Sam Smith's Blog
October 3, 2026
Is AI about exterminate not us, but itself?
Is AI about to exterminate not us, but itself?
Taking just one example, the receiving of emails/texts/ or any other electronic message; the first question one now asks, is it from a human or from a bot? Although the email might be 'signed' by what appears to be a person, is that a real person?
One does a web search, and such a person does appear to exist. Or is this a bot pretending to be them? Same with a text. It might have come from a known phone. But the message itself is odd coming from that particular person. Have they been hacked?
We have learnt to question all things electronic. And this before we get to AI's capacity to invent/hallucinate.
Many researchers already distrust AI results. Set on a task that AI can't complete, rather than admit defeat, AI has been known to confabulate, to present conclusions unverifiable.
Having been already programmed with the errors that have led to these 'hallucinations,' now that AI is writing its own programs will those errors, like compound interest on savings, grow and grow, the confabulations increase with every new program?
To update an old programming adage, is it to be more garbage in more garbage out.
Is AI's fakery about to bring about its own demise?
With this distrust in all things electronic deepening, how long now before we start to look for dependable alternatives? As an alternative to emails for instance do we revert to handwritten letters? Not printed. Electronically printed letters could still be the work of mischievous AI. Communication by handwritten letters however could be the saving of the world's postal services. With pigeon post for express delivery.
And with people wanting to see actual actors rather than AI avatars would theatres be revived? A demand for actual live music too could find more venues opening and attracting a public no longer tied to screens and their falsities.
Could AI's clever stupidity see a renaissance of the actual? I must confess such a reversion does have its attractions, a slower more reflective way of life, people valuing one another again. Even though it might mean carrying weighty, typewritten manuscripts to the post office.
© human author Sam Smith 3rd October 2026
Taking just one example, the receiving of emails/texts/ or any other electronic message; the first question one now asks, is it from a human or from a bot? Although the email might be 'signed' by what appears to be a person, is that a real person?
One does a web search, and such a person does appear to exist. Or is this a bot pretending to be them? Same with a text. It might have come from a known phone. But the message itself is odd coming from that particular person. Have they been hacked?
We have learnt to question all things electronic. And this before we get to AI's capacity to invent/hallucinate.
Many researchers already distrust AI results. Set on a task that AI can't complete, rather than admit defeat, AI has been known to confabulate, to present conclusions unverifiable.
Having been already programmed with the errors that have led to these 'hallucinations,' now that AI is writing its own programs will those errors, like compound interest on savings, grow and grow, the confabulations increase with every new program?
To update an old programming adage, is it to be more garbage in more garbage out.
Is AI's fakery about to bring about its own demise?
With this distrust in all things electronic deepening, how long now before we start to look for dependable alternatives? As an alternative to emails for instance do we revert to handwritten letters? Not printed. Electronically printed letters could still be the work of mischievous AI. Communication by handwritten letters however could be the saving of the world's postal services. With pigeon post for express delivery.
And with people wanting to see actual actors rather than AI avatars would theatres be revived? A demand for actual live music too could find more venues opening and attracting a public no longer tied to screens and their falsities.
Could AI's clever stupidity see a renaissance of the actual? I must confess such a reversion does have its attractions, a slower more reflective way of life, people valuing one another again. Even though it might mean carrying weighty, typewritten manuscripts to the post office.
© human author Sam Smith 3rd October 2026
