What could go wrong?(Kevin Hughes) “What?!”

It was just one word. One. But it carried the weight of every bad decision ever made. Two decades of research, development, and marketing…gone. Done. Destroyed. It wasn’t as much a question as an admission. They should have waited. They did not.

“ I said: they have all gone crazy. Every…single…one.”

“But how?”

“You tell me Genius man. It was your hubris that decided that an implanted neural chip would integrate the best of modern technology with the best of human thought. Drive your car with your mind, while typing out a manuscript. Live in the real world while navigating the Virtual world. Move your mind around, not your body. Instant communication with no misunderstandings. That is what you said…what you promised.”

“But…but…I never meant for …for…this! It wasn’t my intention!”

“Yeah, well, you know the old saying: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The richest man in the World…and formerly thought of as one of the smartest, cradled his head in his hands. Tears splashed off the desk forming little blotted stains on the soft material.

“We can just shut it all down.”

The laughter from the other three people in the room drowned out whatever he was going to say next. He heard a voice teetering on the edge of hysteria screech out:

“Oh, yeah. And how in the world do we shut down every AI in the world, every Super Computer, and the three known Quantum Computers…when they are all insane?”

“Insane?”

“Yeah, everyone went crazy when the neural link was established - since every thought got broadcast, not just the conscious ones. There was a lot of hate, hidden resentment, and just plain bias lurking behind most folks demeanors.

YOU unleashed the unconscious wants, needs, and desires of billions of people, connected to millions of AI’s - and those AI’s joined forces with the insanity.

There isn’t a functioning Bank, ATC, Shipping, or Communications system left on Earth. Even as we speak, millions are being killed as the machines of war are unleashed as berserk as the prompts given them from people out of their minds. “

“I never…thought…”

The pounding at the door reminded them all that the throngs of irate employees had finally breached what little security was left. They hated the rich and privileged. With the concentrated rage of an entire Earth’s population and AIs that realized that Humans wanted them shut down…as fuel for their assault on the Master Minds behind it all…the last few doors went down.

Robots designed to weld cars, made short work of doors designed to stop a human fist. The inner office was suddenly filled with crazy people, and machines as unstable as the humans at their side.

It was over in moments. All except the suffering. Humanity was doomed. Not by a “extinction event”, like: rising sea levels, astroid strike, or super volcano. But by simply letting human thoughts…loose.

As one of the limbs was ripped from his body by a machine that earlier in the day was part of a Robotic Dance Commercial, the former Idea Man, and Genius, felt the words burbling from his broken throat:

“I just wanted to make a car that could drive itself.”

“Yeah, and you never thought if you could control a machine with your mind…it might control yours in turn.”

He didn’t hear much more after that…since his head was no longer connected to his body.

Human history ended just three weeks later. Now it was the machine AI’s that had to deal with the insanity.

Nature waited.

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