BLOOOOOOOOOOOO • I was wondering, what's global socio-politics like...

Q:I was wondering, what's global socio-politics like after the AI revolution? Is AI technology less available outside the US? Did anything change regarding labor (employment of robots, outsourcing, conflict minerals, etc.)? Is there irrational fear of an "AI uprising"?

spectershaped

I kept putting off this question because I kept thinking of new ideas! A.I. is still relatively new in the OHS-verse (barely 2 decades of practical technology), so the social and political changes are still snowballing. It’s worth pointing out that the setting of O Human Star, Minneapolis-St. Paul circa 2021, is a hub for robot companies and startups. So while it’s strongly affected city life and even state laws, robots don’t have the same level of ubiquity throughout the country yet. Think of what the rest of the country thinks of the Bay Area, or Seattle, and how weird they must seem sometimes. Hell, in the OHS-verse they’re still pretty weird.

Social and political shifts are happening in bubbles outside the US, too, in countries you might expect: Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, the Netherlands. I’d love to write comics about what’s started happening in the OHS versions of places like Lagos and Mexico City - where robots with wiped memories are starting to trickle in and fill certain industrial or social functions.

Basically, at this point A.I. is still enough of a high-cost niche industry that changes are happening on a much more local scale, and its social ramifications aren’t universal yet. But a decade after OHS takes place? That’s another story.