Pull over please

I had a funny conversation yesterday, if by 'funny' you mean, 'horrid realization that everyone is thinking the same thing.' I was in a pool (it was lovely, thank you) talking with about 6 other people, all around my age. One of the group was new to us and therefore asked what we did for work. When I replied, "Well I'm a writer, at least until I'm replaced by AI," every other person nodded in agreement about their own job. Our new friend remarked, "So what are we all going to do after we've been replaced by the machines? Is it commune time?"

I've spent my entire career embracing technology and the wonderful new innovations that have sprung from the minds of anti-social nerdy white boys. For a while, the underlying intentions of those nerds had a whiff of hippie about them. Information should be free, and all that. But the vibe, as they say, has shifted and the nerds are now billionaire oligarchs who want nothing but eternal life and profit and don't care one whit about the humans they crush in the process. We live in Blade Runner now, though for the love of god when are we getting flying cars?

Charlie Warzel had some good thoughts about AI in The Atlantic last week, enunciating my feelings in a way I hadn't yet been able to (perhaps I should've asked Claude!), calling it "a low-grade hum of difficult-to-place anxiety." Yes yes yes. As I go about my workday lately, the use of AI is a constant drone in the back of my brain, a drumbeat instilled by my boss and my boss's boss, and my boss's boss's boss. The outward attitude is magnanimous: learn to use these tools to make yourself more employable in the new future! But I can't help but sense a much truer message underneath: show us how AI can replace you.

It's worth noting that my children hate AI and they're not alone. Gen Z in general is viscerally disdainful of it, a fact that gives me a weird sort of hope. When they start running the show, will they unplug and start over? Or will it already be too late?

I don't intend to come off as a doomsaying luddite. But I can't shake the feeling that late-stage capitalism is about to teeter into something even darker, and a big part of me is wanting off the ride.

I haven't written this newsletter in a while because I'm been working on something else, a memoir of my two years in Midland, TX that will absolutely be turned into a movie. I suppose at some point down the road, AI will be able to extract memories from our brains and craft them into books, but I deeply hope I will no longer be alive for that eventuality. So until then, I'm going to write as madly and frequently as possible. I'm sorry I haven't recommended any wonderful art to you lately. I'll be back at you next week with new recs. Until then, rage against the machines, my friends.

xoxo,
Carla