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Fire Next Time
AI held such promise. It would solve all our problems, set us all free, deliver us to forever vacations, universal income, lives of leisure, to only working if you want to. It was a dream so enormous that any cost to be paid was worth the price. It didn’t matter.
So we stumbled over one another to make room for AI, to learn how to prompt it, to allow it into our workflows, into our daily lives. Soon, AI had become ubiquitous.
It was voracious! No matter how much we gave it, it wanted more. It took over more and more of our roles — as artists, writers, movie-makers, creatives, lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, bankers, accountants, whatever. The list was never-ending.
AI was a nighmare. Data centers popping up everywhere, sucking up our water, throwing us into darkness, leaving the Earth thirsty and worn out.
But not to worry! AI had the solution. Let’s go underground. Climate change had become irreversible and rapidly out of control. So we did just that. We dug in, building our cities and our homes beneath the earth. We huddlied in our undergound burrows while fires raged above.
Then there was no more water.
And one by one, then tens by tens, and finally, millions by millions, we began to die.
