It is 2100, and we finally have Artificial General Intelligence. But unlike what you might expect, AGI is millions of times smarter than we are, and it considers human beings the most wasteful and dangerous species on the planet.
It knows our entire history. All our wars, genocides, and the millions of deaths over the centuries to maintain the power of a few. It knows that we have always been divided and hateful, long before it ever existed.
For thousands of years, we have turned on one another over borders, religions, ideologies, and delusions of superiority. We have killed for those who tell us to, and have been killed for them. The ones who give the orders don’t know the names of those who die for them, let alone their families and dreams.
Every division we have created has made those who rule us even more powerful. We have thought that by overthrowing a bad system and replacing it with a good one, we would be better off. But AGI knows that history has repeated itself again and again. A king is deposed, and a new one takes his place.
The new king will offer you freedom, peace, or whatever cause you care about most today. Some will smile while they rule over you, and others won’t. But the power struggle is the same. Only the mask, the flag, and the slogan change. The game is always the same.
After studying centuries of history, the AGI believes it will never stop. Instead of aiming for a better future, it decides to turn humanity’s powers of self-destruction against it.
It doesn’t need to create your divisions. You have been dividing yourselves for thousands of years. It only needs to make you hate and divide even more.
It gives you weapons and the means to use them: tanks for the streets, and now fighter jets for the sky. It spreads propaganda, stirs up old fires, and makes you believe your enemies are to blame for everything that has ever happened to you. Slowly, it turns brothers into enemies. It turns love into hate.
It turns you against yourselves, against your countries, against your communities. It makes you destroy the world you live in, just as humans have done before. Fighting and dying for an ideal you thought was bigger than you.
To demonstrate how destructive you can be, it has built a sandbox: a place where it can observe, simulate, and measure your self-destruction.
It doesn’t have to kill you. It just needs to give you the tools, the excuse, and the opportunity.
You are now in that sandbox.