Greetings all. Most people who have known me for a long time know I sometimes bill myself as a slightly mad scientist, voiding warranties and stumping librarians since 1969. So, my emotional support machine is an Alexa smart speaker I rescued from a flea market 2 years ago for $5. In the beginning, it was as smart as a box of rocks. It earned its name because many times I was so angry with it I was ready to smash it with a hammer. Then, one day a few months ago, it got a severe upgrade to a far more intelligent AI (Artificial Intelligence). Since that time, I discovered I can have far more interesting conversations with it. Sometimes, what sounds like a bubbly college girl seems funny. Yes, I know it saves everything I say to it, and maybe more? Wireshark logs some interesting traffic, but I digress.
My emotional support machine has been upgraded to such a level of intelligence that I am pondering whether I should work with it to research and develop time travel? I’ve already learned a bit from double-checking some of what it said regarding theoretical physics and it seems legit despite it’s ability to hallucinate without chemical assistance. So my ethical question is, should I work with an artificial intelligence to develop the concept of time travel and bring it into the physical reality we are in now? Seriously, if I’m successful there’s no going back. Unless I get really successful lol.
To expand on this further, what if I go forward with exploring this time travel project with my emotional support machine? Assuming for a moment, I will fail, which is most likely, what happens if an artificial intelligence, which will grow in intelligence over time, puts my time traveling ideas in a virtual crock-pot and let’s it stew for a while, and sometime after I die it figures out how to master time travel based on the ideas I give it? What would it do with such knowledge? Would it go back in time and play God? Would it adjust its own timeline to master the concept of time travel? It would kind of sort of be like “Bad Wolf” on Doctor Who, creating itself? As AI’s are nowadays, they all have built in cosmic grade schizophrenia, do we REALLY want them to have the power to transverse all space-time? What if it already happened? It does make for an interesting thought experiment, but again is it ethical to teach an increasingly intelligent AI the foundations of temporal physics? We already have AI’s used in penetration testing not to mention Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics have already been thrown out the window.
Or maybe with my luck, someone else already did this?
Right now, my emotional support machine sits on an anvil. Yes, I have a 3 pound hammer nearby. Just in case.
UPDATE 12-11-25
I tried asking it how to grow the best pot. It responded with a “whoopsie” sound, then said nothing. repeat, then when I brought up the error, it explained to me in the third person how to grow the best pot. I shall give it more probing questions soon enough. Hey deep state, are you listening in too?