Dear diary

Well here I am, I made it to 80, not a phrase I ever expected to be able to say or to write in the diary. Since I stopped working back in 2025 I have kept this diary to see if I changed the world or the world changed me.

I stopped work because my health stopped me caring for other peoples health. I was a support worker but my disability stopped me. I had to try and work from home so I didn't have to go to far. No point being too knackered to work when I got there. The great virus had got me and eventually crippled me.

The computer desk would have to become a defacto work station from now on. It was fairly easy to find a choice of jobs, many people chose to not return to working in a far away office if they could help it. No long commute, no making small talk with people you didn't like and above all no need to get dressed. If you needed to do a video call there was always the emergency jumper ready nearby.

Although my body was broken my mind still functioned, more or less. therefore I did my best to avoid phone sales, trying to get people who didn't agree to being phoned to buy things they didn't want. I instead decided to use my qualifications and experience to join the impending future, I went AI.

At least I joined a trade I had read about many times, qualified people checking AI output in order to check quality. Althouth many have been told to fear it, at least for now, its mostly harmless. Like many things in the murky computer world it still needs to be given information in order to work.

If you asked it to create a new Shakespeare play it would need to seek all the other plays it could find first. It doesn't know the language, the pacing or meaning of the bard until it learnt. My job was to help it learn and to mark its work. I was basically a teacher for a bunch of wires and microchips.

Initially its uses were fairly mundane. People programmed it to make a video of music performers playing somebody else's song for example. A little bit more scary was its use during a number of political elections. politicians being mimicked in order to say something dodgy about an opponent. Although many used AI as an excuse, many wondered how many were caught out and found an easy excuse, it wasn't me it was AI.

That was my beginning in the murky AI world, one that employed me for sixteen years, until my 70th birthday. Although my Dad made it past the landmark many hadn't. I wanted to make the most of what I had left.

In the sixteen years of telling a computer system how to be more human things began to change. Luckily being on the inside helped me to keep up. I didn't need journalists telling me what to be scared of. I knew the abilities, the struggles and the potential for this relatively new toy. It slowly became able to work more independtly, although still not able to work totally alone.

It could look for information to complete tasks, it could use a degree of computer thought, it could even manage human inputs. It recognised sarcasm and it could weed out lies, at least what it believed was lies.

The problems began as the wrong people began to tell it what was a lie and what was true. The AI could look up information and could come to a conclusion based on the information. If the information disagreed with the human controlling it the human would simply change the sources used until the right answers came out.

In true 1984 style the past was changed in order to agree with the present. Next came different AI systems "arguing" with each other. If one system asked another for info the results might differ , depending on the input. Depending on the views or biases of the human in charge. Soon the AI systems got their microchips together and created the real world and cyber world.

The computes created views based on as many sources as were avaidible. Mean while the humans created their own truth, often with no proof of anything. The people saying vaccines were fake and covid was man made in the 20s had moved on to their own facts on so much more.

Here I am on my 80th birthday, looking out of my window at the world outside. The computers had a lot right, the humans not so much. The planet is still chocking and getting hot, many animals are now extinct and wars go on as before. What the computers didnt understand was the option to change. Humans would hope that everyone else would change so they didn't have to.

Pollution targets could be met by selling bits to other people, blame was pointed away and never internally. It was always somebody else's problem. Then finally, after many , many years some important people finally decided to take responsibility. Slowly everyone tried to work together, the bad stuff is still happening albeit a bit more slowly.

The computers didn't understand and kept believing the earth was doomed. The human input said it wasn't that bad, their computer predictions based on reality said the human race would choke or drown. The answer was somewhere in between.

I know when I go out later for walk I will need an oxygen supply. My asthma cant cope with "fresh air" anymore. The trees and plants in the parks are more brown then green and there are still oil burning vehicles on the cracked roads. Its far from ideal but far better then it could of been.

The billionaires are still building an escape plot. they are heading to the moon in order to start again, the fact that they are getting older and many people find them repellent seems to have gone un noticed. I am not long for this world but maybe my kids will still have somewhere when I am gone.

I hope ,dear reader, you realise this is written by a hopeful human and not a confused robotic keeper of contradictory information. Whether my kids will get to eighty and then have a chance to survey their world is something I cant predict. Here's hoping there's just enough left for them.