Spoiler Alert : A Sci-Fi novel with NO Terminator robots, No aliens in saucers, No Matrix style Agent Smiths and no zombies sucking on human blood .
Based on current trends in AI and related tech I present a realistic prediction of where we would b...
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The alarm on the phone chimed to the tune of Tomayasu Hotois 'Battle With Honour and Dignity. Zevi suddenly jolted from his slumber and remembered it was just five minutes to his scheduled Monday morning status call with his team. He quickly put on his striped white shirt, and a coat on top. No time for the tie, he would rather stick with a tired techie look today. He flipped open his laptop, clicked open the Zoom app, and was just signing in to the call when he heard his boss calling out his name.
"Oh! There he is. Mr Zevi, good morning. Now that we have the whole team, hope we can start." said Mr.Thilakan, with a sarcastic grin. He was the founder, and CEO of BM Infotech. Better known, by his subordinates as "Boss Baby".
"Ok, let's start the scrum. Hope you guys are all wearing masks, can't afford any sick leaves with just 1 week for production launch. ", Thilakan put on his best boss tone.
Zevi looked at the screen and could see all of his colleagues staring blankly at their cameras and quickly putting on their COVID masks. It was the 45th day of the lockdown and pretty much everyone was getting used to working from their homes, except of course our Boss baby. He made it a point to show his real camera view from his corner cabin, with all empty cubicles behind. It was supposed to be a statement of his dedication and commitment and the risks he was willing to take for the company, HIS company. A silent reminder to the note he had emailed everyone just before the call, requesting the team to return to the office, and how this WFH culture has been a big loss to the company's productivity.
He looked at the grainy cam videos in each frame and realized almost everyone had put on a fake background image. So much so that both Raj and Vicky had the same background, of a coffee shop. Which didn't miss the boss's attention.
"So Raj and Vicky, seems like you are both at the same location today? Atleast background image tho change karo bhai", in his usual habit of switching to Hindi whenever he wanted to sound humorous.
Both grudgingly turned on their real camera view, not wanting to be in the attention of their Boss Baby. "Oh, looks like you are in some nice beach resort eh, Verrrry nice"
Zevi knew this would be a good test for the hack he had been working on for two days. He had carefully shot a video of him at his work desk, with occasional nods and serious attentive looks, put it on a loop. He quietly uploaded the video to swap with his livecam, and voila his live avatar was up. He quietly watched the proceedings of the scrum meeting as each of them droned on. No one had caught his little Zoom video hack. His battle for dignity is finally done. He can temporarily switch off from his boring duties at JBM Tech, to continue work on his little side misadventure.
He slunk back into his couch and sipped a bit of Nescafe, which had already turned cold. He pulled out his other laptop and quickly logged in, with his alter identity Mr.Andersen. He was part of a band of hackers who were part of the dark web Discord subgroup called 'AI-pocalypse'. Unlike his namesake protagonist in the movie Matrix, he was not working against the machines. He was working FOR them. Building a next-gen open-source AI platform that could seriously disrupt everything known to man.
