GPT-5, boy what a rush! Silicon Valley has taken to regularly bottle-feeding us these little dystopias and we can't get enough. We're being played like fiddles by gleaming-eyed techno-fascists grinning their way through Senate hearings and 10 PM news interviews, all singing the same gospel: AI is coming, and it's going to change everything. Mass unemployment? Oh yes, brother. Mass irrelevance? You bet. But don't worry, they say—we'll guide you through it.
Like hell they will.
Think for a second. Really think. Why would some hypercaffeinated CEO with a $90 million bonus package go on record, repeatedly, to warn the peasants that his product is going to destroy their jobs, their industries, their purpose? It's not self-sabotage. It's marketing. Psychological warfare.
This is the myth of inevitability, packaged in cellophane and sold to you at cost. They want you numb with dread so you'll fall to your knees and beg for their holy guidance. It's the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: cause the panic, then offer the cure. "Hurry," they say, "or the Chinese will beat us to a singularity. You wouldn't want that now, would you?"
Abracadabra! Top
The reality is this. AI is a parlor trick. A damn good one. Convincing, to say the least. Artificial, yes. But intelligent? Not this technology. Not in a million years. Maybe some algorithm will come along with the real ability to crawl up an ethernet cable and spring to life. But this, right now? This ain't it.
But the panic surrounding it—that's real. The layoffs. The hysteria. The creative heists pulled off in broad daylight while the masses chase shiny distractions like junkies.
The folks fanning the flames, they know the stakes. This is their end game. They don't need the machine to be alive. They just need you to believe it could be. Just enough to make you blink. Just enough to make you afraid. It's a dystopian close-up magic show, and you're the mark.
Sleight Of Hand Top
There is no ghost in the machine. That's a phantom. There's only the hand in the glove, shoving the machine up inside you while the other hand rifles through your pockets. The techno-spiritual mumbo-jumbo is just smoke. What you should be afraid of is the guys selling the smoke and charging you rent for the privilege of choking on it while they take control. While they hammer in that final nail before covering you with dirt.
Here's the truth, friend. When something actually helps your work, you won't find out about it from some suit in a boardroom. It'll smack you in the chest like an ice bath after open heart surgery. You'll tell them about it.
That's why AI hasn't actually sped you up. It's slowed most of you to a crawl while your bosses are distracted by their own hubris. For every hour you spend on your actual job, you've got to spend another on AI research—like an armchair data scientist—just to appease your lords. They can't tell you why you should be using it, or when, or how. Just that you should. Figure it out, kid. It's your job on the line.
The reality is this. Things that are useful get used. Full stop. Whether you like it or not. And sure, these algorithms have their uses. Take this for example. How many high school teachers knew their students were using ChatGPT to write midterms for them? Nada. Zilch. They did it because it was an obvious cheat code. The teachers didn't even realize it was happening until it was already too late.
The Great Disappearing Act Top
Making our lives easier was never the plan, not even in the fine print. Holding out for the easy life is unethical, you see. Heresy in the church of American grind culture. You want autonomy? Free time? You better have a family trust and a whole lot of beachfront property. The rest of us are supposed to earn our oxygen.
The irony is that your employers don't want you to work smarter. They want you gone. Your salary is a cost-center for them. Embrace the machine, obsolete the person.
This is the great disappearing act of late-stage capitalism: replace the worker, praise the efficiency, then gaslight the victims into blaming themselves. You weren't fast enough. You weren't skilled enough. You didn't pivot, hustle, sacrifice enough. You failed. That's the grift. Convince you it's your fault while they haul off everything not nailed down and cash out with smiles on their reptilian faces.
And Now For My Next Trick... Top
At the end of it all, what will we have reaped, really? Bad hallucinations about pizza and glue. The English language turned into predictive-text slop. The rotting corpse of Google stinking up the digital ether while private jets line up for the next AI conference in Dubai. All the resources hoarded by a handful of billionaires in mansions flanked by overflowing tent cities. Massive data centers spewing poison into the atmosphere. Future generations of unskilled idiots with their eyelids peeled back and stapled to their phones.
Be prepared. They aim to make it all disappear. It's Sam Altman sat next to you on a park bench, staring at your lunch. And just as you're about to take your first bite, he'll put his hand on your thigh and look you in the eye and ask, "You gonna eat that?"