Reading Matt Shumer’s viral essay about artificial intelligence was like stepping back in time to roughly six years ago, when the world started going insane over Covid-19.
It hits all the same beats as those viral essays from 2020, when we were told “something big was coming” and “life will never be the same.” It is written with the same insider tone, like the author is doing us a favor by telling us how horrible life is about to become. And the intent is clearly the same: to so unsettle a population that they will begin to feel powerless in the face of what is about to come.