Have A Deep Thought This Friday

Is There a Non-Dystopian Option, Please?

Standing in the subway car in Hong Kong, en route to a photo walk, I observe the people around me. Every person is on their phone, except one. If we'd show this scene to somebody fifty years ago, they'd think it's some nightmarish dystopian future. I see the same in Tokyo, perhaps even worse, as there, people stare at their phone screens to avoid accidental eye contact at all costs.

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of what people are looking at. There's the young, geeky-looking guy playing some one-tap, highly animated action RPG game. The older lady is playing level two thousand of some Candy Crush variant. Many young women are looking at beauty influencer videos. Kids, like my young girls, are watching the worst content imaginable: kids' influencers on YouTube. Our children's minds are shaped by these whiny, non-stop-talking nightmare human beings, good God! It's entirely possible that our kids' brains will turn into jelly and they will become completely non-functioning humans, just glued to screens. On the other hand, it's marvelous that, for an hour or two, they don't require our full attention, and we can have a calm lunch or an adult conversation with the wife, sooo - maybe it's worth it?

Anyway, is it a problem that we are being entertained during these idle minutes and hours of the day? I don't think many of these people would need a wandering, clear mind to come up with profound thoughts to invent something new, on the way back from work. It's the compulsive, all-encompassing nature of this that bothers me, the addiction that is clear in sight. We're experiencing a significant disruption to the human psyche; we're not in control.

Now...we're going to incorporate AI into this shit-show of human development. There's no question about it; it's happening, and it's happening fast. I've already integrated AI chatbots into my work, creative projects, and personal life. With a vast amount of helpful information readily available, easily retrievable, and personalized to our exact needs, this is something we will not turn off ever again.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Take my relationship with AI, which has become embarrassingly intimate. When Grammarly checks my text, it occasionally spits out suggestions that make my writing "stiff like a Viagra morning" – which, let's be honest, is exactly the kind of corporate-approved phrasing that would make Don Draper weep into his Old Fashioned. But I might as well keep it because, well, it works most of the time.

Then there's my AI "life coach" – and yes, I'm using air quotes because this thing has the memory of a goldfish with early-onset dementia. I keep a session open to log meals and count calories, but it forgets what we discussed about breakfast by the time I'm having lunch. It forgets I already logged my morning jog. If this scene had happened in a 1930s "talkie" movie, this "life coach" would have been whacked with Milady's slippers! Instead, I just sigh and re-explain my entire dietary history like some sort of digital Groundhog Day.

So how does it fit into the metro car?

Here's where it gets interesting, in that "watching a slow-motion car crash" sort of way. Context matters – and by context, I mean location, surroundings, other people, the conversation happening around us. Our AI assistants are currently like that friend who shows up to dinner having missed the first hour of conversation and keeps asking, "Wait, who's Sarah again?"

It's unavoidable that we'll soon have listening devices, recording mics, cameras on pendants, rings, glasses – whatever fashionable surveillance jewelry Jony Ive dreams up next – to capture this context so we don't have to type out every tedious detail. The AI will know we're on the 8:15 train, that it's raining, that the person next to us is watching TikTok videos of someone making miniature food, and that we're stressed about the HSBC presentation.

Context is also history. Your local LLM will remember that three weeks ago you mentioned hating your job, that you've been considering therapy, that you always order the salmon when you're anxious. It'll have external help from the cloud when needed, creating a digital diary more detailed and incriminating than you can imagine – weaving in data from your Smart Toilet. What's that spike in alcohol levels paired with unusual melon seed quantities at 3 AM?

And here's the part where I channel my inner pessimist (though let's call it "realism"): there's no way all of this 360-degree data won't be auctioned off, plus shared with your government. Corporations will sell this data, regardless of the privacy promises AI companies make today. They'll find creative legal language, cite "safety concerns," or simply change their terms of service when we're not paying attention.

The Inevitable Conclusion

So we're heading toward a world where AI knows us better than we know ourselves, where privacy is as quaint a concept as handwritten letters, and where the people in that Hong Kong subway car will have digital companions whispering contextually appropriate suggestions in their ears.

Is this dystopian? Maybe. Is it inevitable? Absolutely – as inevitable as when Brad Pitt turned suddenly into an old man at exactly 60 years old. Will we complain about it while simultaneously being unable to live without it? Obviously.

The truth is, we're all going to become slightly irritated elderly people with dim-witted servants – not the cool, leather-wearing cyborgs from movies, but the mundane, slightly embarrassing kind who can't remember our own passwords without asking our AI assistant. And honestly? Given how often I forget my own passwords, maybe that's not the worst trade-off.

At least the trains will still be crowded, the phones will still glow, and somewhere, someone will still be stuck on level 2,847 of Candy Crush. Some things, thankfully, never change.

Thanks for reading! Your AI-enabled elderly.

#AI #SmartToilets #DigitalDystopia #LinkedIn #TechLife