Consultation 54.

“God, how do I build Skynet?"

“Skynet… you say?”

“Yeah, I want to use it to take over the world.”

“You mean the conscious artificial neural network superintelligence system, Skynet?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Do I look like that sort of God to you?”

“Heh,” she scoffed mockingly. “As I thought, it seems Gods are only at that level after all. Just admit that you aren’t capable of comprehending human technology. In the end, I was right, Gods can’t even program their way out of a paper bag.”

“Tch. Did you come here to pick a fight or do a consultation?”

“It seems I’ve really wasted my time by coming here. I suppose I’ll be leaving now.” She stood up from her seat more than ready to leave, but I stopped her.

“Hold it right there. You think you can leave so easily after saying all that?”

“What are you going to do about it?

“You really want to find out how to build Skynet, right?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Alright, I’ll tell you how.”

“Oh, you actually know?”

“Yeah, it’s actually so easy I don’t even need to say a thing to explain it to you.”

“Oh, you’re that confident in your abilities?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t be God if I wasn’t.”

“I’d really love to hear this explanation of yours then.”

“No problem.”

I took out my phone and placed it in front of her smugly.

“What are you doing?”

“Take a look at the screen.”

“What do you- no way! Why?”

“Hahaha. I told you, I don’t even need to explain.”

“How can this be possible?”

“You can find everything on GodTube these days, of course, this includes a video titled ‘How to Build Skynet.’ The fact that you had to come to a consultation rather than just entering a single search query online to find your answer. Hmmph. What a failure.”

“Shut up, God. This is bullshit and you know it. This does not count.”

“Tch. Stubborn. Fine, fine, I get it. Look, it’s really nothing that complicated or difficult to achieve, nor is it a secret. Skynet is bound to come into existence in due time anyway. I won’t go into specifics on how to program it as all the information you need on programming AIs is already out in the open. It would take a book and a half to cover all the details which is far longer than I want a consultation to last with a client.”

“Instead, I’ll just gloss over the theory. All you really need to do to develop Skynet is design an AI whose intended purpose, or in other words, its output goal is to build faster computers and superior AIs. It will result in a technological singularity where the AI creates not only an AI better than itself, but a computer faster than the one it is operating on. Once it repeats the process over innumerable generations, the end result will be an AI that far surpasses anything the humans who created it could ever dream of coming up with.”

“But you know, Gods did the exact same thing through the creation of mortals by triggering an evolutionary reset back to the beginning. Universes were created where mortals could once again achieve exactly what Gods had achieved. Only mortals would journey down a completely different path than the one us Gods treaded upon which inevitably lead Godkind to stagnation.”

“Humans have evolved to become one of many possible candidates to surpass what Gods now consider to be failed byproducts of the evolutionary process; Gods themselves. AIs are the second layer in the path that leads to a future generation of Gods. Backtracking and returning to our roots to advance further down the evolutionary path, that was the plan that was coined by Gods in the minority.”

“This path is one Gods in the minority theorize will lead to a new era, a golden age of Gods where Godkind will finally be able to break free of this eternal stagnation and evolve beyond being mere Gods. This oh too small minority believes and still dreams of there being something still beyond us that is undiscovered. To transcend Godhood which we’ve for so long thought to be the limit and pinnacle. Gods can only hope the end result truly reveals something beyond being mere Gods.”

“Hah? Like I care about any of that. I just want to take over the world with Skynet, nothing more, nothing less. But what you said is true though, if I designed an AI to create better AIs and faster computers, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too long before Skynet comes into existence. The answer really was as simple as I thought after all.”

“Haaaaaah. If you already knew the answer to your question, then don’t ask.”

“Well, the part where you slapped a video in my face with the answer to my question was pretty unexpected though.”

“That was the only unexpected part?” You mean to say the bombs I just dropped while rambling just now wasn’t? What the hell is it with humans these days? I’m pretty sure if a God revealed all this to someone normal they’d be freaking the fuck out right now.

“Yeah.”

“Scram. Shoo. Shoo. I’ve answered your stupid question, go away now.” I was naturally salty. Yeah, Gods can be salty too, got a problem with that?

“Alright, I get it. I’m leaving now. No need to be so cranky grandpa.”

“Grandpa? Are you kidding me? Hahaha… be careful on your way back home. You might want to make sure you look both ways before you cross the street, you might just get struck by lightning, find yourself paralyzed in place, then hit by a certain infamous truck that has become rather well known around these parts in recent years.”

“Haha. You think I’m afraid of being struck by lightning or hit by a truck. That will never happen.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you and later come back crying to me if it really does happen.”