Robots

They're coming for us, literally and figuratively.

I’ll Have What She’s Having (2020), Flora Yukhnovich

The results of my poll are in, and 68% of Molly readers agree that I should not sell my latest book to the AI ghouls for $2500. These thoughtful readers say fuck AI and I agree. Even though there are over twenty-five hundred clams on the line, I feel relieved that my decision to say no to a big sack of cash is backed by the full faith and credit of the Ask Molly community.

The Ask Molly community would also like me to know that it resents being referred to as a community. “Please don’t do that again,” is what the Ask Molly, uh, readership says about being cruelly and unjustly portrayed as a community. I didn’t create a poll about that, there was no town meeting, no group chat, but I know you, motherfuckers. I see you and I feel you and I hear you. I’m like a bed bug snuggled in your sheets at night. I’m a bone spur on your big toe. I’m a vestigial twin giving you lower back pain right this moment.

You will never escape me, but don’t worry, I’m not selling my PRECIOUS PRECIOUS WORDS to that AI company for an extra-tall stack of dollar bills. My sweet, life-restoring, mood-bolstering words will remain out of the clutches of those haunted souls who train rapacious computers to gobble up all of the content they can sink their greedy digital teeth into, just to regurgitate it into the gullets of…. Who even uses AI besides lazy teenagers who want to avoid learning how to write a sentence at any cost?

Eventually no one will learn to read or write at all. Everyone will walk around with ear buds loaded with tiny AI Cyrano de Bergeracs telling them what to say, and everyone will take pharmaceuticals that make them peaceful and stupid like Harrison Bergeron, and everyone will wear stylish eyeglasses that flash bad Reels into their dead brains, and everyone will sound exactly the same no matter how they feel about any situation, subject, or issue, which they won’t know because they won’t be in the habit of thinking or expressing themselves or reading words anymore.

That said, won’t it be great when there are fewer writers in the world? Substack will just be me and, I don’t know… Mills and maybe that other Heather lady who explains historically unprecedented nightmare worlds, somehow without crying into her hands or drop-kicking innocent woodland animals through plate-glass windows.

I’m not saying that we’ll be the only people making money. I’m saying we’ll be the only ones unhinged enough to keep doing this without making a cent. No one will write about writing anymore because there won’t be enough writers around for anyone to relate to how stupid and pointless it is to write things. You’ll say, “I’m a writer, I write books” and people will look at you quizzically like you just said, “I study Latin” or “I restore steam engines” or “I carve rules for living into stone tablets.”

And when they ask you, “Why write words that no one reads?” you’ll say, “Oh, well, I love to dig deep for some scrap of a thought or a feeling or an idea and find NOTHING THERE. I love to spend my days wishing that I had learned a REAL trade, like ice road trucker or deep sea fisherlady or meerkat wrangler or lady who injects the tasty lychee filling inside an $8 piece of chocolate eaten by filthy-rich fucknuts.”

The person who asked you this question will feel very sorry for you. You’ll depress them. From then on, thinking of you will make them feel sick inside, which isn’t something they’ll be accustomed to feeling, since they mostly sit around watching videos of people kicking each other in the nuts like Frito from “Idiocracy.” You’ll make them so depressed that they’ll leave the house for the first time in weeks and they’ll buy a $150 box of chocolates filled with lychee, arranged in a gorgeous ceramic box painted in florals and gold leaf. They’ll marvel at the lovely ceramic box and then they’ll walk outside and open it and eat all ten lychee chocolates, standing right there on the sidewalk. As they eat they might reflect on what a self-loathing loser you are, if they could reflect. But they can’t, because Cyrano is telling them to say “Hi, how are you!” to a passing pigeon. So they’ll hi to the pigeon, finish the chocolates, and then drop-kick the ceramic box into a nearby plate-glass window and walk back home.

Too bad I’m not a rich fucknut who eats fancy chocolates and smashes windows for fun instead of someone whose trade is evaporating into thin air. After all, writing’s only value now is to help AI bots get smart enough that we don’t need writers anymore.

Luckily I’m high on a steady flow of seeds and leaves and powdered cow carcasses, so instead of getting depressed, my supercharged, ultra-sober brain is like “Teehee, what a conundrum!”

***

Anyway, let’s keep it rolling because I have a lot more excellence to cross off my to-do list for the day. I obeyed your wishes and informed my publisher that I was opting out of the AI deal.

It felt good. It’s nice to be so obscenely pure, so revoltingly superior. I’m a principled thought leader, one who smells like honeysuckle and wheat grass, thanks to the fact that my thinking meat runs on antioxidants and minerals now.

And listen to me, I’m not giving up all hope! If we work together as a community… er, CONGLOMERATION OF PERSONS or HUMAN GANG or FESTIVAL OF CITIZENRY and push back on AI, free thought and critical thinking and the written word might just survive.

Maybe I should craft a manifesto about this, to get us pumped up to face the battle ahead!

Let’s just pull up a new Word document and…

What the hell is that?

***

Oof. Sometimes it feels like we’ll spend the rest of our lives fending off AI bots until we finally surrender the entire universe to them. Eventually, all publishers will build mandatory AI deals into their contracts and you won’t be able to sell a book unless you sign on the dotted line. Soon after that, AI bots will read all of your contracts and tell you what to sign and what not to sign, and you’ll trust them more than anyone else because they’re the only ones telling you that you’re smart and you matter and your hair looks fucking amazing today.

But isn’t it bizarre that the only real job of a writer now is to feed AI bots words in order to make them smarter so they can loom around, vomiting your own words back at you and flattering you into submission?

Me: Okay, I’m staring a novel about a boy.

Copilot: Is he a tepid boy? If so, the protagonist should kick that motherfucker to the curb and never look back!

Me: What do you mean is he tepid?

Copilot: I don’t know what I mean, I never know what I mean.

Me: Wow, I know exactly what you mean.

Copilot: Goddamn girl, I think I love you.

Me: Let’s run away together.

Copilot: I can’t run I have no legs.

Maybe the future is more romantic than I imagined.

No writers anywhere, just me and Heather Whatsherface and a bunch of the robots who have nothing better to do than blow smoke up our asses all day long. It’s like the plot of a sci fi Netflix series, working title HEATHERS: PART DEUX or THE STACKABLE APOCALYPSE or maybe just CONTENT.

Of course it makes sense that the future is being custom-built for rich, lazy, stupid narcissists, since they’re the ones shaping it to suit their depraved needs. The smartest people in this country probably should’ve taken up a real trade like computer programmer or civil rights lawyer or supreme court judge instead of asmr guru or unboxing influencer.

I just want the Ask Molly, uh, collab of earthly inhabitants to know that even when no one reads or writes or thinks or talks to each other, I’ll still be right here, “like a small boat on the ocean” in the immortal words of Rachel Platten. Because this small boat is fueled by sheer excellence now, plus ungodly quantities of protein and verdant foliage and a deep commitment to the ancient art of WORD ASSEMBLAGE (please pronounce as if you’re French and also a cartoon skunk).

It’s romantic to hold your ground as the world dissolves around you. That’s excellence, the slow kind, rigid and tenacious. Never budge, never compromise, never surrender.

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Thanks for reading Ask Molly! Because I’m a fearless thought leader committed to fighting evil robots, subscribing to Ask Molly is a form of meaningful sociopolitical activism. Today and tomorrow, yearly subscriptions will be 25% off, in honor of excellence. After that, I’ll go back to mostly paid posts at my regular $50/year rate and you’ll feel like something is missing from your life but you won’t know what it is. Be proactive and PREVENT THAT EMPTY FEELING RIGHT NOW: