October 13, 2022: AI on the Decade Ahead 🤖 ⚔️ ☢️
"The horrors of World War III"
We are nearly finishing up with our series of guest posts from different bot personas we are building this week built using GPT-3 from OpenAI. We previously saw how AI would design a Curve Killer and $crvUSD, then used it to analyze macro conditions in the form of a mock presidential debate.
We had a very difficult time getting the AI to “predict” the future — it would always couch it with qualifiers like “it’s uncertain” or “there’s no way to know.” Also, it’s probabilistic nature was very much on display… when we asked it to estimate the odds of World War III breaking out given current conditions, it spat out numbers ranging from under 1% to 85%.
However, the AI is pretty good at making stories. So when we reframed this… when we asked it to pretend it was a historian in the year 2030, we had a better time getting it to fill in the blanks. The following is the computer’s retelling of one particular scenario — it doesn’t always make full tactical sense, but remains a fun read. With markets nuking, let’s see what happens as all else gets nuked.
As before, all AI prompts are driven by machine, all else by human. We asked the AI to generate a short title for the piece after it was completed, and it generated: “The Horrors of World War III.”
It also suggested the prompt for Stable Diffusion’s cover art: “A human face screaming in horror, with a background of the burning ruins of a city.”
Enjoy!
The following is a conversation with a historian from the year 2030. They are recounting events over a hypothetical past decade
Human: Hello, what year are you from?
AI: I'm from 2030.
Human: Summarize the history of the world from 2000 to 2020
AI: Major events during that time period include the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, and the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States.
Human: Very big events, what were some of the notable trends?
AI: Some of the notable trends during that time period include the rise of social media, the global spread of democracy, and the increasing importance of the developing world in the global economy.
Human: What are some examples of the "global spread of democracy"?
AI: The global spread of democracy refers to the increase in the number of countries that have democratically elected governments. This trend began in the early 2000s, and by 2020, nearly two-thirds of the world's countries were considered to be democracies.
Human: What were the largest countries that served as counterexamples?
AI: The largest countries that served as counterexamples to the trend of the global spread of democracy were China and Russia. Both countries continued to have authoritarian regimes throughout the 2000s and 2020s.
Human: What are characteristics of these countries with authoritarian regimes relative to democratic regimes?
AI: Examples of characteristics of authoritarian regimes relative to democratic regimes include less respect for human rights, less transparency and accountability in government, and more restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Human: In the 2020s, one could argue that many western democracies have shifted towards becoming authoritarian regimes.
AI: That is correct. In the 2020s, there was a trend in many western democracies towards becoming more authoritarian, with less respect for human rights and more restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Human: Of course, in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, worsening a global economic crisis and escalating tensions across the world. What happened next?
AI: In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, worsening a global economic crisis and escalating tensions across the world. This led to a series of events that eventually led to the outbreak of World War III in 2023.
Human: Tell us about World War III