Using AI to create the average or most stereotypical image of certain things is pretty much the internet's favourite toy right now, but here at UNILAD we thought we'd peek into the future.
Or at least what an artificial intelligence thinks the future has in store for the human race in about 1,000 years time, provided we haven't blown ourselves to kingdom come over the course of this millennium.
We decided to ask AI program Midjourney to mock up some pictures of what it reckons human beings will look like 1,000 years from now, and you might not like the prediction it made.
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According to AI, the fashion of the future is going to involve covering our faces in a web of wiring and whirring motors.
Frankly it looks like the AI has been spending too much time looking at concept art for Warhammer 40,000 and decided that our human visage becoming subsumed beneath technology was definitely the way our species was headed.
That holds some quite disturbing implications for our relationship with technology over the course of this millennium, since the AI image appears to show it having sunk its hooks into us good and proper.
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The man from the year 3,000 appears to have sacrificed the skin of his face to make way for all of this futuristic technology and it's frankly quite disturbing.
He really doesn't look happy at all, but the AI seems convinced in its prediction that this is what we're going to look like about 1,000 years from now and they've stuck to it in another image they created.
This poor person seems to have the same web of wires weaving their way across their face but oddly enough it looks like they get to keep their skin - though that hardly makes the results any less disturbing.
Perhaps this is what societal beauty standards will be like 1,000 years from now, you've got to show off how many wires you've been able to attach to your face and having skin on that face is optional.
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If this is the future of beauty then count me out, though even the AI generated images of some of our future selves who don't go in for the whole 'stick wires into your face' approach are still quite terrifying.
Among the results there's a smattering of normal faces and then there's the Morlocks you see in the two middle spots on the bottom row.
Again, methinks the AI has been scouring the depths of science fiction for ideas, which would potentially mean that the AI's idea of what we'll look like in the future is strongly shaped by our own suggestions on that front.
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If this is what our future looks like then the future ain't what it used to be, and perhaps we should stick to using AI for less scary things like generating stereotypical images which don't always look anything like the thing they're supposed to be depicting.
Quite a lot of people who've seen the 'average person' that ought to represent their country haven't liked the results, and in some cases, we really can't blame them.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Weird
Joe Harker