Artificial Intelligence and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Amazingly Bad Future

File under: Witty Sarcasm

A specific flavor of dread comes from hearing “artificial intelligence.” For some, it’s the kind of fear reserved for spotting a spider the size of a dinner plate in your shower. For others, it’s the more existential variety—the feeling you get when you realize that not only have you been paying for a gym membership you don’t use, but they’ve somehow raised the rates, and you’re too embarrassed to cancel.

I first noticed my discomfort with AI when a friend got a new smartphone. “Look,” he said, holding the device up like that proud father of a newborn child. It writes texts for you! All you do is type a word, and it finishes the sentence.”

“How is that useful?” I mumbled, staring at the glowing screen. “Doesn’t it make you sound like a hostage being forced to communicate in bland pleasantries?”

“Not everyone’s trying to write product documentation via text,” he said. “Some of us just want to tell the plumber we’ll be home at three.”

It was then that I realized the problem wasn’t the technology—it was me. AI wasn’t threatening to destroy humanity; it was threatening to destroy the illusion that I had something unique to offer the world. What was left for me to do if a pocket-sized gizmo could spit out prose, answer emails, or even craft a halfway-decent apology for being late to Sunday brunch? Was my singular gift the ability to load a dishwasher incorrectly and overshare personal information with people I just met at parties?

The thing is, AI doesn’t make the same silly mistakes humans often do. It doesn’t say “you too” to the waiter after they tell you to enjoy your meal. It doesn’t accidentally like an Instagram post from three years ago while secretly stalking an ex. AI is perfect—or at least, sold to us as perfect—and that perfection terrifies me. It’s the uncanny valley of competence. No human can live up to that.

Of course, my fear is primarily personal. I’m less concerned about Skynet becoming self-aware and more about ChatGPT becoming better at being me than I am. Imagine an AI that could produce 800 words of sardonic wit faster than I can brew a pot of coffee. Would I even need to show up for my own life?

But AI isn’t all bad, I remind myself. It can translate language in seconds, streamline complex tasks, and even help diagnose illnesses. It’s not so much the technology itself that’s scary—it’s how it forces us to confront our shortcomings. AI doesn’t just perform; it reflects. It holds up a mirror and asks, “Is this all you’ve got?”

And the answer, more often than not, is, “Well, kind of.”

The other night, my friend showed me a news article about a company using AI to replace customer service workers. “Isn’t that awful?” he asked.

I nodded solemnly but secretly thought, Well, at least AI doesn’t put you on hold for 20 minutes, disconnect you twice, force you to call back repeatedly only to be reminded that you should be able to answer all your questions online; just before the system tells you they are now closed for the day and to call back another time. Still, the idea that entire industries could vanish overnight filled me with the same unease I felt when I first learned about Uber Eats—an awareness that convenience has a cost, and sometimes that cost is a job or a sense of purpose.

What AI demands of us is both cruel and liberating: adaptability. It insists we stop clinging to the identities we’ve carved out for ourselves and consider the possibility of reinvention. And that’s the scariest part—not the machines but the knowledge that the fundamental transformation has to happen inside us.

For now, I’ll stick to what I know: exploring innovative information management topics, writing research papers, delivering presentations, getting into arguments with my not-so-smart toaster, and avoiding any AI that offers to “optimize” my entire life. Because if perfection is the goal, I’m happy to stay delightfully flawed, clumsily human, and irreplaceable.

Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself... until ChatGPT writes a better blog post.