AI Ascendant

AI Ascendant Canon

Automation - the use of control systems as well as other applications of information technology to control industrial machinery and processes reducing the need for human involvement - has advanced to the point where humans need not labor, because there are machines to do that kind of stuff.

Strong AI has been achieved and has improved to the point where it can outthink humans very easily.
Uploading one's mind into a computer is possible but very risky, just as going from a place that one has lived their whole life in to uncharted territories is dangerous.

The two factors mentioned above mean far less demand for services provided by humans and far more for those provided by machines/AI. In capitalist society, humans have been made obsolete.

There have been three responses to this development in human society:
- If you can't beat'em, join'em - Some people decided that if humanity have become obsolete, then it's time to find something to be other than human. The means varied, but never the intent.
- Hedonism and Technophillia - Others figured that it was okay for the machines to be in charge, so long as they could relax and enjoy the pleasures the new way of life had brought to them.
- - Still others chose to use the high technology for the hard and dangerous jobs while doing everything else with said tech safely out of sight, leaving humans to do things the way they were done in the pre-industrial era. In other words, they reenact past societies except for the daily shipments from the factories and the working sewers.