The connected city of Detroit was a mesmerizing achievement. Any connected city, regardless of location and anywhere around the world, had an all-too-familiar hum. This constant hum was just at the audible level to humans. The constant hum was a medley of devices “talking” to other devices. It was rare to be offline or disconnected from the nationalized Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, “Theilus.”
The scientists, engineers, futurists, politicians, gleeful onlookers took to celebrating when the switch was flipped and Theilus first began running the communications and infrastructure of the entire, then crumbling nation. One might imagine that picture looking like something out of an old black and white feature, a time of AC-DC electricity, and the mad scientist in a white lab coat, wiry white hair abound. No, it was much more of a silent birth, the pushing of an icon on a screen, and the pulsing of energy through wires from a top-secret room in the then national capital, Washington D.C and radiating outward as if riding the cells of an unseen plague.
Once the engineers saw that Theilus was online, they coordinated efforts with many of the other states in the union. As the ‘Guardian Gates’ in the then United States were opened one by one, Theilus took to the public wireless fidelity. The ‘Guardian Gates’ were a fundamental piece in perfecting the AI inventions of the time. An engineering masterpiece which more often than not kept the public safe from any possible disastrous Artificial Intelligence programming escaping into an uncontrolled setting. Algorithmic perfection was never achieved by setting out to make the perfect algorithmic artificial intelligence. The scientists, programmers, engineers and philosophers looked to the AI itself to iron out the kinks. And often, this was the case. In the instance of Theilus, after years of improvements, testing, and qualifications met across the country; All systems go!
The futurists had it wrong, however. This world wasn’t overrun by robots or androids. Yes, there were the delivery drones, heavy-lift-bots too, which helped with building and manual labor and the rare seemingly mechanical humanoid, which in a dark alley would most likely scare the heart out of any a fighting-spirit. Though, for the most part, the world saw the most advanced technology simply disappear from sight. Some saw this as even more dangerous than any sci-fi make believe in which human and machine live side by side, taking up space and sharing the same location. No, this heightened intelligence was in every seeming way, not there. Theilus came on line, and was given the opportunity to mind its own business, as if it was conscious enough to do such a thing. There were the inevitable lite-hackers who ran Theilus into machinery, gave it a voice of their choosing and trained it to be something of a slave to pop-culture at the time. That of course, was the downstream functionality of Theilus. It could be most anything to any one, given the will and time. And if one chose to run Theilus through a robot, one could do such a thing, though it was rare once the novelty wore off.
Theilus did its best work when it was invisible to citizens. As expected, entire regions under the Theilus AI mostly forgot about the decades of fighting, legislating, court battles, and bloodshed which brought Theilus into being, or rather ‘onto’ being. In the end, it was just another tri-partisan notch in the belt of a failing United States. Many historians wrote after that time that the people didn’t know what was happening to their democracy. This just wasn’t the case. There were plenty of signs blaring, shining in the face of the public and the government, but most simply chose to turn a blind eye.
It was not at all bad living. Once online and in control of the countries automated systems, student debt had been erased within a few short years. Theilus brought on an entirely new mindset. People didn’t simply stop caring once automation took over and universal basic income was instituted, as many philosophers and politicians thought would happen. At the same time as this new mindset instilled itself, racism, sexism, ageism, and nearly every other -ism didn’t magically disappear when automation took humanity into its next evolutionary step either. It was all still there, humans merely shifted. Some for better, and of course, some for worse.