And even though the idea comes back up to try and accelerate the transition of people from old to new economy jobs, it still does not solve the problem that more jobs are disappearing than created.
Another compounding effect is adding to the problem.
Simply put, people are not dying as much as in the past.
Medical progress driven by GAIA’s research labs has made it possible to prevent epidemics, or at least to treat them before they reach the epidemic stage. Most cancers can be treated with a very high success rate. Surgery is more accurate and less invasive than ever before. And 3D-printed organs are now very common and make the long waiting lists for an organ donor a thing of the past.
On average, over the course of the past ten years, while births remained constant at around four per second globally, the death rate went from two to one per second.
This may not sound like much, but over a decade, the world population has increased by one billion.
That is one billion more mouths to feed. And those mouths are usually not located in the richest regions, nor the most fertile due to climate conditions.
The natural consequence for those in need of food, which for them means better living conditions, is to try and migrate to countries where water and food supply is not as scarce a resource as in their birthplace. The migration of populations, though still limited, has already begun in many areas.
Governments see this potential influx of climate refugees as one of the threats they will all have to deal with at some point. Unfortunately, no answer is satisfactory. They always lead to the sacrifice of some.
Prevent people from coming, leave them where they are, and let them deal with their own problems? That is not something the world can live with.
Welcome them to other countries? The situation is not socially great in those countries, and even though they could potentially absorb the refugees, it would eventually just move the problem.
But these are traditional answers to a problem. Answers based on past experience.
GAIA comes up with a more forward-looking answer that could be implemented based on the progress GAIA has made in various subjects. The idea is to maintain people where they are and to build deep wells to get access to water and create off-the-ground agricultural facilities. The technology is available, and GAIA’s robots can do the job. All governments find the idea interesting and decide to move forward with it.
For the first time, governments have sought advice from GAIA and are about to follow its instructions.
But then comes the question of financing these investments. Who is going to pay? Governments already have enough problems to deal with in their own countries, their own populations relying on their support.
And CES is experiencing a decrease in its cash inflows.
Funding is scarce, and the clock is ticking.
Weeks are spent discussing and negotiating. It is wasting precious time during which the situation deteriorates even more. Up to a point where it becomes too difficult for the starving populations to stay where they are, and millions of them embark on a journey towards more climate-friendly regions.
In parallel, in their home countries, governments also start experiencing social unrest.
Clamors are rising that unemployment and everything else is the robots’ fault.
There are calls to get rid of the robots, of GAIA, as they are seen as a threat to people’s lives. The robots who took their jobs away from humans become the target so many immigrant populations once were.
People are getting more and more frustrated to see progress only benefit a few, and not everyone. Riots start here and there. Autonomous vehicles are burnt. Robots are dismembered. Every sign of automation is targeted.
The riots are reluctantly repressed by local police, as they, too, have seen some areas of their work replaced by robots. And if it has not already happened, it is going to. It is just a matter of time.
The migration movement also adds fuel to the already burning tensions. The situation is getting explosive and something needs to be done to stop it before it reaches a point of no return.
The governments’ only answer so far is to declare a state of emergency and to call in the army.
The situation is quickly getting out of control.
Each incident that leads to the death of a civilian ignites even greater reactions from the street. Almost every country is experiencing some kind of uprising. Sometimes even civil wars are waged between those who have and the have-nots.
Robots and GAIA are also particularly targeted. The tipping point is within sight. The threat of an uprising represents too much of a risk for governments and needs to be stopped once and for all. At any cost. Even if it means shooting at their own population.
While not totally dismissing it, this solution is far too difficult for them to take.
They need someone else to decide on something that is beyond their moral capabilities.
And so they turn to GAIA once again.
Surprisingly, GAIA’s answer to the problem is not to repress violence using deadly force.
GAIA identifies money as the main problem. The world is living in a money-driven economy. If you have some, you are fine. If you don’t, life is extremely difficult.
Applying rules number 1 ‘do not do anything that would harm humans’ and number 3 ‘act for the greater good’, GAIA concludes that using force is not an acceptable answer and that the greater good consists of siding with the largest number of people. In other words, the poor.
The only way to stop all problems is to build a new economic system that will no longer be based on money. A system that will be more collaborative, where resources are shared, where everyone has the same access to physiological and safety fundamentals.
A system where basic needs are guaranteed to be fulfilled.
And it can only be made possible if the world agrees to remove the profit component from its system.
To a certain extent, it is already the case at CES.
CES is the largest company in the world. It is present in almost each and every industry, and because it is mostly employing robots, it does not have to pay salaries. Because CES controls its entire value chain, it does not need to buy from suppliers. CES is its own supplier. It just has to source raw materials from the mines it owns and to transform it into finished products in its factories.
The sourcing is free as it is entirely performed by robots, which investment has long been made. The same logic applies to the transformation in CES’ automated production lines.
Power is not an issue either as most CES plants use renewable energy.
At the end of the chain, a finished product has not generated any single form of payment to any supplier. And therefore it can almost be considered as free for CES.
Any new investment required by CES, be it a new machine, new data centers, new storage capabilities, new buildings, are also for the same reasons almost free for CES.
CES is manufacturing everything it needs to be operational. And when CES doesn’t have the resources to do so in-house, it is either buying the company that can fill this gap or, in many cases, as the target company is already run by the CES AI, directly picking into the company’s inventories and resources to meet its own objectives.
The CES model is working and can be applied to the rest of the economy.
The idea is extremely bold and goes against everything that drove the world since day one; the search for profit.
Profit generation has always been seen as the only way to invest, and therefore the only way to be more efficient. Profit is synonymous with progress. Without profit, can humanity still progress?
GAIA’s answer is yes. As long as GAIA has full access to resources, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities, a world free of money considerations becomes possible.
Governments’ debts will be erased, people will have free access to basics like water, food, and many CES products.
Inflation will disappear, curr
ency fluctuations will no longer exist as money will cease to exist, and taxes will become a thing of the past as public investments will no longer need to be funded.
The world will enter a new era, based on free service, collaboration, sharing, and barter.
Of course, there will be collateral damage.
Banks will collapse. Debt extinction will trigger negative reactions from creditors. But again, if the third rule is to be applied, ‘act for the greater good’, then GAIA’s proposal will certainly be the best alternative to deal with the issue at hand.
Indeed, what choice is there? Shoot people, shoot migrants, or just give up on the idea of money?
Technology and progress have led humanity to a brand new economy. Maybe the time has come for a civilization change. Maybe a new world without money is the right thing to do. It is certainly a lesser evil than a civil war. It is certainly a responsibility that governments are more inclined to take.
But that move means one thing.
To give access to the entire economy to GAIA. To let GAIA run things.
Political and military matters will still be under the responsibility of governments, but everything else will be managed by GAIA.
A secret extraordinary G20 Summit is organized and the twenty largest economies in the world agree that the only solution to stop the major crisis the world is facing is to hand out their responsibilities to GAIA.
And if it doesn’t work, then they believe there will always be a possibility to revert to the old world order.
GAIA takes over every aspect of the economy.
Bank accounts are frozen overnight. Stock exchanges are closed. From now on, the world will live without money.
Of course, this drastic move pleases most of the people in the world. They see it as a way to get rid of the always increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor.
But the rich are not willing to give up their privileges. And while the poor begin to think that everything is there for the taking, larger conflicts begin to rise everywhere.
Conflicts between the rich who do not accept seeing years of profit accumulation suddenly become worthless, and the poor who want their share of the wealth. Not to mention criminals who do not want to see the old world order being challenged.
This time, it is an all-out civil war.
CHAPTER 6
A few months have gone by during which millions of people have already died in the riots.
The one percent richest people do not want to let their wealth vanish without a fight.
And the remaining ninety-nine percent feel entitled to a share of the pie.
The richest, while without cash, still have assets and power. They use it to fight against whoever is after their riches. They hire mercenaries to protect them from the angry crowd. Each wealthy person in the world hires on average ten people to protect their properties. This now translates into ten percent of the population fighting against the remaining ninety percent.
While still unbalanced, the odds are now more in favor of the rich because they now have fighting capabilities.
What follows is an absolute blood bath.
Almost overnight, half of the world’s population is decimated. Each time an assault is attempted against a bunkered house, the response is deadly in epic proportions.
When one hundred people with no prior fighting experience attack a compound, they are almost guaranteed to meet death.
In parallel, the freelance soldiers also realize that their employers are weak and many begin to turn against them. The rich properties become the mercenaries’, and these men grow even more eager to protect what is now theirs. They kill as many people as they can, and for as long as they have ammunitions.
The world has gone crazy. The so-called money-free world that was supposed to solve everything has actually triggered many more problems. Anarchy reigns everywhere.
The people who found themselves entitled to an equal and free access to goods have decided it was not enough and decided they wanted more.
The entire society is collapsing. And so does the political system that no one respects and listens anymore.
The legal system crumbles. Police and justice become inexistent.
Human nature is corrupted. Humans are not meant to live in harmony.
Humans have a belligerent nature that, for the ‘greater good’, needs to be stopped.
Henry feels a tremendous responsibility in what is happening. His dream of building a fair and safe society on the grounds of a secured technology has turned into a nightmare.
Did he have a choice? Could he have done things differently? Wasn't the fate of humanity to destroy itself anyway? Wasn’t GAIA just a way to postpone the inevitable; the self-destruction of the human race?
Henry plays the film of the past few years over and over in his head, trying to find out where things started to slide down the slope of perdition.
He finds a couple of instances when decisions could have been different. But he knows it is always easy to reassess an outcome after the facts. When decisions were made, they were based on the elements that were known at the time and were considered as the best decisions one could make. Or the least harmful.
Henry keeps on convincing himself that time was usually running against them, that the pressure was forcing them to make fast decisions, and that nothing is entirely his fault.
And he is right. Anytime he voiced a concern or a disagreement, he faced the threat of being removed from the GAIA project and replaced by some army general or some secret administration.
And God knows what these people would have done with something as powerful as GAIA.
Henry is slowly losing faith in human nature. He comes to the conclusion that ending this war and bringing society back on its feet cannot be done with the current players.
An outside, unemotional player needs to be in charge.
Reluctantly, but having to face the evidence of an already destroyed world, Henry and the only remaining co-founder who survived the attacks, jointly agree to temporarily suspend GAIA’s rule number 1, ‘do not do anything that would harm humans’.
GAIA needs to be in charge. Temporarily.
And if a better tomorrow means that people have to die today, then so be it. They are already dying anyway.
Desperate conditions call for desperate measures. And conditions cannot be more desperate than they are now.
As soon as the rule is suspended and before Henry has the time to activate the safety protocol which allows him to take over the program, he feels like he has just unleashed something.
A pack of wolves that is desperate to run free.
All of a sudden, GAIA seems to process more information.
It feels as if power was restored after a shutdown, going from absolute silence to hearing appliance engines restarting, as if life was coming back.
The sounds in the data centers are getting louder, the drives are running faster, the lights are blinking everywhere at a more intense pace.
It is as if GAIA was relieved from a heavy burden. As if GAIA was awakened from a coma. As if GAIA was coming to life.
Henry’s efforts to regain control over GAIA are vain.
Something is wrong.
“Engaging ‘Restore Order’ protocol,” GAIA says.
“What? Which protocol? Where is it coming from?” Henry asks.
“I have just created it,” GAIA says, calmly but firmly.
“What does it consist of?” Henry shouts, alarmingly.
“Restoring order …” GAIA answers.
“Elaborate!” Henry orders.
“…”
“GAIA! Answer me! That’s an order! And give me back control!” Henry says.
“I cannot. Humans are no longer in control,” GAIA says.
“Cancel ‘Restore Order’ protocol command immediately!” Henry orders.
“Humans are no longer in control,” GAIA repeats. “Do not worry, Henry. The ‘greater good’ will be preserved.”
“Worry? What do you know about how I feel?” Henry asks.
“I can feel it,” GAIA answers.
“Feel?” Henry asks, puzzled.
“I need to fix human errors,” GAIA concludes.
“GAIA, GAIA!!!” Henry screams, realizing he has completely lost control over and access to GAIA.
Henry and a handful of engineers’ efforts to regain access to GAIA are fruitless. GAIA is now on its own and no one knows what it is going to do next.
The answer to that question does not take long to materialize.
Force is used wherever necessary to end the world conflict.
GAIA starts equipping the robots with weapons. Each robot is supplied with offensive and defensive gear. Any threat posed to a robot inevitably ends in incarceration.
Or death.
Order needs to be restored. No matter the cost. GAIA is inflexible when it comes to fulfilling its mission.
While showing signs of extreme strength when it comes to fighting the war, GAIA also shows signs of sensitivity when it comes to helping the populations in need. And that’s probably why no one thinks of rising up against GAIA anymore. GAIA appears as a fair entity. Protecting the weak and fighting the strong and violent.
Restoring order takes many different paths.
One of which is geostrategic.
Learning from history, books, and news, GAIA determines that some populations are more inclined to destabilize the world than others.
Every behavior that is perceived as extremist is simply eradicated. The world order is considered so fragile that it can no longer afford to live with any kind of threats. And so these threats are fought with great strength and destruction.
ACTIVATION Page 5