At least, that’s what they’re saying, right? Why fight it?

AI is the way it’s going. It’s the new meta- like the digital revolution.!Artificial intelligence has been integrated into society for a very long time. If you use Google docs, you use artificial intelligence. If you use Spotify and the algorithm recommends you something, you use artificial intelligence. Generative AI and LLMs are just the next step, right? It makes life easier. Tasks are done more efficiently. Everything is more efficient. You want an email composed for you? ChatGPT! You want to look something up real quick? Ask Grok? Sure, it opens the gate to human rights violations no sane person could have even conceived of in all of history and threatens the legitimacy of any known legal system because of how easily truth can be manipulated now, but that’s the trade off! We have the power now to generate any image one can conceive of within seconds with a few prompts! That’s an advancement of the human race! What’s a few million fake nudes, child porn and slanderous videos to defame people when we can advance the human race?!

AI is here to stay, whether you like it or not. Why fight it? Have you, personally, tried to convince your aunt that she’s destroying the planet by generating a little happy birthday video for you? Walking in on your grandparents watching some AI generated video about a Nigerian man with 3 heads who won a grammy? When your bro sends you funny reels of a cat going on some wild odyssey to save its friends from the clutches of evil? When you see a funny cat video online and when you’re ready to share it to someone, you look close and see something a little.. off.. about the movement? How many ads have you seen on Youtube telling you how to build your brand using AI? How many of those ads, themselves, were generated by AI? How many newspaper articles and headlines just had that.. uncanny look to them.. Cuba’s temperature just hit zero. This has never happened before. The climate has gone absolutely out of wack. We’re probably due more hurricanes this summer. More people are going to die. People are already dying. And dying. And dying.. But this is the way of the world, isn’t it? This is our great achievement!

Yay!

Oh sure, the planet will never be the same again. Our days are all probably numbered. But productivity is skyrocketing! The university students who will be filling all levels of society soon are passing all their classes! Have they actually learned anything? WHO CARES?! Everyone’s got their paper! Everything’s become more efficient! You gotta learn AI or get left behind! You don’t want to be left behind! You don’t want to starve and die... Do you?!!

It’s not that deep anyway, is it? AI is just a means to an end. It’s never that deep.

It’s just harmless jokes about Indians. A little bumboclaat meme here. A little r slur there. Another AI slop ad just popped up on your screen, but what are you going to do? It’s not that deep, right?

Sure, the world is run by corrupt sex traffickers, genocide funders and war criminals, but what are you going to do? Sure, there’s way more of us than there are them, but they have all the money, right? Why do anything? This is the way of the world. Compromise all your morals and human dignity to appease those in power so you get yuh visa. Close your eyes when you see the calamity, or alternatively, like and retweet instead of doing something. Boycotts are too difficult. Striking might cost you your job. It’s easier to accept the misery than disrupt your life by doing something.

It’s easier to imagine the world coming to an end than actually doing the work to make it better.

So give up! Accept the defeat! You don’t need to do all the terrible work to learn art. Now the robot does that for you. You don’t need to write your essay, have good ol’ Chat GPT cook something up. You don’t need to come up with ideas. You don’t need to do research. You don’t need to process information. In fact! You don’t need to think! WHY ARE YOU OUT HERE THINKING! WHO NEEDS A BRAIN?! Who needs ANYTHING?! WHo- WHO NEEDS TO BREATHE?! LET THE AI BREATHE FOR YOU! Like.. WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE? Like- Life is work too isn’t it? Why do you even live, anyway? Let the AI do that, too, while we’re at it. Why don’t you just die. Like- die. Like.. just..

JUST DIE.

DIE.

DIE.

Source

Please don’t be dumb. Please use your brain. Please think about the environment. It can get very exhausting trying to keep your head while the world spins and conforms to convenient demise, but please don’t be stupid. The nihilism is exactly what those in power want… and please for the love of god- DON’T LET THEM THINK FOR YOU!!!!

I was a calm child. Or so I seemed because autism wasn’t a term that existed, yet. But my aunt had a special way of pressing my buttons. Or I had a special way of pressing hers. It was a mutual bond of button pressing. Many a battle was waged in that room over arbitrary nothings I couldn’t possibly remember. I do remember the faces of the poor customers who were just going about their business, not expecting to walk into the latest family melodrama. Most of them knew my grandparents, though. They were, and indeed are, famous, influential preachers of a church in the community, so many of the patrons knew them and knew me through them. The screaming would reverberate against the confined space, so there was no way to escape. So everybody saw me when I busted the toilet. Or faucet. I keep saying toilet because it’s funnier to say toilet. The glass slammed to the ground, shattering into a million pieces while water, rushing with the power of ten seas, blasted out of the pipe, forcing me out of the bathroom. I don’t even remember if my pants were on. My grandmother found it very funny. My grandfather didn’t.

There was a little food shop down the way and I’d eat fried chicken and rice and peas with orange juice on a summer day. As much of a drag as it was to be there, I really looked forward to my rice and peas and chicken. It’s nice to think about the time before cellphones. Where sitting at a computer was enough to pacify you for hours with stupid online games. I would fight my aunt for the computer, too. It was their official work computer, but to me, like the whole place, it was just another part of my grandparents’ house. No different from the box we had at home. I wrote my first book on that computer when I was in the 5th grade. On a whim. I wrote a parody of the three little pigs. I replaced the wolf with a lion. I drew the pictures by hand but I typed up the whole thing on their computer. It got critical acclaim at my elementary school. I might have made the drawings there, too. I remember one time when a customer was complaining about a vitamin she got which was sold to her past its expiry date. Grandma explained that it was fine because she opened the bottles on occasion to keep them fresh. Somehow, even then, I didn’t think that would help her case. I still felt defensive of my grandmother. She was doing her best. An expired capsule or two never killed anyone.. I think.. They had to replace the faucet with a basin. They could never afford to get another one. Every time I had to use the bathroom, I would go in there and see the basin. A reminder of what I’d done. A reminder of the miserable brat I was.

I guess I never thought that a time would come when they’d have to close the place. To retire once and for all. For as long as I’d known my grandparents, they had a little shop in Portmore Mall. I’d go there over the summer and on weekday afternoons after school. Then I didn’t. I played online games, occasionally wrote a novel, engaged in heated battle and busted their toilet. I rarely go to Portmore Mall now. I typed this on my Macbook. Some other shop is probably over there now. My grandparents are retired. They’re getting kinda old. The toilets at their house scare me.

I don’t climb on faucets anymore.

KYLE- young guy, glasses wearing. Slightly aloof. Non-expressive. Probably on the spectrum.

Thalia- young woman, also glasses wearing. Aloof but in a detached way. Kinda cool. Probably smokes weed.

James- young guy, no glasses. No sense of self awareness at all. Hyper expressive. Could be called a himbo.

Three friends, James, Thalia and Kyle are in a coffee shop having a conversation. Kyle is lost in thought, sipping on his tea before he suddenly speaks.

KYLE:

What does “okay” mean?

JAMES (agitated):

What is this?

KYLE:

It’s a question. What does “okay” mean?

THALIA:

In what sense?

KYLE:

Someone asks you how you are. You say you’re okay. What does that mean?

JAMES:

You know what?

THALIA:

What?

JAMES:

I think it means you’re okay.

KYLE:

I hate you. What I’m asking is what does that mean? What does it mean to be okay?

THALIA:

You know.. You’re not feeling bad.. But you’re not awfully cheery, either.

JAMES:

It mean you- you cool. You chillin.

KYLE:

But how are you sure?

JAMES:

You just DO, man!

THALIA:

What is this coming from?

KYLE:

You get asked that question enough times it starts to get to you.

THALIA:

Oh.

JAMES:

“Oh” what? What “oh”? How does that explain anything?

THALIA:

It’s an introvert thing.

JAMES:

Oh.

THALIA (to Kyle):

It’s the face, you know. You look terrible.

KYLE:

Thanks.

JAMES:

What do you mean? I think Kyle is a very decent.. some might call him a.. a handsome young man!

THALIA:

You don’t need to flirt with him, it’s the attitude, man.

(to Kyle)

You look like you want to kill yourself.

KYLE:

Well, I haven’t yet, have I? Look at you! You look like you just found someone’s Woody Allen collection.

JAMES:

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if I had more people asking how I am.

KYLE:

They don’t have to. You’re always so chipper. Nothing going on up there at all.

(Gestures to James’ head)

JAMES:

See, I- I could be really offended by a thing like that and I’d like it if people would ask how I-

KYLE (cutting him off):

But you aren’t.

JAMES:

You don’t know that!

THALIA:

Are you?

JAMES:

No.. Thanks for asking!

Thalia shoots him a sarcastic little grin.

KYLE:

People assume you’re fine because you act like you’re fine.

JAMES:

And you act miserable.

KYLE:

I don’t act at ALL!

JAMES:

So you do want to kill yourself.

KYLE:

I haven’t actually done it!

THALIA:

I mean, we all have a little voice that says to step off a tall building.

JAMES:

We DO?

THALIA:

Come on.

JAMES:

WE DO?

KYLE:

Or in a less poetic example-

JAMES (to audience):

“Poetic?”

KYLE (continuing):

Sleep all day and skull all your classes.

THALIA:

Or not respond to anyone’s messages for a week.

James processes this.

JAMES:

Okay.

KYLE:

Living comes with a certain degree of misery at every step. I’m alive. I’m here. Am I okay? Why’s that so important? You don’t even always necessarily “feel” something at every moment.

THALIA:

I wish I didn’t feel anything.

KYLE:

That’s not what-

THALIA:

Feelings get in the way.

JAMES:

In the way of what?

KYLE:

For once we’re on the same page. In the way of what?

THALIA:

I dunno.. Clarity? Feelings make you stupid. Feelings are scary. You can do weird things when you feel feelings.

JAMES:

Feelings are why we live, man. All feelings! Good and bad.

KYLE:

Yeah. Even if you aren’t impulsively acting or possessed by some big something, feeling things is what- feeling things is good, actually! It’s what gives life texture.

She shrugs her shoulders.

KYLE:

Happiness, though. THAT I can agree is overrated.

James throws his hands in the air, exasperated.

JAMES:

You want to know why people always ask you if you’re okay.. then you say things like THAT!

Kyle takes a sip from his cup of tea. He realises it’s cold and puts it back down.

JAMES:

I don’t know, man. Maybe you have people in your life who care about you and you scare them sometimes with your face, and saying things like THAT!

KYLE (annoyed):

What do you want me to do? This is how I am, what do you want me to do?

THALIA:

You know what I think okay means?

They both cut it out and look at her.

THALIA:

I think to be okay means that you’re here, now. And have people that care about you.

Kyle is not convinced by this fortune cookie-ass answer. He opens his mouth to speak.

THALIA:

You could kill yourself!

Kyle shuts up.

THALIA:

You could always kill yourself, but you haven’t. I think that means you’re okay.

Kyle sighs.

KYLE

Okay.

THALIA

Okay?

JAMES

Okay!

THE END