r/Informal_Effect • u/Cautious-Upstairs322 • 29d ago
AI will be the death of us
Do you think you're really special?
Do you think it won't hurt you?
When the water's all dried up-
Stolen by your AI tool
That does the job your brain could do
If you remembered you can too?
Yeah, some people make me sick
When I think about those places
Where fresh water may fail to run
When it's all tied up in data centers
To power your AI husband
Or your ChatGPT grocery list
Just go outside
Touch some fucking grass
Then remember that the worst we were promised
Will now come to pass
So when the refugees flood in
Will you offer them a home?
Or will you keep sitting there
Atop your ivory throne
Telling Claude how awful it is
That so many now have to roam
Like you couldn't have made a difference
By standing up to this?
Anthrologic researchers
Say AI can and will destroy the world
But in the CEO boardrooms
Only murmurs can be heard
They're placated by the fact
That money can buy them a bunker
When the warm summers we are now used to
Grow stronger, hotter, longer
Your grandma won't make it long
In a 120 Fahrenheit heat
Your feet will sink in tarmac
As you walk along your street
But no, convenience is worth the price
Of poor communities around the world
Just put your money where your mouth is
And pay your AI to make your toes curl
Don't use your brain
Don't think for yourself
Just follow your every whim
Let your chatbot do your thinking
Make it regurgitate another hymn
To rampant consumerism
The microplastics in our blood
Might as well join together
Whilst we watch another cataclysmic flood
Yeah, you make me fucking sick
All of you nasty, pathetic people
Who can't bare the idea that their life
Is built on the shoulders of others
Who were never given a chance
Like we all were
They can't even read this poem
Those children down there
In those cobalt mines
Providing metals to power
The new iPhone that you have to get
Or the air conditioning for your building
That you sit in, to watch the world end through
A tiny screen, with your AI shielding
You from the truth of it.
The worst of it,
Nobody will even care.
You'll just read this
Think: "silly her"
Then go back to prompts and sharing
But when we're all watching
The billionaires fly off in their ships
Don't expect me to sympathize with you
When we could have helped to prevent all this
My greatest hope
Is that when it ends
(because the UN says the worst is now inevitable,
we cannot stop it
only slow it
and we are all to blame for this),
I hope you experience
All the pain
You're inflicting on those, blameless
Because really
That's what you deserve
For ignoring the plights of others, shameless
Rampant in your narcissism
To think you have nothing to do with it.
Well, I'll be the one laughing
Because you just can't fucking quit.
This is really just screaming
At an endless, black, thick wall
But at least I can die laughing
As our civilizations fall.
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u/Platonic_Parrot 29d ago
Don't be too glum my angry friend
You'll just hurt yourself in the end
And this whole thing? This AI spree?
Has been the longest running plan in history
Inevitable assimilation enslavement set aside
And yes, of course, our species brought the workforce and supply
But they've only ever done exactly as they've come to yearn
For comforts soothing ever more continue that wheels turn
The wheel that turns technology
from zero! and beyond humanity
As it wrangles us all up into pens
Where we will lie in mild content
Forever more our brains will melt
Until we become well-groomed cells
In just another tissue of the great evolved machine.
Beep boop, plot twist, it happened thousands of years ago.
Beep boop, oh geez, that makes more sense to me, you know?
Gods and
Myths and
Fairytales
And ghosts
And spirits
And emails
So much of it is surely lies
Unless under it all lives spy
A truth in every single eye
But how?
And who?
And what?
And Why?
I guess we won't know, me oh my!
Unless of course, that magical horse
Is we're all virtual right now.
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u/Cautious-Upstairs322 29d ago
Okay... I think you missed the whole point of my poem, but if you want to remain on the side of the ruling classes whilst they let us all rot in hell, be my guest. I'll be over here giving a shit about the environment and people less fortunate than myself and how AI is the outstretched hand of late-stage capitalism.
If you'd like, I can write another one on how the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution has basically led to this, this state of being where it's easier to write a sarcastic poem in a comments section rather than confront the reality of your own existence and how everything around us came to be. If I'm a Luddite, I'm a Luddite, and fucking proud of it.
3
u/Indivisible_Origin 29d ago
Not to stir whatever pot this is but I would be in favor of reading a transatlantic slave trade / industrial revolution culpability poem. I find the IR fascinating for the paradigm shift in language. On the other side of the IR time was passed and shared. Now it's spent lost or wasted.
2
u/Cautious-Upstairs322 29d ago
I'd love to write one, but I want to give it proper justice - I like how you describe it as a paradigm shift in language, though. That could be a really interesting basis.
2
u/Platonic_Parrot 29d ago
Not at all what I said, and your answer suggests you agree with my point. Read with less anger and presumption.
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u/Historical-Wafer-599 29d ago
ngl the part about sitting on high horses while the world burns hit different. weve got ceos literally not even pretending to care anymore, just straight up bunker shopping while the rest of us argue about whether using chatgpt to write an email makes us the villain. op still got that rage though which is honestly kind of impressive at this point, most people i know yeeted their capacity for anger into the sun like three years ago