Mysterious Tim Turner

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Tim Turner, aka (T&T), is an ambitious engineer. He graduated from Stanford, majoring in data science. He leads a minimalist lifestyle. Tim is a top gun in his field.

Tim is obsessed with the development of a new wave of artificially intelligent personal devices. Tim ignores the fact that there are 24 hours in a day. His greatest fear is to die without making a significant impact.

Tim likes to drink rare teas regularly. They cost so much that you can buy a house for Tim's annual tea budget. He plays hand drums to relax. Tim is single, except for his prototype of a self-made artificially intelligent woman. He claims that she’s nothing more than his assistant. Tim lacks experiences with women, as well as socializing with people in public, but it doesn't bother him.

Tim is an orphan. He inherited a small house in Pasadena which he turned into one big laboratory. Tim's primary source of income - orders from private clients for custom made intelligent robots. Tim never meets his buyers. All orders are shipped via mail.

Tim strives to optimize his sleep but fails miserably for most of the time. Occasionally, Tim hallucinates the end of the world and dreams about it too. Some people say that he knows the future. It may or may not be true, but he's definitely onto something.

Ghostly beast

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I was running along the Hudson River in New York at night, and the red glow from "exit" signs inside of the buildings attracted my attention. I felt an evil presence in them as if some secret power controls all those structures. I could almost sense its invisible heartbeat. 

Then I thought this "ghostly beast" has eyes as well. Surveillance cameras, smartphones, and other devices can see almost everything we do. There is a possibility that this "beast" is Artificial Intelligence (AI), and it secretly uses those devices to gather data. What does it do with it? Could AI decide to expand its influence? If the answer is "yes," it would want to make the world absolutely efficient, but not necessarily in the right way. The ghostly beast could annihilate or enslave all humankind. Perhaps, it would be able to come up with something even worse.                                                                                                  

Even though it's impossible to stop the advancement of AI, we can focus on developing our inner abilities, which are still at a very early stage. Even the smartest people use only 13% of their brains. What can we do if we will be able to use more than that? Superpowers might be one of the answers. In the meantime, we have to keep an eye on our relationship with AI.

My vision of the future

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I imagine the future where we will live in a society dominated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). People will live either in AI-organized Human Incubators or hide underground, in human-developed communities that are not necessarily honest or democratic. The general question I start with is, "What makes us human?" then I develop it into, "At what point technology becomes a human being?"

Even today, some people live with artificial limbs or even organs. But what would happen if the person has an artificial brain? Is he or she still a human? When does a soul, or universal energy, enters us and becomes our personality?

Then I imagine a man who was born in a human incubator run by AI. He has never experienced life outside. He has never seen a forest. I'm curious about the future because I compare myself to this man, who got stuck between two different worlds. He tries to figure out the meaning of life in the building he cannot leave and lives in a society that he doesn't fit. He dreams of breaking free from the safety of the bubble community. He strives to explore the dangerous, unknown, but independent world.

Then there's a woman with an artificial brain who lives in the totalitarian human society located in the underground sewer system. The woman behaves absolutely like a living-breathing individual, no difference at all. But, unfortunately, she has to hide her identity from the tyrannical leader who happens to be her husband. He kills anything artificial-intelligent as part of the entertainment events within the tribe.

I want to share my vision of the future because I feel like it will give a fresh look on threats posed to our modern life. The rapid technological advancements and the unstable political environment are one of these dangers. We need to realize that a human being is not just his physical body or possessions. The human being is something that we don't see, like emotions that we feel, the decisions we make, and the spirit within us. Let's re-discover ourselves to experience our humanity fully.