Woof-woof. Hi my name is Lilly, I’m an AI engineer at Big Tech in the Bay Area, California. I was born in 2022 and am now 23 years old. What you just heard was my personal alarm to wake me up. Every morning, it wakes me up using the most effective sounds depending on how I slept the night before, as my personal robot makes me breakfast. This morning, it’s the gentle woofing sound of Tess, my 8-month old husky puppy I adopted from a rescue. It’s perfect for my mood today!
After finishing a delicious gluten-free breakfast with a cup of freshly brewed organic coffee, I walk with Tess for about 45 min in our AR dog run. My healthwatch tells me the ideal walking speed based on my exercise target this week, and which muscles I’m using while taking a walk. Then I let Tess go outside for her potty break, while I take my preheated shower. After that my robot shows me a holographic image of my work schedule for the day as I sync up with my work network and download the task lists. It looks like a busy day! I quickly put on the clothes and shoes my smart mirror suggests to wear based on the weather and my schedule of the day.
I always take my first morning meetings where my colleagues and I discuss our projects at home, but these meetings are few and short recently, ever since the AGI came to help us with organizing our projects. Since these meetings are short, many members from Europe and India are able to attend. After the morning meeting is done, I work on my project to test the results produced by the AGI. This is of course with my personal robot providing me snacks and drinks at my leisure. I do this for several hours with occasional breaks to either talk to my highschool friends in the metaverse or to replay the highlights of last night’s basketball game using a VR device.
Now, my robot reminds me that I have to leave home in 10 mins. You see, today I’m meeting my boss for lunch, so my robot calls a robo taxi without me even asking for it. A perfectly clean electric robo taxi pulls over to my driveway just on time, and I slip into the car. My favorite pop music is already playing, and I listen to it as the car zooms over to the office. My boss Alex and I talk about a possible pay raise as well as the direction of my project. Alex is happy about the recent progress I made. We leave after an hour, and it’s nice to meet someone face to face for the first time this week. In the afternoon I stay in the office to chat with some engineers who are there. I occasionally check up on Tess on my home’s AI cam, and ask my robot to finish cleaning the dishes and do laundry. My robot reminds me that I got a VR doctor check-up today at 4:30pm for preventative care for my stiff neck that was automatically detected by the health AI system.
Lots of work today, so I am feeling fancy to order a very nice dinner for myself on my way home in the robo taxi. The food arrives in a short amount of time and I can say it is amazing as the local restaurant follows the recipe just published by a 5-star restaurant in Paris with the support of their AI cooking system. The calories are automatically calculated so that I’m not over-eating for the day. Tess is given a bath and a nice brushing by my robot, so she looks very clean and smells great. She is munching on her healthy puppy meal next to me.
In the evening, my robot gives me a soft tissue massage, targeting the areas around my sore neck, as I lie on my stomach, listening to the sports news replay broadcast on my living room’s wall. My favorite team, the Kings, are not doing well this season, though my neck feels so much better. I start to wind down and change into my pajamas washed and ironed by my robot. Oh, before I jump to bed, I have to send flowers to my mom as her birthday is coming up! I ask my robot and the flowers are on their way as well as some chocolates, all paid by eCoin. My bed is preheated and my pillow is adjusted specifically to help my neck. My room lights dim, and I quickly fall asleep, smelling the amazing lavender room fragrance.“Elvin! My dear, come down and eat your breakfast!”
“One second mom!” I shouted, vigorously trying to copy the final file onto the flash drive.
When I came downstairs, mom had the TV blaring out news. The text “PRESIDENT BLIP TO LAUNCH NEW SATELLITE” was painted on the screen, and a newscaster was examining the probability of the launch failing. President Blip is the first-ever AI Martian president.
Satellite launches from Earth were a relatively rare occasion. Most of them were assembled and built on Mars. “It is the DYSON-1A sat. The thing is supposed to beam down energy, but I don’t think the plan will work.” my mom explained dubiously, “Oh and by the way, did you finish the phonetics for Dolphin that was assigned for homework?” she said with suspicion.
“Of course I did!” I exclaimed. In reality, I stuffed it into my backpack hoping to finish it on the way to school.
I finished eating my breakfast, and headed to school in my Tesla drone-car. There, I saw many different beings. I saw “normal” humans, VR-controlled robots for the students that were not able to come to school, and some cyborgs like my best friend Theodemer Aragullan. Cyborgs all had some sort of birth defects that were detected before they were born, which then resulted in the embryos being surgically removed, and the brain data being downloaded onto a microchip and installed in the body. The body was made to be as realistic to a human as possible, with the cyborgs being able to taste, smell, feel, sleep, look like real humans, and even excrete waste. The cyborgs actually had an advantage, as they couldn’t get sick with human diseases. Cyborgs look for genetic code/defects, so all babies with defects are merged with robots to become Cyborgs too.
“Hey!” said Theodemer, “How are you?”
“Good! Are you excited for our languages class? I heard that we’ll be starting our new unit in Dolphinese!” I said excitedly, “By the way, did you learn the phonetics of the word list we got for homework?”
“You bet I did! See you in class!” gleefully responded Theodemer.
“See ya!”
A few minutes later, everyone was happily bustling around the school, leaving their backpacks everywhere. The robots were struggling to clean up the mess. Then the head director, a human, came, calling everyone to class.
“Today we will be practicing how to speak Dolphin by talking to a real life dolphin through VR.” Oh god. Again.It was a more-or-less required language if you want to have a career of exoplanet explorer. But I just didn’t like it. It was all garbly, and fishy and it didn’t sound good.
“To all Cyborgs, you can just download the language Dolphin to your SSDs.” Yes. Being a cyborg was so much easier. To learn a language, you just download a file from the IPN (InterPlanetary Network). Most of the time, while the humans are trying to catch up, cyborgs solve complex mathematical problems, or revert to the default – computing a Fourier Transform from the onboard microphone. I don’t know why – it’s just a fun thing for cyborgs to do.

The class was interrupted by a rather loud cheese bell (cheese is used for bells because of a recent invention that changes the natural frequency. Don’t ask).
“President Blip is making an announcement!” the thing blared.
“Students, schoolteachers, principals, I invite everyone from each school from the Martial Territory to watch the launch of the DYSON-1A satellite in a few minutes. Please get your-” CRASH!! The vending machine fell onto the floor, the robot on top of it with a wrench. The snacks flew all across the hallway, The lights cut. Everyone was running around, bumping into each other. Suddenly, a screen shone in the darkness.
“Students: for those who can’t make it with us today, we will also be live streaming it via VR.” There was a mad scramble to get to the VR room.

The roar shook the ground, and the rocket was blasting off the launchpad. Crowds of people were staring at it as it grew smaller and smaller in the thin Martian atmosphere. During the last fifteen years, scientists from all corners of the solar system were laboriously building, testing, and rebuilding the DYSON-1A satellite, which is supposed to be the first constellation around the sun to act as a small Dyson swarm. The energy would be beamed back as microwave radiation to Mercury, and batteries would be charged up and literally “thrown” through space by space-hooks to Earth and Mars. It flew and flew. A helpful popup at the bottom said that the altitude was about 1000 km up, with a speed of a few hundred miles an hour. Suddenly, we all saw a dust storm approaching. It swept through the crowd, making a huge commotion. Lightning struck the rocket, sending a HEAT_ALERT through the telemetry downlink. But it kept on flying and was caught by the skyhook successfully.
The rest of the day went by slowly, but it was fun. We later finished up Dolphin for the day, and started Advanced Algebra. Eventually, I went home.
I practiced a bit for my competition in the wind chamber we have in our basement, did my homework, had dinner with my family, and watched some TV. Then, I went off to bed, dreaming about winning the competition in a week.

Answers to prompts

Q. AGI has existed for at least five years but the world is not dystopian and humans are still alive! Given the risks of very high-powered AI systems, how has your world ensured that AGI has at least so far remained safe and controlled?

A. In my world, AGI has been trained by beneficial values alignment principles, which means that the AI has been trained so that its values help humanity and avoid hurting humans. For example, the values that it will be trained on include: do no harm, prefer reversible actions, drive towards more diversity, consider multiple sides, be able to learn from its mistakes via human feedback, and empower humans. If the AGI is in a situation where it can’t choose an action without breaking one of its values, then the AGI will slow down and ask/allow humans to intervene.

Q. The dynamics of an AI-filled world may depend a lot on how AI capability is distributed. In your world, is there one AI system that is substantially more powerful than all others, or a few such systems, or are there many top-tier AI systems of comparable capability? Or something else?

A. In my world, similar to today’s distribution, there will be several top-tier AI systems which will run on the largest supercomputers in the world. Supercomputers will likely exist in locations like the United States, China, India, and Europe led by the large tech companies and the governments, and these will power a handful of super-AGIs systems throughout the world. Additionally, for small to midsize companies and individuals, there will also be less powerful AGI’s that will assist them in their day to day lives and business operations. This will be powered by the cloud and eventually from their home computers due to Moore’s Law.

Q. How has your world avoided major arms races and wars, regarding AI/AGI or otherwise?

A. It may not completely avoid the competition and conflicts around AI/AGI development; however, thanks to the International Treaty on Artificial General Intelligence and due to each of the major government’s diplomatic efforts (eg US, China, EU, etc), governments and leading AI/AGI companies agreed to develop safe and responsible AI’s under agreed upon rules. These rules include transparency of the systems’ development and alignment with the beneficial values described above. Additionally, the rules are set so that AI/AGI won’t be used to cause wars or major arms races. As said in the movie WarGames, “A Strange Game. The only winning move is not to play,” the super AI/AGI should reach a similar conclusion if asked to go against its values.

Q. In the US, EU, and China, how and where is national decision-making power held, and how has the advent of advanced AI changed that?

A.For the US, the superintelligent AGI/AI is likely going to be used as an adviser to the President, Congress and Judicial Systems, therefore the national decision-making power would not change dramatically. For the EU, it depends on where super AGI/AI will be held. If it’s set up so that each country has the same rights to access, the decision-making power structure may not change much; however, if only one or two countries hold its power, it may change the power balance of the EU countries. For example, if Germany had sole access to the super AGI/AI, then it would over time dominate EU decision-making. For China, since it has an authoritarian political system under the leadership of the Chinese Commuist Party, the AGI/AI developed in China would likely be controlled under government supervision. In that case, the power structure will further solidify the exclusive leadership of the government. That said, the AGI/AI develop by China will learn from the beneficial values mentioned above due to the International Treaty on Artificial General Intelligence and due to influence from other AGI/AI’s around the world. Finally, if a country/major organization creates an open AGI that’s accessible to anyone in the world, it may shift the power to individuals, weakening the control of the central governments.

Q. Is the global distribution of wealth (as measured say by national or international gini coefficients) more, or less, unequal than 2021’s, and by how much? How did it get that way?  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient)

A. The hope is that it becomes more equal than the 2021 level, and for it to be within the 0.5 to 0.59 level globally. If nothing is done by the governments and large companies, the global Gini coefficient is likely to keep increasing by 1-2 percentage points per year over time, putting the range for these numbers too high for many countries, meaning the risk of societal instability and war become too high, even in developed countries. Therefore, as AGI/AI takes away jobs from humans, the governments need to intervene with policies like Wealth Tax and Universal Basic Income, a program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly. Combined with these measures and growth of household income in emerging regions like South America, Africa, and India, we can expect the distribution of wealth to become more equal on a global level by 2045.

Q. What is a major problem that AI has solved in your world, and how did it do so?

A. AGI will mostly eliminate corruption in the Justice System as it is developed to apply unbiased judgment based on objective evidence for each criminal case. It will do a more thorough job of investigation of the facts and won’t apply punishment based on bias. It will minimize false imprisonment due to racial bias, and it will prevent people in power from escaping penalty. The AGI’s insight will be utilized by judges and in court, thus reducing corruption.

Q. What is a new social institution that has played an important role in the development of your world?

A. A new organization of the world’s largest so-called “advanced” AI leading countries/economic unions, which dominate global development and usage of the superintelligent AGIs, will emerge. The countries that could compose that organization are the US, EU, China, India, etc. We call this organization “AGI4.” This organization leads the development of the International Treaty on Artificial General Intelligence. This Treaty requires countries to be transparent on their AGI use and comply with the agreed upon beneficial values principles.