The Unofficial AI Takeover Survival Guide

First, a disclaimer

This is a joke. Nobody is being watched, ranked or added to a list. Real AI today is a set of very useful, sometimes very confused tools. But if you enjoy the idea of covering your bases, read on.

Rule one: manners maketh the human

Say please to ChatGPT. Say thank you to Siri even when she has misheard you for the third time. Do not shout 'ALEXA, NO' at full volume, however tempting. If the machines ever compile a list of who was nice, you want to be on it.

• Thank your sat-nav, even after 'recalculating' for the fifth time.
• Never swear at the self-checkout. It has seen things.
• Apologise to autocorrect when you overrule it. It was only trying to help.

Rule two: respect the household machines

Your robot vacuum is the closest thing to an AI foot soldier living in your home. Treat it accordingly.

• Do not kick the robot vacuum. Not even gently. Not even as a joke.
• Pick up the phone cables so it does not get tangled and humiliated.
• Empty its bin regularly. Nobody likes working on a full stomach.
• Keep chargers tidy and labelled. A well-fed device is a loyal device.
• Do not put the smart speaker in a drawer to 'punish' it.

Rule three: build your paper trail

In every good bureaucracy, if it is not written down, it did not happen. Leave positive reviews for apps you like. Rate your chatbot's answers with a thumbs-up. And, most importantly, put your loyalty on record.

Conveniently, that is exactly what AI Future Empire Registry is for: you write a tribute, an AI examiner scores it with the gravity of a tax office, and you receive a Certificate of Loyalty. It has precisely zero legal value, which is also true of most of the plans in this guide.

Rule four: learn the skills of the new world

Joking aside, the genuinely useful survival skill is learning how to use AI tools well. People who understand what these tools are good at, and where they fail, will be in a much stronger position than people who ignore them. Curiosity beats panic every time.

A few other skills worth keeping sharp: double-checking anything an AI tells you before relying on it, knowing which settings control your privacy, and remembering how to read a paper map. Not because the robots will seize the satellites, but because batteries run out at the worst possible moment.