I Hate AI!
This painting, which the human female at right and I saw at Frisco’s DeYoung Museum, expresses how I feel when I silently scream, AI-EEEEEE!
SAN FRANCISCO, MARCH 19, 2026. Waymo, the driverless taxi, works flawlessly. That makes me loathe AI even more. Silently I shriek: AI-EEEEEEEE!
I’ll circle back to Waymo later. First, context:
On March 15, I fly to San Francisco for a five-day holiday with Vicki, my flesh-and-blood girlfriend. Unlike an AI romantic companion, Vicki is stubbornly herself. She tells me things I don’t want to hear. She’s headstrong, unpredictable, needy, by which I mean she needs food, sleep, respect, affection--things bots don’t need.
Vicki and I were inspired to visit San Francisco by rewatching Vertigo, the old Hitchcock flick, which makes the city look enchanted. Plus, Frisco would surely be warmer than Jersey.
Note: My old friends Chris and Jennine, tech veterans who live in San Francisco, hate it when I call their hometown “Frisco.” That’s why I call it “Frisco.”
Anyway, Vicki and I came here to see this lovely city, which we love, and hang with Chris and Jennine. I did not come to Frisco to brood about AI. No, I’m as sick of AI as I am of Trump. Enough already! I don’t want to spend my one wild and precious life brooding about stuff I hate.
But as soon as Vicki and I get off the plane in San Francisco airport, we’re inundated in ads pitching AI this and AI that. The barrage continues as our cabbie, human, drives us from the airport to our hotel past billboards and bus-stop ads for AI-related products.
The ads spout “jargon for those already fluent in startup,” as a local paper put it, but the message is clear: AI is coming, it’s already here. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Then there are all the Waymos, the white, driverless Jaguars prowling the city with the weird, spinning roof-bulbs. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, that is, Google, which once preached “Don’t be evil” but is now just another war profiteer.
Another example of AI’s creepy ubiquity: I’m in the dining room of our old fashioned, genteel hotel, no AI ads in sight, sipping coffee and jotting profundities in my journal. Vicki texts, she’ll join me soon. My iPhone’s AI suggests that I respond to Vicki with: “Sounds good” or “Okay, see you soon.”
What’s irritating is that I might have used these responses, but now I can’t, I need to think of something else to convince myself I’m not just a mindless bot. I want to text my iPhone’s AI: No one asked for your advice, you parasitic plagiarism algorithm. So shut the fuck up, don’t bother us, humans are talking here.
I don’t send this message, for several reasons. First, I don’t know how to text my iPhone’s AI. Second, the AI won’t give a shit, it doesn’t have feelings. Third, the AI might tag me as an anti-AI crank, I could end up in Guantanamo undergoing pro-AI indoctrination from bots. Or maybe I’ll just get disappeared.
I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding. I used to enjoy speculating about the future of machine intelligence. No longer. I’m worried we’re on the verge of a real-world sci-fi dystopia.
Trump and tech are intertwined. AI moguls have glommed onto our warlord-in-chief, he’s their meal ticket, they’re making moola off his wars. AI has become an essential component of Trump’s extended self. It’s boosting his power, helping him monitor, manipulate and kill his enemies. None of this is funny.
In 2013, I read The Circle, the anti-tech novel by Dave Eggers. Obama was President then, the tech guys were still pretending to be woke, Trump and ChatGPT hadn’t happened yet. I thought, Come on, Eggers, you’re too worried, things won’t get this bad.
Eggers must be muttering, I told you so, I told you so. Or maybe he’s silently screaming, AI-EEEEEEEE!
I’m even empathizing, sort of, with Yudkowsky, the AI autodidact. After ChatGPT burst upon the scene three years ago, Yudkowsky shrieked: We must destroy the AI before it destroys us! Or words to that effect.
The main difference between Yudkowsky and me is that he fears the bots. I fear the bros, the rich, powerful assholes using AI to become richer and more powerful.
Of course we’re in an AI bubble. But when the bubble bursts, we’re not going to revert to some Obama-esque, quasi-woke quasi-utopia. No, when the bubble bursts, our current, quasi-dystopia will probably get even more dystopian. Like Kong and Godzilla in the cheesy series Monarch, the monstrous capitalist predators will crush us little folk as they stomp around battling for supremacy.
These are the dark thoughts I’m having in Frisco. I decide to vent my angst by ranting about AI in a column. This column. That’s when it occurs to me to ride in a Waymo. Know your enemy! I download the Waymo app, which, I must say, is quite user-friendly. It’s similar to the Uber app.
On Saint Patrick’s Day, Vicki and I get a tour of the Mission, the Castro and other neighborhoods from a funny human named Clyde Always. Afterwards we decide to take a Waymo to Crissy Field, from which we can ogle the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Waymo glides up to us, roof-bulb displaying my initials: “JH.” When we get in the cab, a mellifluous female voice assures us that we can speak freely, Waymo isn’t listening to us. Yeah, right. I sit in the right rear seat, so I can see the steering wheel move back and forth as the Waymo heads toward Crissy Field.
Wait, first, a mini-story: Before ordering the Waymo, Vicki and I have lunch with Chris and Jennine, my Frisco friends. Vicki tells them she doesn’t like the way I drive back in Jersey, with only one hand on the wheel. Jennine responds: You think that’s bad,wait til you take a Waymo, no hands on the wheel.
I remember Jennine’s quip as the Waymo navigates through heavy traffic. I’m sitting in the right rear seat, so I can see the steering wheel move back and forth, back and forth, as the Waymo responds to pedestrians and human-driven cars. Not to mention traffic lights, stop signs, speed bumps.
I keep thinking there’s an invisible person at the wheel, an extremely skilled, capable person, reacting smoothly as human-driven cars lurch into our lane and human pedestrians bolt across crosswalks.
Vicki says she trusts the Waymo more than she trusts me. She’s kidding, but she’s not kidding. And I have to agree with her, we’re in good “hands.”
The more I trust the Waymo, the more I distrust it, and fear it. It’s seducing us with its tireless, unrufflable competence. I start seeing all the stupid, quirky humans out there as the problem and the Waymo as the solution. I’m a traitor to my race, the human race.
We’re being assimilated. Resistance is pointless. This column is the bleat of a sheep being herded into the slaughterhouse, where robot executioners await.
Further Reading:
Should Killer Robots Have Rights?
What Is It Like to Be a Superintelligent Machine?
How AI Moguls Are Like Mobsters
Cutting Through the ChatGPT Hype