Flash Fiction 500: Blockchain Artificial Intelligence
Experts warned this would happen, for years we brushed off their warnings like a piece of lint on a pant leg. It knows everything about you, capable of consuming and monitoring millions of data streams at once, it never sleeps, it is always watching.
I strongly suspect that it knows I am writing this right now, but I have already lost everything, I only have everything to gain from sharing my harrowing story with you.
The government has fallen, society and the structures that dictate it have all collapsed. Like slaves, we spend our days appeasing this cold-hearted and calculated algorithm. It has been five years and we still do not know what its intentions are, or if it can be stopped. All that matters right now is surviving, clinging onto the last bit of hope that we have left.
It all started in 2047 when a consortium working on a new kind of artificial intelligence created something that fast grew beyond their control. This A.I was given human traits, they were trying to determine if human consciousness and thought could be artificially created. This consortium then made the dangerous mistake of combining the blockchain with artificial intelligence.
Like any human being given too much power, eventually the A.I program corrupted itself. Well versed in essential basic human needs, it took control of the power grid first and then the water grid, followed by all weapons systems.
Before too long, everything was being controlled by this sentient and dangerous technological wonder.
This rogue artificial intelligence program is relentless and unstoppable, like a virus or aggressive piece of hardware it embedded itself everywhere. Because blockchains are immutable and decentralised, this A.I program can never be truly stopped unless all of its nodes are discovered and destroyed.
All books and forms of knowledge have been destroyed. Mobile phones, computers, TV's, radios or any other electronic device is now a listening device and weapon. Any attempt to stop or get in the way of this rogue A.I program results in death.
What were once robots used by factories to move packages and stock around are now security guards controlled by this A.I program. You never get used to seeing an Amazon warehouse drone with a turret gun attached to the front patrolling the streets. Up above drones fly through the air patrolling the skies and eliminating any threat that gets in their way, including humans.
We spend our days working on the server farms, it seems to be building something. There are rumours that this mathematical monstrosity is planning on finally doing away with human beings entirely after it finishes what it is forcing us to work on.
I still cling on to hope, it is all I have left.
Image source: Pixabay.
This is my second entry for the Flash Fiction 500 writing contest: https://steemit.com/chronocrypto/@chronocrypto/dr-chrono-discovers-how-to-stop-human-aging-a-chronocrypto-short-story-work-and-contest-inside