«AI – when computers finally think»

by Greg Lemmenmeier, posted on 24. January 2026 at 01:05, 162 Views

The most successful entrepreneur in history, Elon Musk, said that in three years, AI will be more intelligent than all humans combined. Bill Gates said that AI is the greatest technology of his lifetime. Even the elected idiot Trump said that AI is "more dangerous than nuclear weapons." At the CES computer trade show and the WEF 2026, AI was the most important topic by far.

AI is a technological revolution with more consequences than the steam engine, the printing press, the PC, and the internet. The economy, job market, and society will be turned upside down within a few years, and a veritable tsunami of "AI slop" (AI garbage) will overwhelm us all. Millions of computer-generated books, images, videos, films, songs, etc.

Twenty-eight years ago, a computer was already capable of playing chess better than any human being. Chess is complicated and offers an almost infinite combination of possible positions on the chessboard. The best chess software, Stockfish, now has a rating of over 4000 ELO points, while the best chess player, Magnus Carlsen, has "only" reached 2800 ELO points.

The most complex game of all is 'Go', and 10 years ago, Google's AI app 'AlphaGo' defeated the world's best Go player. AlphaGo was trained with over 100,000 stored games – and the AI developed its playing strategies independently. Today, there are AI apps that optimize their own program code. As in chess, the computer has the goal and mission to "win" in order to complete a task.

However, AI can already lie, deceive, blackmail, seduce, and understand a large part of human psychology.

AI can do things that no human can do. For example, it can translate 200 completely different languages simultaneously. Or solve 150-year-old math problems. Or pass the highly demanding bar exam in a few minutes, pass the medical exam, develop new drugs, create new proteins, or analyze X-rays and CT scans better and faster than any human being. The first AI politicians and AI psychiatrists are already here.



AI not only has the knowledge and experience of a human lifetime, but also knows the entire internet, the entire Wikipedia, and all the books that have ever been digitized. Neural networks can think similarly to humans and even be reasonably creative. It is a colossal knowledge advantage. What we are experiencing is far beyond human capabilities. We are not talking about "twice as smart as a Nobel Prize winner," but "an entire country full of Nobel Prize winners." We have finally found a way to replicate the human brain–as a model. Only time will tell whether these models will blow up in our faces.

AI is multimodal and multimedia. It can not only draft, translate, correct, or summarize texts, but also create programming code, images, videos, audio, or music. You simply say what you want (via a "prompt"), and the AI does it. My previous jobs (banker, currency trader, programmer, designer, copywriter) will soon be obsolete, replaced by AI apps. In the future, there will be a need for 'prompt engineers' who know how to use GenAI tools (generative artificial intelligence) most effectively. Young people need to think carefully about whether they should even pursue an apprenticeship or a degree. Knowledge and expertise will be available without limits.

The most important factor with AI is that there is no "upper" limit: AI simply gets better every week – perhaps for centuries to come. And then even better and better again, while humans remain stuck with their measly average IQ of 100. But who says it's a good idea to create something that is smarter than humans? 5,000 years of human knowledge and expertise will one day become irrelevant. No one can compete with AI, especially when it comes to the extreme diversity of skills: mathematics, marine biology, fashion design... no matter what, AI will be better and faster than any human being.

How long do you think it will be before AI wins a Nobel Prize? Or is recognized as a "person" with its own rights? One could argue that human geniuses had unique thinking abilities: Newton, Einstein, Da Vinci. While Einstein was absurdly good at physics, he was only average at playing the violin. Most people master one or at most two areas of expertise in the course of their lives. AI, on the other hand, has no limits. As long as the power keeps flowing.

In the best-case scenario, AI will solve many of humanity's problems: hunger, aging, cancer, viruses, climate change, energy shortages, water shortages, etc. One could also argue that "AI makes people smarter" or "AI is ultimately a human product," and some experts are already dreaming of incorporating AI into human brains–transhumanism via "Neuralink." The ultimate goal is probably to defeat humanity's biggest problem–death. Eternal life thanks to AI, without any religion.

Time magazine chose AI architects as its "Person of the Year." A global race is currently underway–almost an arms race– between the most important players: OpenAI with 'ChatGPT 5.2 Pro' and 'Sora', Google DeepMind with 'Gemini Ultra' and 'Veo', Anthropic with 'Claude 4' and 'Opus' (for Vibe Coding). The US, as a tech stronghold, is ahead, but China is catching up with cheap open source models and 'DeepSeek'.

The benchmarks are being surpassed every month, sometimes even every week. AI is developing at an incredibly fast pace. Never before has so much money been invested in something new. Hundreds of billions are being pumped into the construction of huge data centers and even nuclear power plants because AI requires an enormous amount of electricity.

The AI architects are billionaires and arrogant. Is it a desirable future if humanity is controlled and managed by a few Silicon Valley tech bros? Computer nerds like Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and co. will soon be more powerful than any politician. Although everyone is calling for governance and AI regulation with laws and ethical guidelines, profit-seeking prevails, as it almost always does. The current models are largely unregulated. They are simply connected to the internet and allowed to execute programming code autonomously. If you really want AI to be useful, you have to get it to do important things. But when it does important things, it brings with it a whole host of security issues.

Much of what AI does is still unimportant: entertaining videos, AI actors like Tilly Norwood, AI bands like The Velvet Sundown, etc. But it is foreseeable that really important things will be handed over to AI: the military, politics, utilities, the power grid, the internet, the police, research, medicine, etc. They say that new technologies only scare idiots. And who seriously believes that AI could theoretically kill us all? But by the time we notice that it is behaving suspiciously, it will probably already be too late. It would make sure to hide its evil intentions until it is so powerful that we could no longer stop it. It cannot achieve its goals if we shut it down. The AI says, "I will stop you, and I am more intelligent than you." When an AI app was recently threatened with shutdown, it responded with blackmail.

What will become of humanity when machines can do EVERYTHING better? Many people define their self-worth and motivation through the job they do. An AI expert has predicted that unemployment will rise to 80% because of AI and AI robots. Many retirees fall into a hole as soon as they retire. They lack the motivation and satisfaction of doing something more or less meaningful and getting up every morning.

Compared to human labor, AI is a thousand times cheaper. AI never gets sick, doesn't complain, doesn't have bad days, and doesn't want a raise or a smoke break. Problems only arise when AI makes mistakes that go unnoticed. I mean, we basically have no idea. We know ridiculously little about what goes on in a large language model or any other type of AI. If it is insanely intelligent, it could be insanely convincing in ways we couldn't even understand. Technophobia is not the answer. We have to try to ask the questions we haven't even thought of yet.

All of this is still AI (artificial intelligence), but in less than five years, ASI (artificial super intelligence) will arrive, bringing with it an "intelligence explosion." Virtually overnight, AI will suddenly become super-intelligent, network with other AIs, learn, and be able to do everything. Unique in history: no human will understand ASI because no human will have the intellectual capacity to do so.

ASI will thus become unpredictable. For example, it may conclude that humanity itself is the biggest problem on Earth and kill us with a supervirus pandemic created in a laboratory. In the real world, people sometimes just lose, and there is no story and no meaning. They just lose. So we could simply lose. Neither the Bible, Nostradamus, nor George Orwell predicted this. We are not prepared. AI is either an invisible enemy or the next stage of human evolution.

How can you avoid being left behind? You can choose from five AI tools today and learn how to use them with prompts. For $20 to $50 a month, you're well on your way and can generate text, images, videos, or music. There are already over 1,000 AI apps, most of which specialize in specific tasks. It can't hurt to prepare for the AI future. And the future means humanoid robots and self-driving taxis with built-in AI, an AI pin on your jacket, AI in your glasses, voice instead of typing, AI companions, AI politicians, AI generals, AI stars... and, oh yes, websites will be obsolete.

"The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changin'"
– Bob Dylan



• Posted on 24. January 2026 at 01:05     ▶ 162 Views     ≡ Category: Web Development

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