I was so sad in 1997, when the computer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in their rematch. Kasparov had beaten Deep Blue in 1996, and it looked like an intelligent person could outsmart a computer: a victory for humanity's flexibility.

But no, Kasparov's flexible moves from 1996 were just programmed into Deep Blue, and the computer beat the smartest chess player who ever lived in 1997.

This doesn't bring a smile to my face, even though AI is a triumph for humanity in a way, since we built it. But the problem is that humanity itself cannot be reprogrammed overnight, like Deep Blue. We evolved to take everyday active measures to provide for ourselves and our families, and that programming when disrupted, ends in depression and dysfunction. And we haven't got millions of years to reprogram ourselves.

In AI and Deep Blue, we built a ticket to sadness for huge swathes of the population. I suppose the solution will be to trick ourselves that our hobbies are productive, like the way we do when sportsmen and women compete. Realistically, they are doing nothing useful, but we all feel they are, and we all tune in.

I think the future is the Matrix: where hobbies are played competitively like sports, where we all enter a collective delusion that we are doing something useful. Those who step out of the Matrix will get depressed. :)