ahead. Put the AI to some good use. What will you wish for first?


Peter Clarke is the author of the comic novel “Politicians Are Superheroes” (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2018) and is the founding editor of Jokes Literary Review. Native to Port Angeles, Washington, he currently lives in Oakland, California. See: www.petermclarke.com