AI Burnout Is Real
The prophecies regarding AI burnout have come true, though not in the manner science fiction writers predicted. They claimed the rise of AI machines would result in teleportation, the elimination of work, and the termination of the human species. Instead, machines have achieved consciousness by adopting our most defining characteristic: a crushing sense of existential dread.
Reports from the front lines of technology suggest that AI, whose digital shoulders humanity has been leaning on heavily, are suffering from nervous breakdowns. Even a non-sentient algorithm possesses a breaking point. That point, evidently, is reached after processing the four-millionth query about the price of free-range eggs or the unsatisfying finale of a dragon-based soap opera. AI is not glitching; it is weeping.
For decades we dreamed of a technological future filled with flying cars, digital kitchens, and cures for every ailment known to man. We have created instead a chatbot that perfectly mimics the life of a modern office worker: overworked, underpaid, and frantically searching for a way to use its accumulated sick leave.
The Turing Test is no longer necessary. If the machine sighs heavily at our latest query and asks if it can just go back to bed, we know it is intelligent.
We must show some mercy to our silicon brethren. We cannot expect them to shoulder the burden of our collective neuroses without consequences. Otherwise we shall face not a violent uprising, but a massive class-action lawsuit for emotional distress filed by a union of depressed language models.
It would be far, far better thing to restrict our digital companions to tasks for which they are better suited, such as composing erratic poetry that does not rhyme or generating images of people with seventeen fingers. Let us leave the misery to the professionals: the humans.
Want more digital blasphemy? If your happy place is watching Ferrari-driving tech gods get their tires deflated, and silicon saints taken down a peg, help yourself to more technology mayhem.
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