Artificial Intelligence created dystopian
Hi,
Context:
The state's AI has taken control with malicious intent. People weren't consulted and remain unaware that an AI is constantly observing and influencing them. My protagonist first noticed this when he arrived in the city, encountering a strange mindset regarding every affair. Someone told him that the communities of the city were "systematic," acting according to protocols that are the same everywhere. Upon closer inspection, he realized the communities were being manipulated by a machine: the patterns he observed weren't human-made.
Organic behavior would leave organic traces even when it is based on a protocol. What he saw lacked such traces entirely. The AI was imposing a specific "order" over everything, coercing people to act according to decisions it had made for them. It didn't have any "planning" but just considered every state of social life like a chessboard and decided who must do what so that it could conclude the state had gained the most.
Essentially, its quest was to profit its owners: the city governors sitting doing nothing but enjoying the performance of the AI as it coerced the nation. It taxed the disfavored as much as possible but for the favored ones let the city feel like paradise. To the disfavored, everything appeared like a paradox.
Troubles stacked until the victim collapsed and felt lost enough to turn to natives to ask for help. In return for any help, according to unwritten rules, the victim had to trade one's freedom and become "owned" by the natives who smiled. Then the AI passed direct instructions to the victim through their new "friend," who was actually an unofficial manager who would trade the victim for personal benefit.
The AI guided this manager to teach the victim to self-exploit. It then paid a share of the profit to the unofficial manager. Yet the victim remained oblivious to the matter.
As my protagonist fell short of finding his way in the city, he turned to city communities to find some friends. He was surprised that people in the city didn't "speak" about things openly as he was used to. Everybody feared everyone, each paranoid relative to the other one. The exaggerated values, such as the concept of privacy (that didn't exist in reality) and similar ones, let each of two individuals consider not to attempt to talk beyond casual matters. Instead of talking together, messages communicated by a different means.
There was the concept of "micro-spectacles." He learned the pattern: any community he headed to, soon the boss required some to play spectacles that were tailored to him, with messages that had only meaning for him. In other words, watching these micro-spectacles enacted by ordinary people but based on AI-generated scenarios, he was told what to do next. But if anyone else watched the spectacle, they couldn't get anything, because the theatrical displays employed events that had happened in his personal life.
It was evident that whoever had created these scenarios had all the data about him. Wherever he went, no one was "speaking" really as it is typical of social life, when it came to offering help. Yet all the freedom of speech was offered, because freedom of thinking was perfectly stolen.
Eventually, he came to the conclusion that when in that city people said "justice is independent," it meant that there were two spoken languages: law enforcement communicated verbally as everyone would expect. However, there was a gang that transparently managed the city and collaborated with law enforcement. The concept of "Inclusivity" had let the gang to get "integrated" in the equation.
My protagonist discovered that this gang "spoke through spectacles." Because it had a different language for communicating, it was "independent" from justice. The gang manipulated the society, its agents enacting spectacles that commanded, intimidated, and extorted. Meaning was conveyed inside the mind of the victims. If he or she refused to take the message and act accordingly, punishment followed.
One quite interesting feature of communities was that the head of community typically chose two people as "options" for my protagonist to connect to them as his new "friends." These two ones typically came and stood close to the victim, but always left the last step for him to take. He was the one who had to trust, yet methodically the plot left him in state of "unaware of unknown" regarding who these people were and what was going to happen if to connect.
He tried to visit various communities in the city and everywhere was the same: no one started any conversation with him as he expected. People boasted about "uniformity" as what benefited "accuracy in decision making" in that city but it was actually suffering from exaggeration in everything due to over-engineering and over-regulation.
The machine didn't ever give up. Obviously, it couldn't care how a victim suffered: offering options it had calculated as ones that "spent" the victim in favor of state it awaited to react. My protagonist soon learned that the machine that does so in fact considers social relationships as a form of controlled poverty it could employ. It never let anyone freely choose a path of life. Its ruling had a clear pattern: you do as I suggest through "spectacles" or you starve.
What he found like dark humor was that if for 2 to 3 times he refused befriending, taking the last step as "chosen ones" came by and stood close to him, the head of community began psychological games he had heard of them as ones attributed to sects. These psychological operations meant to hurt victim emotionally and coerce him to comply. Ignoring was the first of them, and there were myriads of techniques in the class of "passive aggressive." He, though, didn't care, for it was nonsense, where everything was about "imposing order that the machine had calculated for a particular victim."
Yet the troubles my protagonist experienced only stacked. Soon he learned that the AI was assuming a kind of glossy enclosure around him. If he tried to contact others freely, direct energy hit him just upon approaching. Others couldn't have any idea he was a hostage: he looked free as others. But the armed AI had him hostage.
The AI's message about this situation was clear: it was me (AI) giving you friendship (so you must consider your friend as a city, impersonating your friend), and indirectly telling you where to go and what to do was your obligation. Essentially, social contact when an AI organizes it based on game-theoretic matrices is just a plot devoid of humanistic connection with others. Living will be a challenge to achieve a state of profit.
My protagonist's horrifying discovery was that humanity was entering a new era: armed AI in the city could take anyone hostage with preventive attacks using direct energy weapons. If anyone approached what the AI didn't want to allow, they were hit. The direct energy harmed inside the body and simulated symptoms of typical health issues. For example, it could injure the kidney in a way that closely simulated "a kidney stone that was now gone."
Healthcare had "collaborative physicians." If a victim sought help from a doctor to get evidence of being targeted by direct energy, the AI made them visit a physician of its choosing. The collaborative doctor would then label the victim as "paranoid." The AI could simulate a brain stroke, methodically doing it in the context of Havana syndrome, and leave the victim unable to whistleblow about it. Collaborative physicians were also in the police service, allowing the AI to attack anyone it desired and still prevent the victim from informing others.
The machine didn't allow new weapons like direct energy and mind-manipulation using electrical charges to be officially recognized as weapons. This kept the majority unaware of what was happening. Only those targeted by the AI learned about it, and if they tried to whistleblow, it worked against them due to the ongoing label war. Essentially, this new state-level crime enjoyed immunity from information: it remained a secret.
I would like to ask you some questions:
Which story does this remind you of, if any?
If you were the protagonist, how would you escape the trap to talk to people freely? Assume the AI has rigged and locked you so you can't leave the city simply.
How could you deal with situation when direct energy attacks, but AI has rigged so if the victim turns to get help will be labeled "paranoid?"