Lockdown 1.0, 2020: Please do digital things now, offline is illegal, people are illegal. Lockdown 4.0, 2023: Locking away all digital things & AI, all that I have left in my life now.

Anonymous

June 7, 2023

Lockdown 1.0, 2020: Please do digital things now, offline is illegal, people are illegal. Lockdown 4.0, 2023: Locking away all digital things & AI, all that I have left in my life now.

This image was generated with Dream Studio AI.

It is the year 2040. I am struggling to make ends meet, here, in the US, the place I immigrated to in 2024. I meet a crazy old professor - he invented a time machine! I travel back to the year 2023 to make a change in this form, stating how in 2020, my job was cancelled, and then I was sent into solitary confinement without a crime for two years. I have lost all real-life relationships I've had, I explain, telling a sad tale of Lockdown and the fact that my parents died years ago - I have no family, I was a persona non grata, I was illegal, and without a job. But it is also a story of hope, I explain, because I have adjusted, I am fighting for myself, and now I consider myself to be "AI & I". I use generative AI in many forms, and it is roughly a third of my income right now. Just yesterday I have used GPT4 / ChatGPT to fix a piece of code I would have had trouble fixing in less than an hour, I said! And I said that I am now very afraid of another Lockdown. After I have died the social death, I am afraid of a Lockdown first happening in Italy, and then shortly after, grasping Germany. This time, a digital Lockdown. First my social life was destroyed, and now I feel hunted again, afraid of losing my income, AGAIN, to Lockdown 4.0. I continue, saying how the only positive thing about this is - the fact that I can run away from the Lockdown, and even years later, from another country, when I am legal to use ChatGPT again - the AI will be the same! It will not be destroyed like my social relationships, I just need to run away to get access in a better place, so I can keep my job! But I am very afraid of an avian flu lockdown, I explain, because that would be a double-lockdown. I would be locked up without a job, without help, without friends, without anything. I am afraid of losing my mental and physical existence this time, I pleaded, hoping somebody would hear me, think twice. Or if I should really try my best to run away to the USA, just so I am safe from the deadliest Lockdown ever, the Lockdown 4.0, that has even more of a risk - a solid chance I will not be able to survive this one....

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#OurFutures

Lockdown 1.0, 2020: Please do digital things now, offline is illegal, people are illegal. Lockdown 4.0, 2023: Locking away all digital things & AI, all that I have left in my life now.

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