The apocalypse unfolding around artificial intelligence is not only planetary and systemic, but also intimate, reshaping what it means to be a person in the world.
The first horse rides in through our screens. Physical presence: seeing, touching, smelling the other has been steadily displaced by mediated interaction in the virtual, the digital and the metaverse. The smartphone always gestured towards this destination; Covid merely revealed it. What once felt like an intrusion now feels natural. We used to protest cameras in public spaces; today, we pose and sit before them voluntarily, for hours each day, curating our own surveillance. AI hoovers in every image, for data, for training, for selling, for supremacy and control.
The second horse follows close behind: total surveillance. Governments and corporations no longer simply know where we are, but where we are going, what we own and what we are likely to desire next. What we say (or type) is aggregated into what we think (via AI-generated predictive text). Keep in mind, when we transit from disembodied AI to physical droids, passive surveillance seamlessly slips into active control … policing, internment, god only knows!
The third horse concerns dignity. Work, which has long been one of the primary sources of human...