Jo woke against her will, the subtle sounds of a bird singing in her dream now morphed into the melody of the alarm clock. “Why are hangovers still a thing now we have so much innovation?” she thought. Good morning, the Voice said, how did you sleep? Jo grunted, but the Voice just chuckled. Kidding, I already know you dreamt of those new sneakers again, so I ordered them for you. Jo couldn’t remember, but she had wanted a pair of blue ones for her skater character. It was probably some late-night ad she had skipped over but still registered. She grunted again.

She got up and moved across her 20m2 flat where ‘kitchen’ was more a state of mind than a room. As she left the bed, it automatically folded into the wall and the large displays changed to a tiled kitchen view, an eclectic mix of her parent’s old house and a Roman villa. On the counter, the coffeish was steaming.

You need some extra zinc today, said the Voice. Jo grunted but obliged. “So, what’s on the schedule today?” she said. It’s a Simulation day. Of course it is, Jo knew that much, “But what topic again?” Flying! “Hmm, flying,” she thought, “What about flying needed to be simulated?”

The pills went down with the coffeish as usual, plain toast with an artificial spread of non-descriptive flavour accompanying the similarly artificial beverage. Grunt. Before leaving the kitchen, Jo took an extra Gummy, it wasn’t necessary for the Simulation Game, but it made it easier to get in the right state of mind.

Listen to this, Jo, said the Voice and turned on a cast. A story on the Indian government simulation dispute on citizenships for children born to surrogate mothers in East Bengal had sparked a flurry of hypothetical responses. None of this had happened in reality, of course, that was the point of the simulation, it just tested the waters. It was remarkably similar to the Game Jo had played last week—did the Game Master she worked for know that the Indian Congress party AI was about to launch last week? “Did the Simulation I took part in impact the outcome?” Jo thought. It was the closest to current affairs she had been in years. I knew you would find it interesting. “Of course you did,” Jo muttered.

You are late again, the Voice demanded as Jo moved to the gaming chair. The small room transformed again, tiles gone, replaced with an illusion of a traditional Japanese garden laden with fake Chinese character neon signs. The Gummy had started to take effect. Logging into her in-game closet, Jo deliberately went with last month’s jacket, admiring herself in the mirror, she liked that jacket. Don’t be silly, the Voice argued. She wasn’t actually going to wear it, she mostly put on something so horribly out of fashion to tease the Voice, and she suspected the Voice knew it. She realigned her skate character using the new sneakers and the appropriate jacket, zooming in on ‘Hall of the Kings’.

The Game Master took the stage to explain the context of today. “You are to fly from Chennai to Sydney”.

Jo thought it was a bit bizarre, why have them play passengers in a regular commercial flight? And looking around the room, the confusion seemed to be universal. Not that it mattered, here they were, and they would soon see. The Game Master had morphed into a flight attendant standing in one corner of the hall, now a regular-looking airport gate. Some of the players had suitcases, some suddenly smelled of curry. The temperature had dropped several degrees below comfort level from the airport AC—some things will never change, Jo thought.

She started guessing the goal of the simulation when a few passengers ahead of her were denied boarding, and then she was turned away too!

“You have used too many flying miles this year,” the young blue-haired flight attendant told Jo. “You have to take the boat”.

The boat! Jo was about to argue but then remembered last year’s ‘Treaty with the Oceans’, where the major governments signed a contract with the AIs to protect the Seven Oceans. One of the clauses stipulated individual flying quotas resulting in air miles going from something people aspired to collect to something frowned upon. Jo had used her allowance already for a trip to Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, darnn, she hadn’t realised this would affect a simulation. But it made sense; now the AI Game Masters could see how people reacted when they weren't allowed to fly with the hope that a flight-free mindset in the simulation would rub off in real life. With a few of the other passengers, she was taken to a separate gate with a tram down to the port. Jo wondered if people could refuse to take the trip in the simulation now. Maybe that was the point, to see how many would skip travelling altogether. There might not be anything to do here in simulated Chennai, but a long boat trip didn’t seem that appealing either. After some deliberating, Jo decided her skater was no bailer; she followed the others to the port.

At the port, they boarded what seemed like a huge ship compared to the small group that came from the airport. Once on board, it became apparent that the ship was already rather full.

“I wonder how many of these are Non-Player Characters (NPC)?” Jo thought as she lost sight of the others.

The speakers in the ship boomed. “The ship will soon depart, we are currently negotiating with the Bay of Bengal AI (BBAI) for a possible rerouting. BBAI reports whale sharks on our route and demands we adjust course to avoid disturbing them”.

“This is going to be a long game”, Jo thought, “I better go find the arcade room,” happy her character had some easy-going characteristics.

This particular future in context

In this scenario set in 2042, AI is integrated into most products and aspects of society. This is an extrapolation from the trends over the last decades where electronics and internet connectivity are ever more present in everything from cars to toothbrushes and daily work. In a similar way to how in 2022, communication, decision-making and administration are performed through and with digital technology, in this scenario, all these activities are integrated with automated decision-making. The scenario has people employed in simulations, The Games, and data from these simulations are used by AIs to make decisions and take actions. This opinion piece aimed to demonstrate the plausibility and limitations of this reality in the near future.

Simulation ¹

When discussing AI's role in decision-making, it often comes down to the question of how much AI will know about us and how good it will be at predicting the behaviour of groups. In his famous science fiction series, The Foundation, Isac Asimov describes a discipline called psychohistory that can mathematically predict how large groups of people will behave over time. In the book, there are mathematicians adjusting outcomes in society with future deep-learning algorithms. It is worth asking whether AIs can fill a role similar to Asimov’s mathematicians, but I assume that it will be at least several decades, if not centuries before we see omnipotent AI capable of predicting everything. An important premise in this piece is that an AI ‘singularity’ has not been reached. AI singularity can be described as the point at which an AI becomes so powerful that it can improve itself, resulting in an exponential spiral of changes. The outcome of AI singularity is hard to predict based on our current experience. Predictions of what can be done beyond that point become almost futile.

The idea expressed in the story above is that countries and companies have started to use advanced models supported by AIs in planning for policies, regulations and commercials. With this, there will be a world with more effective measures for running and controlling society—for good and bad. Predictive modelling is a tool currently used by both governments and boardrooms. But as demonstrated in the COVID-19 pandemic, models for both infection and population behaviour had several miscalculations. In 2042 we can expect increased efficiency and precision and more sophisticated modelling. These models will rely on data, but reliance on data collected from lived experience might not be enough in a rapidly changing future. The central suggestion in this thought experiment is that to make better decisions, AIs act as Game Masters, running simulations where groups of people are put in hypothetical situations where they are to act and react ‘naturally’. With a constant adaptation and replaying of simulations, various policies can be tried before they are implemented and otherwise unforeseen consequences can be predicted. In a future where many former jobs are lost to automation, one new occupation could be, like Jo did, to play human.

Environmental personhood ²

In several non-western philosophies, it’s natural to grant, for example, a forest or a mountain ‘rights’. In a western juridical system, this has been uncommon but can be compared to, for example, the rights of a company or foundation. Even though it is uncommon, the idea of integrating environmental entities as legal persons has been discussed in western law for decades. So far in most contexts, it has been people, often aboriginal groups, that have represented and given voice to nature. But in this story an AI serves as a guardian for an ocean, creating a truly independent entity with the purpose of protecting and arguing for the rights of marine life, and in the story, enforces agreements about what is allowed and not in its jurisdiction.

Conclusion

I would argue that our current collection of big data will never get us to the predictive models that can be used to create impressive predictions to improve society. We need to use simulations of humans to generate that data. Furthermore, I conclude that AI has the potential to represent the natural environment in a way that humans have not been able to so far in society. There is great potential for AI and only AI can predict how exciting it will be.