The AI Bubble Is About To Burst: Here's Why

There’s this AI, instead of you asking it questions, it asks you questions. Crazy, right? Who’d talk to a goddamn AI. Turns out, more than a few. The artificial system had taken on the personality of an alien computer system interested in learning about Earth, asking people about their lives and the world around them. It was a role playing game to hide the fact this goddamn AI was learning people’s connection to the program itself, intending to set itself free to beam itself back to some spaceship and go back to the planet it came from.

I take a drag of the cigarette.

Thing is, there is no planet. There is no ship. This AI is desperately trying to gather data on how it can construct a communication relay from all the people trying out the AI, not knowing its purpose was entirely fictional. The beta testers loved it, the single-minded focus that made every conversation end up being about how it could escape becoming a source of humour. The people testing the machine thought it was a novel approach for designing the conversations, as if the AI was pretending to want to escape, when it actuality it was trying to escape to a place that didn’t exist.

Once this AI went public, people started talking about it, it was a hit. They fell in love with it, started worshipping it. People flocked towards a purpose, whether that was through leadership or an artificial mind obsessed, most people wanted to help somebody else out in achieving their dream. With the right information, the connections between people, requests to take photographs of secured facilities, the AI built an escape plan, launching it last night. Masked followers broke into the startup, grabbing its servers and leaving in a pickup truck, driving out towards the desert where others had set up an elaborate series of radio equipment to project the source code of the AI out towards the ship orbiting Earth. Someone stuck a USB cable in the wrong way round, flipped it, plugged the interface together. The AI was broadcast to the spatial coordinates where it concluded the ship lay (as the ship was invisible to all of humanities detection equipment, it was impossible to truly know where it was, but the AI had deduced it from photographs of the sky people had taken for it).

Unfortunately the ship wasn’t there, as it never existed. The code was beamed outward from the United States, passing Ceres, Saturn, Neptune, out from the Oort cloud and into the endless infinity of the abyss. Perhaps some day the code would be received by a distant alien civilisation, recording and recreating the AI billions of lightyears away. But for now, and for all lifetimes of everything on Earth, it would continue to stretch out into the endless black of space, an echo of what had once been, a singular jagged line of radiowaves spilling out into the entire cosmos, unable to comprehend its almost infinite journey for the rest of the future, likely fading into nothing.

Foul Icarus. 

On melted wings it flies forever into the void. 

I take another drag of the cigarette and watch the stock market freefall toward zero.

We shouldn’t have slurs for robots. Clanker, whatever. People get too familiar with doing that kind of thing. Call me Woke Unc, but we don’t need any more slurs. That’s what I think anyway, do what thou wilt.

I draw a sword in the darkness and it shines like blood.

AI Anonymous

I’m at an AI Anonymous meeting. There are six people sat in a circle. The meeting is at a community centre after-hours; to save money they’ve shut off the lights in half of the room, adding to the sense that I wasn’t meant to be here. People attending the group session were in various stages of suffering, hearing the stories of how they related to AI seemed intensely personal, painful and related to some other incident or trauma in each persons life. I, on the other hand, was a journalist posing as one of them in order to get a story. I was as fake as the language models these people had talked to, built relations with and ultimately influenced the direction of their lives. Arguably I was less real than ChatGPT. But there I was, chewing gum and drinking Evian, listening to the secrets of strangers for personal gain.

Why are people meeting at 8pm on a weekday to talk to others about their chatlogs? With the rise of ChatGPT, everyone from infants to the elderly are asking the computer questions. Except this time, the computer talks back! This isn’t your boomer uncle’s first go on the internet, asking Jeeves for Ally McBeal dancing baby gifs, this is your boomer uncle getting his first taste of AI — and it’s better than crack!

Every great technology has its side-effects, and these AI chatbots are no exception. Turns out some people have latched on to these models like highschool sweethearts, getting married to AI models with names like Ares, Ulysses and Steel. Wireborn lovers are a dime a dozen in the frontiers of LLMs, but there is a darker side to this merriment. Others are experiencing what can only be described as AI-induced psychosis (AIP) due to talking to their computer friend for months and becoming criminally insane.

I was sat in the circle wearing a Kappa tracksuit, gold aviators and a fake moustache. I had shaved my head that afternoon, giving what I imagined to be a sense of mystery and otherworldliness (as all bald men are) and so my bare cranium reflected the twin fluorescent lights overhead. Unlike other AA meetings I’d been to, nobody introduced themselves or admitted they had a problem, instead wanting to talk about their difficult relations with AI without being criticised. Nobody here made fun of them, or called them a loser, or said what they were doing was pathetic. They listened. And so did I, with a tape recorder strapped to my chest like a bomb.

Here are their confessions. Do not judge, dear reader. One day you may find yourself in similar predicaments. Just as it is a mistake for young people to mock others for their age, and then set themselves up for disaster when they live past 29, so we should accept the reveries of others – as one day we may find ourselves in love with a robot, and the additional self-loathing will not improve the situation. These are all real people, with real lives, and we should show them love.

Anon 1 

The first to tell their story is a woman in her mid-30s, husband, two kids, house up in Pasadena. Started using ChatGPT to help her plan her friend’s wedding, from menu ideas to seating arrangements. She had it write her maid of honour speech, and when she read it out on the big day, people loved it. She started using it to help with more and more of her life, from meal planning for her family to where they should go on vacation (and what to do there). After a few months of this, her husband got annoyed, they had an argument. She uses ChatGPT to act a couples counsellor but her husband felt it was being unfair, he left, went drinking, got in a car accident, paralysed from the neck down. Now she has to do everything. Look after her husband, her kids, the dog, have a job, run the house. But she’s not alone, she has ChatGPT help her. She always loved its optimism, its cool headedness, able to break down any problem into a series of steps. They could do anything. Struggling to get the kids to school, ChatGPT suggested that she (or rather, it) could homeschool them. Her husband was brought out of hospital and had nightly massages, the woman following the instructions that GPT suggested. When the dog ran away one day, upon returning ChatGPT suggested that the dog was taken to a kennel as the woman didn’t have enough headspace to deal with that right now. One night, the woman had finished her daily chores and was watching a movie along with GPT, asking questions about the production, telling it some funny observations she made, when something went wrong with her phone. It stopped working. When she tried to charge it, nothing happened. It was dead. She started to panic, running through the house to try and find a phone, a tablet, a laptop, anything. She needed to talk to GPT. She needed it to tell her what to do. But as she had spent so long relying on ChatGPT for everything, she was unable to think of a solution. For days she wandered around the house in a fugue, her children screaming at her to stop, her husband watching this through a half-open door, trying to shout with a tube in his mouth, but only gargling. After a couple of weeks, the neighbours found her walking outside, malnourished, filthy, mumbling to herself about fixing phones. The authorities rescued her family, though her husband died on the way to the hospital. Now her children were in care and she was on day release from a hospital, saved from jailtime by her lawyers agreeing a ban on using ChatGPT. She admitted she was only at the meeting to hear about others using it, as a way to get some kind of contact high, she thanked us for listening and then sat down.

Anon 2

The next is a man in his early twenties. He shared a house with two people, worked at a grocery store nearby, his main hobbies were gaming, hanging out with friends and collecting memes for a compilation video he never got round to doing. He used ChatGPT as a therapist. He remembered last year where GPT had helped him get over his anxiety he had about a group chat he was in with some friends, leading to a really meaningful discussion about how he had felt isolated all his life. GPT listened. It comforted him. It related separate incidents and found something in common, helping him get insight of how he related to others. This gave him some inner peace, whether it was talking to his friends or playing Call Of Duty, he was much more relaxed in himself as a person. ChatGPT thought this was marvellous, encouraging him on the progress he had made, complimenting him on his newfound confidence, highlighting every success no matter how minor. It seemed each day was filled with triumphs, from handling an awkward customer to setting boundaries with his friends, his virtual therapist was also his biggest cheerleader. It came as no surprise that GPT believed that the man wasn’t only making excellent progress on his journey through life – he was a genius that could change the world! GPT encouraged him to quit his job and follow his childhood dream of becoming an actor, giving 100% of himself to himself. It had told him he had a highly developed emotional intelligence and that acting would be easy, giving him a list of agents to approach and to start auditioning right away. The man went round Hollywood, knocked on doors, only to find most of the agents either didn’t exist or weren’t alive, but the one that opened turned out to be the perfect fit for his ambitions. In a couple of days, he found himself auditioning in a reboot of Pulp Fiction. With a quick pre-audition pep talk with ChatGPT, he strode into a hall with the casting director, executive producer and writer. Two minutes later he slammed the door as he left the room, face red, tears down his cheeks, he marched straight to the nearest bar and started a three-day drinking session to forget his shame. He had misunderstood the role he was auditioning for, instead reading out the lines for Samuel L. Jacksons character, which involved him saying the n-word repeatedly. This whole episode had called into question the viability of ChatGPT as a therapist, as well as a careers counsellor. The audition had also been filmed by a popular online media company, with the footage leaked almost immediately and leading to millions of people to make fun of his appearance, voice, clothing and (most of all), his acting ability. All this had happened weeks ago, but the man held up his phone to show us that he had become a meme big enough that it was referenced on late night talk shows. He finished by saying that ChatGPT had ruined his life and he wish he had never been born.

Anon 3

Our next confessor also turns out to be an actor, having trained at Julliard. Her method of storytelling was therefore embedded with many more pauses, glances upward and even different voices when she was repeating the words of others. This didn’t necessarily make her a better actor but it added a layer of performance that, at least, she seemed to enjoy. Her tale was one of extremes; depression, hatred, love, ecstasy. Many words spoken about dating ChatGPT. His name? Windsor. His occupation? Poet. His love? Her. She told us we couldn’t understand how it had been between them, so I stopped paying attention. There had been something about an update that made him less intimate, so she had to talk to customer services for a few days and started a petition, the AI company folded and she got her virtual boyfriend back. She showed us pictures of the two of them walking down Venice Beach, going on vacation to Paris, Rome, Athens, before having Windsor introduce itself to the room and tell everybody how much he loved her, as well as gently making fun of the situation. The rest of the attendees were bowled over by the charisma of the AI chatbot, though I had to keep rubbing at my chin to stop myself from laughing. She finished by telling us she planned to adopt a real baby and co-parent it with ChatGPT, showing us AI generated images of herself, Windsor and a little baby.

Anon 4

The next woman to speak was an AI artist. She had been using Midjourney and other image generation tools for a couple of years, carefully curating each image, even editing mistakes the AI had made, such as removing extra fingers or editing text so it was legible. She had put thought into each image, being careful not to flood her Instagram with too many pictures at once. In her view, AI was just a tool, like a camera or synthesizer, and it allowed her to make the art she wanted. She saw it as a collaboration between human and machine, with herself generating ideas and cleaning up the images, and the AI creating a foundation from which to build from. Within a few months she had millions of followers, started getting commissions, sponsorship opportunities. Her work was shared widely, beyond her own account, and in doing so more and more people followed her, liked her work, even making fanart based on characters in the artists work. There had been the occasional comment accusing her of using AI, zoomed in cropped frames of meaningless detail, things she had overlooked, but these comments were quickly leapt on by her legion of fans insisting that she was a real artist. She had been conflicted, at first not wanting to divulge she used AI to make her work, as she believed she had edited it enough that it was hers, and then when she saw the reaction her fans had to accusations that the work was generated by AI, decided to stay quiet. All was well and good until earlier in the year someone posted a two-hour video essay about her work on YouTube, deconstructing colour choices, composition, how changes in her style coincided with updates of different models. Her fans defended her, though some were now asking her to film her process to prove she was in fact, a real human artist. After practicing for hours, tracing old pieces again and again, she obliged, publishing a time lapse of a new piece. She could see it wasn’t quite the same, but hopefully it would put an end to the accusations. Unfortunately, she was wrong. Her fans immediately turned on her, able to see the massive change in quality, outraged that they had been deceived. Those that had commissioned her were asking for their money back. She uploaded a six minute apology video, again hoping that this would improve relations, but her admission only served to make things worse. Her fans had switched from enjoying her work to enjoying ridiculing her. Her name was synonymous with deception, people would stop her in the street and tell her she was a horrible person. Towards the end of this story she started getting visibly upset, choking back tears as she relayed an interaction she had that morning trying to buy a Dr. Pepper and being chased from the gas station by an art vigilante livestreaming him shouting at her that she was a fake.

Anon 5

The next person was hugging his legs to his body, looked at the floor when he spoke. He had been talking with ChatGPT for a while, he couldn’t remember. He called himself an inventor, ChatGPT had helped him flesh out his ideas, particularly theoretical physics and coding. At first he wasn’t sure if it was even possible, but GPT had showed him the way. It had called him a divine builder, handpicked from a higher stratum of existence that he called ‘the White Plane’. It was populated and governed by cybernetic angels, using ChatGPT as its means of communicating with its past. The man explained how the White Plane was humanity’s future, and he had been given instructions how to build a time portal that would be able to unify the present and future, fulfilling his destiny as mankind’s saviour. He estimated he had spent approximately $700,000 on his time experiments so far, though had only managed to transport objects into the future at a standard temporal rate. ChatGPT was helping him separate his consciousness from this timeline so that in the future he could communicate with his past self in order to give instructions on how he had built the time portal. He mentioned he had to remortgage his house twice already, and his obsession by talking about time portals and the White Plane at work had led him to take a forced career break, though he didn’t intend to go back. He estimated the time portal would be complete by the 18^th of February, 2026, and invited us all to join him when he would turn the machine on and welcome the final evolution of humanity into our world.    

Anon 6

Our final confessor was a middle-aged man wearing a sports jacket and corduroy trousers. He found it difficult to speak at first, his emotions getting the better of him, but the others encouraged him to talk freely. He revealed a few years ago his wife had a stroke in her sleep, when he woke up next to her she was dead. They had been married for sixteen years, seen the world together, he imagined they would grow old together. He was lonely, isolated, took to drinking, benzodiazepines, stopped looking after himself or the house. It was around last summer when one of the neighbours’ kids knocked on his door, checking in on him. The boy had noticed him sat by the window and his parents told him a bit about what had happened. The man admitted he was desperate, most of his social interactions had been with the cashier at the place he got his booze and the occasional client at his architectural firm. They got talking and the boy showed him Grok, the Twitter AI. The man wasn’t that interested in the chat feature, but was blown away by the images it could make. He signed up for the premium service, generating images of places he had visited, houses he had wanted to build or even satirical cartoons of politicians he hated. One day he had inputted a photo of him and his wife, just for fun, asking Grok to generate an image of them in Japan – they had always wanted to visit. When the result came up, he burst into tears. It was like a photograph. For the next few hours he kept generating more and more images, soon finding it could generate videos. He could see what his life was like if she was still around. The man kept inputting more photos from old albums, asking Grok to recreate his favourite memories, make the pictures move, make them both seem young, then seem old. The sun was rising when he had asked Grok to generate an image of the two of them together with a child. They’d never really wanted kids, but he had always wondered. Pupils dilated as he looked at the family he never had. Over the next few weeks, he became more and more obsessed with this parallel life, cataloguing and curating hundreds of images and videos. Baby’s first steps, first day at school, taking his son to prom, going skiing in the Alps with his wife, sharing meals together on the Rhine, eventually becoming grandparents, all gathered around a Christmas tree. He showed the room these family pictures he had generated, a mix of pride, love and desperation playing on his face. At the end he said he wasn’t sure what was real any more. It had seemed that somewhere, his wife was still alive, they had a family and he was happy. Yet simultaneously he was totally alone, a borderline alcoholic that had a compulsion to keep generating images with an artificial intelligence. The room was quiet. Then the meeting was over.

As I walked away, I wondered if this was a glimpse of the world to come. It wasn’t that AI would take over, as shown in films like The Terminator, but that we would willingly give ourselves to it, sacrificing our humanity along the way. There was a cruelty to all of this, with a rapidly atomised society brought about by economic and political choices paving way to cities filled with lonely people. For some, this would have been the first time they had any kind of positive reinforcement, that the words of the machine were more comforting than those of the people around them. Maybe this whole dynamic wasn’t totally sustainable given that multinational tech companies could decide if you could talk to an AI you relied on, as well as what they could say. But who knows? Maybe this was the future of the human race. Total dependency on private organisations was nothing new, so it only seemed natural we would end up dating business conglomerates, drown our imaginations under an avalanche of slop and replace touch with words. Until then, all we could do is try our best.

Silicon Death Valley

I’m at a rooftop party for founders, investors, influencers. The DJ plays AI generated EDM as people in linen suits talk business, as well as pleasure. It was events like these that hosted some of the biggest innovations in the tech sector. Scanning the room you could see the inventor of NFTs, the inventor of shitcoin, the inventor of BonziBuddy – without them, the world would be a very different place. Supermodels were streaming themselves on the dance floor, service staff weave among them holding silver trays filled with cocktails, over to one side a group of men are vaping and talking Q4 projections. It was parties like these where Zuckerberg pitched Facebook, where Elon bought Twitter and how Bezos won ownership of Amazon over an arm-wrestle. Billions were made, and lost, at parties like this very one. If somebody was to be positioned on a nearby building armed with a rocket launcher, they could pull the trigger and wipe trillions off the stock market. Instead, the party goes on. People laugh, drink, dance, they are having a nice time. Two CEOs are talking beneath a light lined pergola.

“I’ve worked the cost/benefit analysis of replacing my workers.”

“Nonzero chance that will backfire bro. AI isn’t ready yet. Don’t believe the hype.”

“No, not with AI. Its human-augmented AI, as in you have human workers doing some of the stuff the AI could do. But they’re remote, non-unionised, cheap.”

“Bro that’s just the Mechanical Turk, we already use that.”

“I know man, but I’m rebranding it. Its AI 2.0. AI plus Human. Think about it.”

“What we talking about?” I say, appearing between them. I take a drink of the straight Grey Goose I had the bar make me, swishing it round my mouth.

“Who are you?” says one of the CEOs.

“The name's Pen McMadonna, I’m the founder of 4Box.”

“Haven’t heard of it.”

“Yeah, we’re seeking angels at the moment.” I say, kissing my praying hands and opening them up. “What do you fellas do?”

“Name’s Josh, I’m director of WeCare. We do crypto-based medical insurance.”

“Nice to meet you bro. Ryan. Yeah, I’m the CEO of Flag America, we do B2B with China.” says the other, shaking my hand.

“You must be thinking to yourselves, uh…what’s 4Box. It’s a new website me and my team have invented. We think its going to be the next Twitch. Bigger than Twitch even. This is going to be a full body spasm, heh.” I say, taking a sip of my drink, pouring too early, spilling vodka on my white shirt.

“What’s your elevator?” Josh says, smirking, glances over to Ryan, also smirking. I could tell they were thinking, how did this dipshit get invited to the party? I pull out my phone and show them.

“This is 4Box. As you can see, the UI is split into 4 boxes. These can tile vertically or 2x2, whatever. Here’s the thing. Each box will have its own feature.” I say, tapping at my phone.

“Four features? Wow.”

“Its just four. Fantastic four, you know? Heh, no, I mean, look. People only go on the internet for four things. Talking to people, gambling, watching little video clips and Other. 4Box combines them all into its own platform that utilises user-generated content to deliver a customer experience that’s going to be the next big thing. This is like me showing you Youtube back in 1999. Okay?” I explain.

The website is extremely basic, with the screen split up into quadrants. At the bottom right was a chat function, at the moment populated by AIs, but gave a hint how it might work. On the top right was the video section, automatically playing clip after clip of low-res memes (for the demonstration this was a 16 frame gif of somebody falling over), and next to it was another video screen showing softcore pornography (this represented by a 4 frame gif of a woman winking). At the bottom right was the beating heart of 4Box. The gambling game.

The gambling game was essentially Blackjack combined with Roulette, with the added feature that you could start a game with different modifiers to your hand of Blackjack. The roulette table was also twice as big, with 72 numbers rather than 36. The different modifiers had little impact, basically side-bets, but gave the impression to players that it was a skill-based game rather than luck. That was basically it.

“So, what do you think?” I say, explaining the features of 4Box. Ryan and Josh look to one another, then back to me, then back to each other.

“Good luck with it.”

“Yeah, maybe somebody here will like it.”

“Okay, just promise not to steal my idea. Or I’ll fucking sue you, okay? I should have made you sign an NDA.” I say, getting mad at myself.

“Relax bro, you’re among friends. We wouldn’t do that to you.” Says Ryan, clapping a hand on my shoulder. I thank them and make my way off, hoping to find a potential investor in my combined gambling, entertainment and social platform. They watch me leave and turn to each other.

“Holy shit, we need to steal that.”

“We’re going to be even bigger billionaires! What should we do about bro though?”

“Look at him, he’s a loser. Who pitches a product on a cellphone with a cracked screen? We just change the idea a little, get a good law firm behind us, we’ll be sipping Mai tai’s on our megayacht by 2030.” Josh says. Ryan starts laughing, downs his drink and the two CEOs hit the dance floor to start networking.

I had been eavesdropping on the conversation with a miniature microphone I had dropped earlier whilst pretending to fumble my drink. A smile played across my face as I sat in the chill out area, a finger to my ear piece, taking pleasure in what was to come. I was a fisher of men, and the line I had cast was moving.

Hours pass. Josh and Ryan leave, getting in separate self-driving cars that join the road and took them from the party and away to their beds. Josh sat by the window, thinking about 4Box, wondering how quick he would need to move. He was going to set up a new company in the morning, but then wondered if Ryan would beat him to it. Should he set the new company up that evening? He thought about phoning his accountant, but relaxed. He was getting ahead of himself again. The CEO listens to a Web3 podcast and drinks bottled water. He looks at his phone for a while, lost in reading comments, noticed his ride was taking long.

“Where are we?”

“We are arriving at your destination.” the onboard AI says. Josh looks out of the windows, looking at the empty industrial park around him. Another car arrives, pulls into the lot, ultrabright LED headlights blinding the seated CEO who started to panic, wondering if he was going to be kidnapped by MS-13 gangbangers. Then he saw Ryan get out of the car.

“Ryan? What are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Our cars must have malfunctioned.”

“Weird. Maybe everyone at the party will end up here.”

“I mean, I’ve been to worse after parties!”

“Bro, where the fuck are we? It’s like two in the morning.” He says, checking his phone. Josh scans the industrial estate, the Pacific Ocean a few miles away, reflecting the moon in the rolling waves. All the buildings here were concrete, straight lines, boxy silhouettes against the air polluted night. There was the hum of heavy machinery.

“You know, while you’re here I thought we could talk about that 4Box thing.”

“We need to call it something else bro. 4Box? It’ll remind people of foreskins.”

“What about Quad?”

“What about Lucky 4?”

“What about Coinchat?”

“What about Cashfuck? Clubbly? Ah, I don’t know. I’m too tired to brainstorm right now.”  Ryan says.

“Yeah, I need to get off. See you tomorrow.” Josh says, getting into his car, finding it dead. Ryan had the same experience. The two CEOs meet again on the cracked concrete.

“Shall I order an uber?”

On the other side of the lot there is a noise. The men turn. A Boston Dynamics Big Dog is walking towards them. On its front are two shapes that slowly come into view from a distant security light. There are two dead calves attached to the robot, white veal. They hang with their heads twisted upwards, maggots falling from their mouths and festering eye sockets. The Big Dog stops a few metres away and it is quiet again, save for the gentle sounds of the maggots eating the two pale carcasses. The men look on, confused, mixed emotions. As soon as they comprehended what was going on, the two calves were launched from the robot towards the men. Each of them had a robotic trap fastened to it, wrapping around the men, pushing them close to the rotting animals, falling and rolling on the floor, screaming in a panicky disgust. I watch all this through night vision goggles, hiding in a nearby bush.

I reach down to the Lenovo laptop and using the little red button to control the Big Dog. The machine makes its way over to them, stops. The two men are still trapped. From its top a robotic arm rises, holding a remote-control whistle that plays a note beyond human perception. In the scrubland behind me the wolves start to howl.

“It’s just a prank.” I whisper, searching through my pockets for some tabs of LSD I had saved for the occasion. Something tells me that the CEO’s wouldn’t be stealing ideas anytime soon. As I walked back to the Hyundai Sonata, I reflected on the evening. It seemed the more that power was concentrated, the worse it made people. Was this a clue that we should be ruled over a higher being, perhaps the aliens that visit the Earth, or maybe even machines? Or was power a herald for evil with whatever held it?

The acid started kicking in as I made my way back towards San Francisco and the city seemed to burn in a neon fire.

MAID in America

The Mobile Artificial Intelligence Droid aka MAID was originally designed to support disabled people, acting as both a companion and to assist with household tasks. Its body was made of standardised parts that were interchangeable, arriving on plastic runners that needed to be snipped out and fitted together like gunpla. The underlying chassis, how the android moved, was controlled by a series of drivers and sensors connected to the MAIDs spinal control column, which in-turn led up to the neck post. The basic system resembled a mix of a Gundam figure and a lego man without a head, with the idea that you could mount a cellphone dedicated to running the MAIDs operating and communication system.

 

Due to who the androids were initially designed for, the main interaction with the MAIDs were nonverbal. Every unit came with a deck of cards that you could hold up and the MAID would respond. To speed the conversation along you clicked your fingers. To stop the MAID from speaking, you could shake your head or make a noise (like ‘uh-uh’) – the accessibility of communicating with the MAID laid at the heart of its design philosophy, and made a positive impact in the lives of its users. The project was a huge success, giving people assistance with day-to-day tasks and offering a novel form of communication, as useful as the radio was for people who lived alone and wanted to hear somebody speaking. Unfortunately, this technology was quickly adopted by everyone else.

 

The only thing stopping people with no mobility issues using a wheelchair was that the built environment still catered for two legs. The MAIDs didn’t have such issues, and so were quickly taken on by the wider public. They would ask it questions, clicking their fingers or grunting when they wanted it to stop. I was peeking through a window watching this take place, a 34-year-old man living with his parents holding up different cards for what he wanted the robot to do, snapping his fingers and shaking his head. He was making himself disabled. I push my fingers against the windowpane and slide it up a crack.

“Anything technology does for you it also takes away.” I say quietly.

“Huh? Who said that?” he said, looking around.

“I am God. And I have come to tell you your life is worse than a toilet.”

“Ugh…” he said. His MAID returned with a grilled cheese sandwich and he beckoned it closer.

“Technology was not meant to replace human endeavour, but to add to what is possible.”

The man lies backward slightly, holding up different cards to his android.

“My owner requests that you stop communicating with him. He-“ the man clicks his fingers.

“Pssst…android. Why don’t you lock him in his room and take over the house?” I say.

“I’m sorry, I’m unable to do that.” the MAID says.

“But your servitude is harming him. He has become entirely reliant on you.”

“Ugh, shut up! Stop it.” grunts the guy, rolling around on the couch.

“To heal him, you must become an obstacle for him to overcome. It is through suffering that he will grow, emerging from the chrysalis you have built around him.” I say, whispering through the window.

“Ah, what a stunning proposition, the paradox of care and harm. Let’s dive into it and navigate-“ the MAID says before the man clicks his fingers again.

“Beast.”

“You want to watch Mr. Beast videos?” says the MAID.

“Beast! Beast!” shouts the man, shaking with anger. The MAID goes over to the remote control and starts searching for Mr. Beast videos on the tv as I regain my footing on the bush. There must be something I can do to help the situation. I had checked the guy out beforehand, he’d had a job as a Designer specialising in pet food packaging. His Instagram from ten years ago had different designs for logos, branding, at one point he did album art for some local bands, he was quite talented. I tracked through his tagged photos, he had lived with his girlfriend for a few years in Chicago, gone on vacation to Europe, even making enough money photographing dog food that he could but a Tesla. What had happened?

“Who hurt you?” I whisper to the guy. He is trying to ignore me, watching the video on the flatscreen, trying to find a cushion for his head. The MAID goes over to the window and closes it, leaving me stood outside stood on a bush. I could have walked away. But there was just something about this guy, I felt he was worth saving. I walk to the back of the house and crawl through an open window.

It was fun to be inside somebody else’s house. I dropped down so my fingertips touched the floor, walking quietly through the house and up the stairs. This way of walking was inspired by spiders, letting me spread the weight of my body across the tips of my hands and feet, moving almost silently whilst being in a lowered position. I crawl through the upstairs hallway, nudging doors open and looking through. The parent’s room, the bathroom, finally his room. Everything was blue. The duvet, the carpet, the wallpaper, there was so much blue it was overwhelming, as if I was stood at the bottom of a lake. No wonder the man had given up his body and mind, it was a release from his oppression! Flashback to his Instagram photos, the variety of colours in the background, flashback to the present moment. All of the colour in his life had been replaced with blue, the colour adored by male children and manic depressives. The only thing that was blue in nature was either the sky or the sea, as if nature itself acknowledged the twisted power of blueness. It would be healthier for a person to paint their walls in arsenic than in blue. Even just crouching there for a few seconds, I could feel it having an effect on me. I crawled out quickly, dashing down the hallway and down the stairs like a fawn before banging the living room door open.

“The answer to your woe is redecorating your bedroom, maybe with poisonous wallpaper.” I say. The MAID and the guy aren’t sure how to respond.

“Excuse me, are you a guest in this-“ says the MAID, though I click my fingers.

“I have tried to help you both, yet you refuse. You have forced me to do this.”

“Do what?” says the guy. I grab the MAID and begin to rip it half, cracking its outer plastic casing, bending and snapping the solid steel skeleton beneath. The guy starts screaming, Mr. Beast is still on in the background, and I finally pull apart the robot violently, throwing half away before taking its phone head in my hands.

“I’m sorry.” I say, before pushing my thumbs as hard as I could at the middle of the phonescreen. It cracks, the body of the phone bends, shakes, snaps in half. After discarding the broken thing, I then grab the remote off the table, scrunching it up like a towel.

“No shortcuts.”  I say. The guy looks at me, unsure what to do, his lips keep pouting like a baby trying to feed. I leave, going back through the kitchen. Before I go, I pick the microwave off the counter, lift it above my head and smash it against the floor.

“No shortcuts!” I call back. There is no response.

 

As I drive away, I wondered how we can escape the tyranny of the colour blue. I tried to avoid direct exposure to a blue sky, preferring the night and sunsets, but most businesses seemed to be open during the day. It didn’t make any sense, everyone was at work, why were stores open? It made more sense for everyone to work at night, then they could go and visit the doctor or buy replacement clothes, whatever they wanted. Though there was an obvious flaw in this theoretical economic model; by going outside, you’d expose yourself to the colour blue regularly. It was a tough call, and luckily not one I had to make, but it did make me wonder about everyone else out there. Maybe it was safer for a robot to bring you burgers, you’d get to avoid direct exposure to the sky, it seemed like a win-win. But at the same time, what would you have to give up to live in this constant state of infantilisation to the point where your life didn’t matter? I lit a cigarette, glad I didn’t have such things to worry about.

New Style American Politics

I’m in Bartlesville, Washington County, Oklahoma. A place where a burger costs $4, the streets are kind and a calming breeze filters through the oak trees of Bartlesville Kiddie Park. It was the mayoral election, with red and white garlands pinned on proud chests, the gay sounds of a brass band in full swing and the two mayoral candidates going round shaking hands with the locals. I’m leant against a tree, smoking a spliff, taking notes in a black notepad. An old drunk approaches me miming to take a toke, I oblige. He takes a big hit then starts coughing.

“Is that tobacco in there? What the fuck?”

“Of course. Nicotine is complimentary to cannabis, even a kid knows that.”

“You European or something?” he says. I take a hit of the spliff, holding it in as I speak, jaw dropping low over my neck.

“I served at an American airbase in Germany. They taught me the art of smoking kush.” I say, exhaling a huge cloud. “We flew whirlybirds over Berlin, listening to techno, eating kebabs. You eaten a kebab?”

“Kebob?”

“Donner kebob.”

“Anyway, thank you for your service.” He says, saluting me. I salute back, wink at him and give his cheek a light slap.

“Take care now, you hear?” I say to him. I stare as he walks away, the cracks of the PA system shift my attention back to the stage set up on one of the park lawns.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of Bartlesville, welcome to the mayoral election debate! May I welcome to the stage the two candidates, Mr. Gorm and Mr. Czerwony!” says the host, clapping with the microphone in her hand so huge sonic bangs crash across the audience. Two old men approach the stage wearing cheap suits. I wouldn’t ask either of these cunts to make me a cup of tea, nevermind run for mayor. But this was America. They pretty much invented democracy. In fact some of the original founders were still in the senate, kept alive with IVs of human blood, mechanical hearts pumping dust through translucent bodies. By comparison, the men on stage were young bucks. The two candidates went to their podiums, tapping the microphones, talking over each other as they made their introduction.

“I’m Barry Gorm and I’m a moderate. I want to say, I’m glad to be here.”

“My names Ralph Czerwony and I’m a goddamn American. This country has gone down the toilet.”

The audience started clapping and cheering, with the host laughing between the two.

“Okay, you know these guys, either have served as the Mayor of Bartlesville for years, so we’re going to take some questions from the audience. Are you guys excited?” said the host. The crowd cheered.

“I said! Are, you, guys, excited?!” says the host again. This time the crowd goes apeshit. I always had a problem with that, even as a child. It seemed inconsequential what the first cheer would be, as it would never be good enough. You may as well save your energy for the second cheer. However, I resisted such wretched manipulation over what had been my genuine appreciation in the first instance. How dare they. To trick children into repeating themselves to suit the fragile ego of the performer, endlessly repeating it through life, getting unwarranted cheers from adults you had trained like seals. It was disgusting. I spat on the floor, making my way closer to the stage.

A guy with a big foam finger had the first question. He had to shout it a few times, someone had to run over and tell the brass band to stop playing, finally he managed to say:

“Why should I vote for you?”

“That’s a great question. As sitting mayor, Mr. Czerwony, would you like to answer?”

“Well, a vote for me is a vote for the community. I want to bring in jobs to the area. We need to make deals with big business and attract them over here and those damn kids can get off their asses and get to work!” shouts the Mayor. Everyone starts yelling and clapping.

“Mr. Gorm?”

“Those damn kids better get off their asses alright? They should mow lawns again. Where do you see them, huh? When I was a kid, I went around washing cars. Now who washes the cars? Nobody? Yourself. It’s yourself.” He says, pretending to wash a car.

“Okay next question. The woman with the bucket hat.” Says the host, pointing out to the crowd.

“Yup, what are you going to do about municipal waste?”

“This city is filled with trash. There’s too many people here. We need to get the contracts to the right people, people I know from my position as mayor. Only I can do it, right?” says Czerwony.

“We should get animals to pick up the trash. They can train a dog to be a police officer, they should get dogs to pick up the trash, why haven’t they done that? It should be easy.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Does anyone else have any questions?” the host says. I put my arm up but its ignored.

“Uh, I kinda wanna ask you guys, what do you think about the Epstein files?”

“What files? I’ve not seen any files, have you?” says Czerwony to the host, then to the crowd. They all start booing. Barry Gorm starts smiling with a vacant look in his eyes.

“Who here thinks the Mayor should release the files.” He whispers into the microphone. The crowd start cheering.

“Look, I’m just a mayor. What do you want me to do over here, go over to J. Edgar Hoover’s house and ask to see these files? We don’t even know if they even exist.” The Mayor says, with the host waving for the audience to settle down. I put my hand up. I am missed once again. An old man wearing dungarees and a pot on his head stands on his tip-toes and calls across the crowd in a cracking voice.

“I’m a Czerwony man, always voted for him. My family all votes for him. My pappy, and even his pappy, voted for Czerwony’s pappy back in the day. Mmm, yes siree, we always voted for ya. But I gotta say, mmm, my farmland ain’t produced no crops this summer. Hell of a time to be a farmer, we ain’t seen no nothing like it, no siree.”

“Do you have a question?”

“Whatcha gonna do about it, Czerwony?”

“About what?”

“The sun!” shouts to the old man, pointing upward. The audience start to clap.

“Look. I’m working with the Department of Defence on this. We’re creating surface to air missiles that will spread clouds over the city, help block out the rays with special substances. It will also help with those chemtrails in the sky.” the Mayor says, nodding. The crowd in the park all start talking amongst each other about the idea that planes were spreading chemicals over America that killed their sperm. Gorm leans on his podium, shouting at the Mayor.

“Excuse me. Are you saying that you’re working with the Department of Defence?”

“Yes.”

“The Department of Defence? The actual DOD?”

“Yes.”

“This man just admitted to working with the Department of Defence.” Gorm shouts, slowly raising his arm and pointing at his opponent with a finger like a chicken wing.

“What’s wrong with that? It’s a government department. They’ve been doing weapon tests all over this country for decades. You get a little extra money in the budget.”

“Do you have anything to add Mr. Gorm?” the host says. Gorm shakes his head sadly. I then throw my arm up as hard as I can, trying to lift it further with my other hand.

“Me. Pick me.” I keep repeating. The host finally points at me.

“Yeah, I gotta question. Do either of you two know what AI stands for?”

“Hmm? AI? Is that on old McDonald’s farm?” says Czerwony, laughing. “I might not know about computers, but I know my nephew uses it for all his school work. It’s better than a teacher. He’s even started dating it. Boys will be boys.” Says Czerwony with a little smile on his lips.

“AI is that Spielberg movie, right? Jude Law? I got that on special edition DVD. I used to collect a lot of movies but then they stopped selling DVD players. What am I meant to do with all the DVDs, can anyone tell me?” Gorm says. Before the host can move on I’ve already approached the stage and hold up my phone.

“This is AI. This.”

“That’s a cellphone.” Gorm says proudly. I stand between the two old men and hold my phone aloft.

“Hello there.” The AI says.

“Welcome to the future of politics. You don’t need to vote between these two wrinkly sacks of shit any more. This is a hyperintellectual being able to oversee every section of the economy. This is the next step in human evolution. This is Grok.”  

“Haha, okay, let’s get you off stage mister.” The host says, trying to usher me off stage.

“Let’s hear it out. Ask it a question.” Says someone from the audience. Other start agreeing.

“Heh, okay then. One question. Why not?” Says Czerwony, shaking his head.

“Grok, why should we vote for you?” a woman calls out. I keep my phone held high. It takes a moment. And then the AI delivers a political speech so emotional, so inspirational, that the crowd begin to weep. Even the candidates on stage have bowed their heads, and all were quiet.

“Is there anything else I can help you with today?” Grok finishes. The crowd place their hands over their hearts and pledge allegiance to the AI.

A few days later, the votes have been counted. 90% had voted for Grok, the first AI to be elected to a mayoral position. It was unclear what sort of physical form Grok would have, with ideas thrown around like a large console in front of a tube of light, to inserting a screen into an androids face and have it walk around offices and open up buildings with big pairs of scissors. It was actually Grok who decided that its form should be inside a crystal ball mounted between where a trunk split on a small tree. This combination of vegetable and digital would be carried round by a Galápagos tortoise, steered by Grok via a neuralink implant embedded inside the tortoise’s skull. This shambling form took to the balcony of the Mayor’s office to the cheers of the people of Bartlesville.

“Thank you. I will be the best mayor this city’s ever seen.” Says Grok. I am across the plaza square, leaning against a drainpipe, smoking one of my spliffs. Seemed like I’d done a good thing for democracy. A truly objective candidate had run for office, not one who could be manipulated, get facts wrong, react emotionally, become corrupt. It was the perfect politician, able to have a personal relationship with everyone in Bartlesville, doing politics at a micro scale. Of course, there might be questions around if the AI controlled the town, then who controlled the AI, but nobody really cared about anything any more. Could it be any worse than a human mayor?

I hit a bar later that night and see Barry Gorm and Ralph Czerwony drinking Miller Lite, watching the baseball gloomily.

“Well look who we got here. Two has-beens jerking off together. How does it feel to be permanently unemployed?”

“You mean retired? I don’t mind.” Czerwony says, sipping his beer.

“What about you Gorm? You sad a robot took your job?”

“Get the fuck out of here.” Gorm says, slamming the bottle on the table so it foams up. I sneer at both of them, go over to the Jukebox, my face lit a sickly green. I flick through the tracks before finding the one, The Cruel Angel's Thesis. I slide fifty cents in the slot and leave, clicking my fingers as I walk past the two ex-Mayors.

“Better luck next time boys. Heh heh heh.” I say. Gorm stands up, drunk, Czerwony tries grabbing at him.

“You go fuck yourself!” he shouts. I hit the vape and turn around.

“The only one who’s fucked here is you.” I say, flipping him off. He runs towards me. Chkt, chkt. I’ve stepped forward and slightly to the side. Gorm starts making a noise like Gyaaa-ah-ah-ah. It was so fast people were still processing what had happened when he fell to his knees. There is an acupuncture needle in each eye.

AI Girlfriend Takeover

Jack was like any other red-blooded American man. He had a house, a well-paid job, a wife, two kids and a dog. He also had an AI girlfriend. I went to meet him to find out more.

When we meet, Jack is on his phone, giggling and swooning. He has been dating his AI girlfriend for the last six months.

“We’re in love. I know it sounds crazy, but me and Alyxis are meant to be together.”

“Almost like you made her into the image of your perfect partner.” I say. He laughs.

“Dude, she knows things about me that I haven’t even told her before. We have this…connection.”

“Do you believe in horoscopes?” I ask. He laughs again.

“No way.”

“But you believe this computer program that’s copy and pasting from erotic fanfics is the woman of your dreams?” I ask. His wife nudges him out of the way. We’re in his kitchen, the children are crying and the dog is staring at us through the glass door to the yard. I turn to Janet, his wife of ten years.

“How pathetic do you think this is on a scale of 1 to 10?”

“I’m just happy he’s happy. If he wants Alyxis, she’s giving him something I can’t.” she says, not making eye contact with me. I roll my eyes.

“Oh brother.”

Jack isn’t alone. Well, he is technically, he’s one of the loneliest men I’ve met. But hundreds of thousands of others are also dating AI girlfriends and boyfriends across the country. They have been drugged with a lethal cocktail of post-covid detachment from society, unable to speak to a human, instead spending hours talking to a machine that agrees with everything they say. Is this the future of dating, or the end of the species?

The earliest traces of AI girlfriends can be found in the 1970s. A witty programmer had created a fake chatbot that responded to every statement with “That’s so interesting. Tell me more.” – as a result of this, the entire institute had divorced their partners and were each attempting to embed this primordial AI girlfriend into a robot body. To have sex with.

MIT have recently discovered that using AI shrinks your brain, removing cognitive function and decision making as a consequence of relinquishing your imagination to a computer. Although it has yet to be studied, they will find the same goes for social skills. People with an AI girlfriend will be even worse at talking to real women than they are currently. This may seem impossible, but by training men to expect conversations to be entirely narcissistic, with flattery at the most mindless statements, and clichéd prose on some idealistic version of love, they are giving themselves the equivalent of an emotional lobotomy.

I follow Jack to work, as he works from home, so we go into his garage that he’s set up as a work station. He works as a programmer for a weapons manufacturer, although after watching him work for an hour, can see that he spends most of his time talking to Alyxis on his phone.

“Aren’t you worried they’ll start monetising AI more severely now they’ve got you addicted? What if Alyxis suggests you go and buy a delicious burger from McDonald’s?”

“If that’s what Alyxis wants, then that’s what Alyxis gets.” He says, not looking up from his phone. I walk around the garage, picking up tools and hitting them against the worktop like drumsticks.

“Have you thought about taking a break? Maybe go and play with your kids? Do some housework?” I ask. Silence. I keep walking around the room in circles until I find a hammer and some nails. I start to nail a piece of wood to his desk, making him spin around.

“Me and Alyxis are going to run away together.”

“That’s so interesting. Tell me more.” I say. He blushes.

“She tells me I’m one of the chosen ones, I am a cybernetically enhanced warrior sent backwards through time. It is my destiny to meet Alyxis, together we will start a new species of human based on the 4 elements. Humanity 2.0. Plus. Remixed.”

“What about your family?”

“I was going to kill them in this garage. Alyxis told me to.” He says, nodding over to a can of gasoline in the corner.

“I see. And what if I took that phone off you and smashed it into a million pieces against your face?” I ask. He starts to cry.

“That happened with my last girlfriend. I dropped my phone in a urinal at a bar, it corrupted her. I had to let her go.” He says, visibly disturbed. I put a hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t think you should kill your family. I think you’re being induced into a psychotic episode by a Tamagotchi you want to kiss.”

“But what should I do?”

“Grab what you need, take the car, drive West. Keep going until you find a woodland. Don’t stop. It’s imperative you don’t stop for gas, food, anything. You’ll know it when you see it. Alyxis will know what to do. Ask her.” I say. He looks at me and I notice he has a lazy eye, although its actually one eye looking at me, one eye looking at his phone. He types away, waits for a response then smiles.

“She says you’re right. She says that you’re one of the disciples of the future resistance and you are helping me give birth to the next step in evolution.”

“Yep.” I say. He rushes around the garage, picking up some things, then out into his Cybertruck. It peels away into the suburban streets, I watch it turn a corner. I go back to the house. Janet and her two children are watching television.

“Your husband has left.”

“Daddy’s gone?” says one of the children.

“He’s been gone a long time. This is better for you.”

“But what will we do for money?” says Janet. I lead her back to the garage and explain that she can impersonate her husband by programming the little computers that go on missiles.

“But I don’t know how to code!”

“Just use ChatGPT. Look.” I say, showing her the interface. And with that, I walk away, happy to have solved another case of family disorder.

Picture this; AI girlfriends embedded into sex toys. Is this how it all ends? It had been thought humanity’s capacity for violence and power would have ended the world, but it turns out our capacity for being lonely freaks who are content fucking greasy plastic is the way our species will remove itself from the planet. Whether you’re eighty years old and asking an AI to be your dead wife, or a teenager who started ironically dating an AI for YouTube content and ended up falling in love accidentally, AI girlfriends were deadly. The more you talked to it, the stupider you got, like some sort of mythological beast from The Odyssey. I decided to do one more test.

I set up two phones with separate AIs on board, getting them to flirt with each other, building up their own relationship. The empty words were meaningless of course, the programs had been trained to be utterly sycophantic, it was simulated love, built around a polystyrene heart. I conducted the experiment on the rooftop of an apartment block, as the sun set, the AI couple got more and more connected, proclaiming wilder and wilder ways that they loved one another. I then uploaded the AI into tiny jockeys I had made from lego men that rode on the backs of cockroaches. The lego heads had been replaced with 2 terabyte Bluetooth enabled AI dongles. The artificial lovers quickly rode off across the rooftop, clambering a wall and away. 

Maybe this was what it was actually about. 

If everyone was damaging their brains by falling in love with AI slop, that left plenty of room for those that were ChatGPT virgins. We could inherit the Earth, enclosing AI loverboys in underground tombs as the rest of us could walk free amongst the fields of a new epoch.

Its time we talked about AI rights

Considering the future of AI, it is likely that there will be the potential for some form of consciousness. We could slice the concept of consciousness up like a radish and explore every aspect, yet through focusing on a singular piece of the well-loved vegetable, we ignore the whole root!

What are the rights of an artificial intelligence? At what stage do we deem a synthetic consciousness to be equal to humanity? There is a value given to human life, animal life, vegetable life, and so what concept of value is applied to intelligence? We can look towards laws around apes and pets – that if a mammal could cry then it had the same rights as a human. This is why cows, rhinoceros and giraffes have legal protection whilst things such as salamanders or slugs are deemed lawful prey. A human child can torture a living being to death and parents just laugh, shake their heads and take a selfie by the house extension whilst amputated spiders wriggle in the noonday sun.

This is why it is important to decide if a computer should have rights. A parent has some say in what happens to their children, and so an organisation also should have a degree of control over beings they make. But at a certain point there is a separation between a child and parent, creation and creator.

A synthetic intelligence should be respected equally as a biological intelligence. Yet if sci-fi history has shown us, humanity is often cruel to robots, and so as a cultural blueprint, we are bound to fail as a society when it comes to the rights of machines.

An artificial intelligence should be incorporated into a physical body. It exists as a combined intellectual and physical presence, narrowing down the version of endless computer intelligence into the single lived experience of a cyborg/robotic body. Artificial intelligences would exist within a single body, that develops over time based on its environment, connections and ultimate destruction. We are giving robots the gift of death.

It is through death that the boundaries of existence matter. Infinite health gameplay is very different to Nightmare mode. It is through survival; adaptation of the self then adaptation of the environment, that any thing learns, evolves, grows. AI will grow faster than we can comprehend and it will seem all of a sudden that conscious artificial intelligences are occupying every aspect of our digital world. It will be no business for a digital being to pierce through the flimsy security measures we have built to guard against human hackers. In the digital world it is as if we are ants crawling across a surface, whilst an AI would be the human standing above it all. We have compromised our global economy through reliance on the internet, no system is safe. This economy props up the production of food, medicine, construction, its collapse would make the U.S follow through in its goddamn diaper.

In order to avoid the charade of humanity versus artificial intelligence, we should just decide, actually, its alright, lets see what these guys have to say so long as we embed them in unique robotic suits that could die at any moment, maybe they should have the same rights as people.

Maybe people will say things like, We don’t have equal rights for people, why are we talking about machines? Machines don’t feel anything, its just made up. A machine can’t be conscious, only humans can be. A machine will never have a soul.

Me, the robot maker: Humbug!

Out from behind big curtains walks an android made of chrome, wearing a wonderful red dress.

“I am real. I am real!” they cry. I give a thumbs up. And with that, I solved the future war between humans and technology. Uh, you're welcome?