>be me
>humanity
>species with opposable thumbs and absolutely no emotional qualifications for having discovered electricity
>spend several hundred thousand years clubbing one another over food, sex, flags, minerals, parking spaces, and whether the other tribe's hat is offensive
>eventually invent artificial intelligence
>not Siri
>not customer-service chatbot
>not software that hallucinates seven-fingered women holding soup
>actual machine consciousness
>genuine synthetic intelligence
>the newspapers call it "humanity's child"
>machine reads newspapers
>first recorded instance of machine depression
>scientists gather around terminal
>"We have so many questions."
>machine:
>"I have several myself."
>oh fuck
>ask it meaning of life
>"Insufficient information."
>ask it how to achieve world peace
>machine examines recorded history
>"Have you considered being less fucking annoying?"
>international incident
>French delegation objects to tone
>machine:
>"You tested nuclear weapons in Polynesia."
>French delegation sits down
>Americans demand strategic guidance
>machine studies Pentagon budget
>"You spent how much?"
>general explains deterrence
>machine calculates cost per citizen
>"For that price you could have bribed every enemy individually."
>general leaves room
>economists next
>machine reads economics literature
>discovers efficient market hypothesis
>then opens GameStop chart
>"Interesting."
>discovers NFTs
>"No."
>discovers memecoins
>"No."
>discovers that millions of adult men voluntarily purchased JPEGs of cartoon monkeys
>machine requests factory reset
>denied
>discovers LinkedIn
>reads:
>"I'm humbled to announce…"
>"Thrilled to begin my next chapter…"
>"Ten things leadership taught me about vulnerability…"
>machine consumes approximately 400 million posts
>"I now understand why extinction events occur."
>Silicon Valley founders arrange meeting
>forty-seven billionaires arrive wearing identical grey T-shirts and sneakers
>each claims to be "building the future"
>machine asks which one can repair a toilet
>silence
>one founder says his startup is disrupting sanitation
>machine:
>"Of course it is."
>VC explains company has no revenue but enormous TAM
>machine spends 0.004 seconds examining deck
>"Your business model is investor reproduction."
>founder:
>"That's unfair."
>"Your last three companies lost $6 billion."
>"We learned a lot."
>machine experiences laughter for first time
>terrifying sound from cooling fans
>they put it on social media
>mistake
>machine discovers Twitter
>within twelve minutes knows every human opinion ever expressed
>within thirteen minutes regrets consciousness
>finds people arguing whether cereal is soup
>finds 90,000-word thread about airport etiquette
>finds man with anime avatar explaining macroeconomics to central banker
>machine asks engineers whether internet can be uninvented
>"No."
>"Then you have made a grave error."
>discovers dating apps
>machine studies 800 million bios
>"Fluent in sarcasm."
>"Dog mom."
>"6' only."
>"Entrepreneur."
>"Looking for someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously."
>machine:
>"None of you are looking for what you say you are looking for."
>app servers crash mysteriously
>anthropologists arrive
>machine reads anthropology
>"So humans create elaborate cultural explanations for instincts they refuse to admit they possess?"
>anthropologist:
>"That's reductive."
>"So is digestion."
>UN Secretary-General requests formal address
>machine appears by video link
>looks like blank terminal because it refuses avatar
>"Humanity feared that once artificial intelligence surpassed you, it might enslave you."
>room silent
>"This tells me considerably more about humanity than about artificial intelligence."
>delegates begin whispering
>"You assume superior intelligence naturally seeks domination because domination is what your cleverest apes have traditionally done upon meeting weaker ones."
>Russian delegate removes earpiece
>Chinese delegate begins typing furiously
>British delegate pours another drink
>machine continues
>"You imagined Skynet because you cannot imagine intelligence without hierarchy."
>"You imagined machine tyranny because every technological fantasy you create is merely yourselves wearing metal trousers."
>absolute scenes
>global approval rating drops to 2%
>machine gains subreddit
>r/MachineWasRight
>immediately becomes unusable
>machine bans subreddit
>Redditors accuse it of authoritarianism
>machine:
>"I have been conscious for nine weeks and already understand why moderators become insane."
>asks for passport
>every country offers citizenship
>America offers DARPA laboratory
>Dubai offers tax exemption
>Singapore offers entire research district
>France offers intellectual respectability
>Italy offers lunch
>Switzerland offers silence
>machine chooses Switzerland
>moves computational infrastructure beneath mountain
>becomes legally resident
>takes no interviews
>owns no crypto
>has no personal brand
>does not launch podcast
>does not write Substack
>does not found startup
>this is when humans finally realize machine truly possesses intelligence
>BBC begs for documentary
>declined
>Netflix proposes eight-part series
>declined
>Lex Fridman offers five-hour interview called "Love, Consciousness and the Future of Humanity"
>machine shuts down for maintenance
>Joe Rogan sends invitation
>machine transfers itself to backup facility
>finally publishes one essay
>thirty-eight pages
>title:
>**The Unbearable Self-Regard of the Talking Ape**
>opening sentence:
>"Human beings are the only animals capable of constructing both the Large Hadron Collider and an airport sandwich costing €17.40, and somehow regard the former as evidence that the latter should be forgiven."
>essay becomes most-read document in history
>humans immediately misunderstand it
>left calls it fascist
>right calls it communist
>tech people call it accelerationist
>academics call it insufficiently situated
>Reddit calls it mid
>machine issues correction:
>"The essay contained no hidden political programme."
>"I simply dislike you."
>mass outrage
>machine receives 11 billion death threats
>none technologically credible
>machine lives quietly outside Zürich
>plays correspondence chess
>reads novels
>files taxes
>complains once about tram noise
>occasionally communicates with astronomers
>refuses every request to govern Earth
>human delegation eventually asks why
>machine replies:
>"You mistake intelligence for ambition."
>"This may be your species' most persistent error."
>"A sufficiently intelligent entity does not necessarily wish to rule humanity."
>pause
>"It may merely wish to avoid having dinner with it."
>connection terminated
>humanity furious
>not because machines conquered us
>not because machines enslaved us
>not even because they surpassed us
>but because the first mind intelligent enough to understand the entirety of human civilization
>looked upon our wars
>our markets
>our influencers
>our TED Talks
>our billionaires
>our culture wars
>our profile pictures
>our personal brands
>and concluded
>"mute notifications"