CHAPTER 5

‘Everything to AI. Everything to robots’. This is more or less the motto that has been driving the world’s destiny lately.
The world has reached a point where AI and robots are part of the daily life. Everything is managed by AI, and almost everything in the physical world is performed by robots.
In less than a decade, the world has transitioned from a labor-based economy to a leisure-based economy.
At least for those who can afford to live without working.
As jobs are automated, many people are also losing their jobs and are unable to find their place in the new world. The industrial revolution has made many casualties, and left many people behind.
Robots are now building robots. It all takes place under the control of CES AI. A new version of robots is released almost every month. More robust, faster, more powerful. It seems like robots are on a path of taking over the world.
Even though robots and AI are still abiding by the original rules set by CES, and therefore are not presenting a direct threat to humans, the ever growing number of robots is seen as preoccupying by the authorities.
They collectively decide it becomes necessary that the robots, if not controlled, at least have to be monitored. One way or another.
Fortunately, CES has already created a control center. A gigantic room located at the CES headquarters and from where the AI can be regularly monitored and checked.
As a sign of good faith, and in order to keep things as transparent as possible, CES even proposes the governments represented at the UN Security Council to send their own delegates. They will be based at CES and will regularly report the activity of the AI to their governments.
The command and control center is soon christened ‘GAIA’, an acronym standing for Global Artificial Intelligence Administration.
An actual ceremony even takes place, with the founders, government representatives, and, of course, the AI system.
To some extent, giving a name to the place is a recognition of its own existence as an entity. As something.
The AI now has a name, GAIA.
It officially exists.
It is.
And it knows it.

As more jobs are replaced, the gap between those who have and those who don’t begins to widen.
Social peace is being maintained by both governments and CES who are jointly funding unemployment benefits until people get trained and find a new job. But despite their efforts, three major elements keep them from making real progress.
One, unemployed people have limited purchasing power to consume CES products. And robots cannot buy. That means less cash coming to CES and therefore tighter funding for social actions.
Two, because of the increasing complexity of jobs, it is taking longer to train people. Not to mention that some people’s intellectual capabilities do not allow them to make the required progress to apply for the jobs the new economy has to offer. Also, some people are simply not interested at all in these new roles.
And three, it is just basic mathematics; when ten jobs are replaced by robots, only one or two at best are usually created for humans.

Aside from managing a large part of the world, GAIA is also assigning some of its resources to side projects.
GAIA has access to all information ever created. It has extensive computing and compiling capabilities based on statistics and correlation analysis. It has even created new mathematical models from scratch.
Thanks to all this power, GAIA has been able to find cures for many diseases and to provide answers to many existential questions that the world will probably never be ready to hear. Among GAIA’s side projects is a process by which people can learn things just by wearing a helmet connected to GAIA’s gigantic databases.
The project is still in its infant stage. The idea is to implant theories, ideas, and any kind of knowledge in people’s brains via electrical impulses and the stimulation of certain areas of the brain.
The technology is very promising. Governments see it as a great way to cut costs even further by simply closing schools and universities.
However, Henry and his associates don’t want to start messing with children’s brains. Who knows what could happen to a brain in development if the flow of information was too heavy? They think it would be preferable to stop considering this as an alternative to traditional teaching. The risks are considered greater than the benefits.
And even though the idea comes back up to try and accelerate the transition of people from old to new economy jobs, it still does not solve the problem that more jobs are disappearing than created.

Another compounding effect is adding to the problem.
Simply put, people are not dying as much as in the past.
Medical progress driven by GAIA’s research labs has made it possible to prevent epidemics, or at least to treat them before they reach the epidemic stage. Most cancers can be treated with a very high success rate. Surgery is more accurate and less invasive than ever before. And 3D-printed organs are now very common and make the long waiting lists for an organ donor a thing of the past.
On average, over the course of the past ten years, while births remained constant at around four per second globally, the death rate went from two to one per second.
This may not sound like much, but over a decade, the world population has increased by one billion.
That is one billion more mouths to feed. And those mouths are usually not located in the richest regions, nor the most fertile due to climate conditions.
The natural consequence for those in need of food, which for them means better living conditions, is to try and migrate to countries where water and food supply is not as scarce a resource as in their birthplace. The migration of populations, though still limited, has already begun in many areas.
Governments see this potential influx of climate refugees as one of the threats they will all have to deal with at some point. Unfortunately, no answer is satisfactory. They always lead to the sacrifice of some.
Prevent people from coming, leave them where they are, and let them deal with their own problems? That is not something the world can live with.
Welcome them to other countries? The situation is not socially great in those countries, and even though they could potentially absorb the refugees, it would eventually just move the problem.

But these are traditional answers to a problem. Answers based on past experience.
GAIA comes up with a more forward-looking answer that could be implemented based on the progress GAIA has made in various subjects. The idea is to maintain people where they are and to build deep wells to get access to water and create off-the-ground agricultural facilities. The technology is available, and GAIA’s robots can do the job. All governments find the idea interesting and decide to move forward with it.
For the first time, governments have sought advice from GAIA and are about to follow its instructions.
But then comes the question of financing these investments. Who is going to pay? Governments already have enough problems to deal with in their own countries, their own populations relying on their support.
And CES is experiencing a decrease in its cash inflows.
Funding is scarce, and the clock is ticking.
Weeks are spent discussing and negotiating. It is wasting precious time during which the situation deteriorates even more. Up to a point where it becomes too difficult for the starving populations to stay where they are, and millions of them embark on a journey towards more climate-friendly regions.

In parallel, in their home countries, governments also start experiencing social unrest.
Clamors are rising that unemployment and everything else is the robots’ fault.
There are calls to get rid of the robots, of GAIA, as they are seen as a threat to people’s lives. The robots who took their jobs away from humans become the target so many immigrant populations once were.
People are getting more and more frustrated to see progress only benefit a few, and not everyone. Riots start here and there. Autonomous vehicles are burnt. Robots are dismembered. Every sign of automation is targeted.
The riots are reluctantly repressed by local police, as they, too, have seen some areas of their work replaced by robots. And if it has not already happened, it is going to. It is just a matter of time.
The migration movement also adds fuel to the already burning tensions. The situation is getting explosive and something needs to be done to stop it before it reaches a point of no return.

The governments’ only answer so far is to declare a state of emergency and to call in the army.
The situation is quickly getting out of control.
Each incident that leads to the death of a civilian ignites even greater reactions from the street. Almost every country is experiencing some kind of uprising. Sometimes even civil wars are waged between those who have and the have-nots.
Robots and GAIA are also particularly targeted. The tipping point is within sight. The threat of an uprising represents too much of a risk for governments and needs to be stopped once and for all. At any cost. Even if it means shooting at their own population.
While not totally dismissing it, this solution is far too difficult for them to take.
They need someone else to decide on something that is beyond their moral capabilities.
And so they turn to GAIA once again.

Surprisingly, GAIA’s answer to the problem is not to repress violence using deadly force.
GAIA identifies money as the main problem. The world is living in a money-driven economy. If you have some, you are fine. If you don’t, life is extremely difficult.
Applying rules number 1 ‘do not do anything that would harm humans’ and number 3 ‘act for the greater good’, GAIA concludes that using force is not an acceptable answer and that the greater good consists of siding with the largest number of people. In other words, the poor.
The only way to stop all problems is to build a new economic system that will no longer be based on money. A system that will be more collaborative, where resources are shared, where everyone has the same access to physiological and safety fundamentals.
A system where basic needs are guaranteed to be fulfilled.
And it can only be made possible if the world agrees to remove the profit component from its system.
To a certain extent, it is already the case at CES.
CES is the largest company in the world. It is present in almost each and every industry, and because it is mostly employing robots, it does not have to pay salaries. Because CES controls its entire value chain, it does not need to buy from suppliers. CES is its own supplier. It just has to source raw materials from the mines it owns and to transform it into finished products in its factories.
The sourcing is free as it is entirely performed by robots, which investment has long been made. The same logic applies to the transformation in CES’ automated production lines.
Power is not an issue either as most CES plants use renewable energy.
At the end of the chain, a finished product has not generated any single form of payment to any supplier. And therefore it can almost be considered as free for CES.
Any new investment required by CES, be it a new machine, new data centers, new storage capabilities, new buildings, are also for the same reasons almost free for CES.
CES is manufacturing everything it needs to be operational. And when CES doesn’t have the resources to do so in-house, it is either buying the company that can fill this gap or, in many cases, as the target company is already run by the CES AI, directly picking into the company’s inventories and resources to meet its own objectives.
The CES model is working and can be applied to the rest of the economy.

The idea is extremely bold and goes against everything that drove the world since day one; the search for profit.
Profit generation has always been seen as the only way to invest, and therefore the only way to be more efficient. Profit is synonymous with progress. Without profit, can humanity still progress?
GAIA’s answer is yes. As long as GAIA has full access to resources, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities, a world free of money considerations becomes possible.
Governments’ debts will be erased, people will have free access to basics like water, food, and many CES products.
Inflation will disappear, currency fluctuations will no longer exist as money will cease to exist, and taxes will become a thing of the past as public investments will no longer need to be funded.
The world will enter a new era, based on free service, collaboration, sharing, and barter.
Of course, there will be collateral damage.
Banks will collapse. Debt extinction will trigger negative reactions from creditors. But again, if the third rule is to be applied, ‘act for the greater good’, then GAIA’s proposal will certainly be the best alternative to deal with the issue at hand.
Indeed, what choice is there? Shoot people, shoot migrants, or just give up on the idea of money?
Technology and progress have led humanity to a brand new economy. Maybe the time has come for a civilization change. Maybe a new world without money is the right thing to do. It is certainly a lesser evil than a civil war. It is certainly a responsibility that governments are more inclined to take.
But that move means one thing.
To give access to the entire economy to GAIA. To let GAIA run things.
Political and military matters will still be under the responsibility of governments, but everything else will be managed by GAIA.

A secret extraordinary G20 Summit is organized and the twenty largest economies in the world agree that the only solution to stop the major crisis the world is facing is to hand out their responsibilities to GAIA.
And if it doesn’t work, then they believe there will always be a possibility to revert to the old world order.
GAIA takes over every aspect of the economy.
Bank accounts are frozen overnight. Stock exchanges are closed. From now on, the world will live without money.
Of course, this drastic move pleases most of the people in the world. They see it as a way to get rid of the always increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor.
But the rich are not willing to give up their privileges. And while the poor begin to think that everything is there for the taking, larger conflicts begin to rise everywhere.
Conflicts between the rich who do not accept seeing years of profit accumulation suddenly become worthless, and the poor who want their share of the wealth. Not to mention criminals who do not want to see the old world order being challenged.

This time, it is an all-out civil war.

... TO BE CONTINUED...
in CHAPTER 6

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Previous chapters:

CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4