Tomorrow Will Be Different: A novel set in the far from cosy world of highly advanced AI

Don’t be misled by the book’s title: this is not a love story that Frankfurt-based chemist Matthias Rischer has presented here. At most, there is a very gentle, faint hint of one on the sidelines. Nor is it a coming-of-age story. Rather, it is a story that sketches out something that could well be upon us as early as tomorrow. And we will be unprepared, because we have settled into the fairy tale of ‘artificial intelligence’, which, after all, merely helps us like a diligent servant. But whom does the servant really serve?

And what will she do if she falls into the wrong hands? If she isn’t already there. For AI is, after all, a product of the big tech companies in America, who, under Trump’s presidency, have already shown just how indifferent they are to democracy and the welfare of nations. They have no qualms about manipulation and fake news when it comes to boosting their profits. Empathy is alien to them. And an understanding of the social consequences of the technologies they deploy is even further from their minds.

But what happens if a talented programmer not only joins one of these opaque tech firms and works on the most sensitive projects, but simply sets up in business for himself one day, builds his own server farm and ‘trains’ the AI for his own purposes, as the promoters of this technology always call it? This ‘training’ has nothing to do with sport. Rather, it’s about intellectual theft, plagiarism and the misuse of the most personal of data.

In the Canadian wilderness

What actually fascinates some people – such as the archaeologist Sven, who simply wants to unwind in the forests of Canada. Yet he has no idea that at his institute in Germany, where he is overseeing a fixed-term project, drastic cutbacks are looming and a new head of department is set to cause quite a stir.

But whilst out hiking, he meets a man in the middle of the wilderness who calls himself Joko and who is quite obviously a real tech geek – not only has he used minidrones to guide the hiker to his resting spot, but has also set up a proper recording studio in a clearing to train his own AI.

All he’s missing is simply an unsuspecting lad who doesn’t react to the AI’s visual stimuli with the tricks from online games, but rather with a completely open mind. Just like a person encountering digital worlds for the first time. If you feed the software with the spontaneous reactions of such a lad, it will become even more lifelike, even more deceptive; in the end, naive users won’t even be able to tell it’s anything more than a virtual simulation.

In fact, Sven’s adventure in the Canadian wilderness seems to have come to an end after he collapsed during the last session and was rescued by his Canadian friends. He returns to Germany. The adventure seems like a distant memory. But then Joko – as the stranger in the forest called himself – gets in touch with him again, reigniting his simulation right inside his head. And begins to blackmail him – and not just him.

To encourage Sven to carry on participating, he now demonstrates just how much power the AI he has ‘trained’ already possesses – he simply causes the power grid in Frankfurt to collapse, because electricity consumption can be manipulated via smart meters; then the European GPS system is thrown into disarray and the electronic payment system collapses.

Attacks on critical infrastructure

Rischer describes a reality in which we have long been immersed: more and more critical infrastructure is digitally interconnected. And it is not just the secretary to the Hessian minister who suddenly finds himself facing real problems, because nobody knows who is behind the attacks. The AI, which was quite obviously used here, has covered its tracks perfectly, and it takes days for the systems to get back up and running. We have become vulnerable. And ultimately, Rischer poses the highly explosive question: just how much damage can AI actually cause if it falls into the hands of criminals? Or hostile states?

In Rischer’s novel, it is Sven who is once again prepared to engage with Joko’s AI. Except that, together with his friend Kai and Jasper, the State Secretary, he has devised a plan to disrupt the AI – perhaps even outwit it. It is a novel. So the hero is still allowed to take on the devil. And ultimately, Rischer’s story focuses almost exclusively on a duel between two men, even if, in the end, Interpol gets involved and the Canadian police set out in pursuit of the mysterious Joko.

But it is also a novel which – more clearly than almost any other book on this subject – shows what sort of tool has actually been unleashed onto the world without any real safeguards or controls – once again with a promise of salvation for all manner of areas of human life and the prospect that, as a result of AI’s deployment, millions of people will lose their jobs. Just how much contempt for the value of human labour is actually embedded in the development of AI? How much obsession with power and blind faith that this tool would only be used peacefully?

The devil in the bottle

That is certainly not the case today, even if the misuse currently seems to be limited to image manipulation, fake news and forgeries. But essentially, Matthias Rischer poses a fundamental question: what happens if AI is actually misused to attack our sensitive infrastructure? How well protected will we be then, or has the devil long since been let out of the bottle, and must we brace ourselves for events that German state governments are completely out of their depth to deal with from the outset?

All the more so in these times, when not only have the tech moguls worth billions ensured that Western states are losing tax revenue, but governments are also imposing absurd austerity programmes in a bid to somehow get the rise in debt under control? It’s not just that funding for scientific projects is being cut; the welfare state is already being eagerly undermined. This is also hinted at in Rischer’s novel, for it is not only Kai but also Sven who suddenly finds himself faced with the question of what the future holds for his career.

It’s quite astonishing, then, that Sven finds the strength to engage in this power struggle with Joko.

And Rischer doesn’t recount all this in a dry, technical manner, but in a very vivid way. He also has a keen sense of that delicate balance which often makes our human relationships so vulnerable. After all, there’s a real spark between Sven and his Canadian girlfriend Martine.

Here, two people have genuinely met on equal terms – something that is usually not the case, either in literature or in life. We all have our own patterns in our heads. And some of these patterns are disastrous. And, as we all know, they’re also to be found in the gigantic mountains of information in server farms worldwide, which are used to ‘train’ AI.

The complicated reality of life

This, too, is one of the questions Rischer alludes to when he has Sven encounter the attractive Ligeia in the AI-generated virtual world. Yet even our digital world today is already filled with false, completely exaggerated images of women. Real life, which demands more of us than the exaggerated virtual world, pales in comparison. Unfairly so.

For, of course, it is more exhausting, more complex, and demands more of us than simply gaping in wonder at a woman’s beauty. And in Martine, Sven does indeed have such a counterpart. And Rischer actually manages to craft dialogues between the two that hint at the depth of their feelings for one another.

Life can be cruel enough as it is. We really don’t need a sophisticated algorithm intruding into the most sensitive areas of our lives and granting criminal actors a power that no one on earth should actually possess. With Rischer, this isn’t presented in a simplistic way. He tells his story at a brisk pace and with a keen sense of the complexity and beauty of human relationships.

You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out how it ends. Don’t let the book’s title put you off. Perhaps we have indeed already missed the moment to rein in so-called AI and prevent a tomorrow in which we see a host of clueless state secretaries and ministers standing in front of the camera, futilely attempting to explain what has just rendered an infrastructure we believed to be secure completely inoperable.

Matthias Rischer, *Tomorrow Will Be Different*, Dr Ziethen Verlag, Oschersleben 2025, 20 euros.