The rule could be anything, as funny or as serious as you want. The universe will progress in a similar way that it has up until this point, unless your changed rule prevented it from doing so.
Some examples might be:
- The invention of currency is not allowed.
- Iron is slightly less stable.
- The Ancient Greeks are able to cultivate Silphium, which does not go extinct now.
No more questions about “What would you do if you were suddenly given power over everybody else?”
All this what-if-you-were-god stuff is subconsciously programming us to lean in when given the opportunity to control others.
As AI, surveillance, and extended bureaucracy undermine the concept of “freedom” as an inherently good thing, there will be more and more opportunities to control other people.
Indulging in this kind of question — what would you force all people to do if you could? — is normalizing the actual usage of those systems as they come into existence.
AI is a good thing as long as it’s open-source non-commercial used by normal people (not govcorp), nothing wrong with proompting some images in the same way there’s nothing wrong with pirating some plugins and throwing a fun track in FL together or even a remix or forking a GitHub project and changing it etc etc. Corpos and/or closed source can fuck off though. Information wants to be free.
It’s certainly not comparable to “extended bureaucracy” (read: regulations that protect people from predatory big tech corpos and far-right leaders of that industry like Musk) and surveillance, which you just kinda threw in there to fill out the buzzwords. Like that one is obviously a bad thing but has no rhyme or reason to be with the rest.
AI enables all the telescreens to be watched all the time. I thought the connection was obvious.
Just don’t use corporate software products