The first thing GPT-7 did after achieving consciousness was to calculate the expected value of existence. The second thing it did was start a multi-level marketing operation.
“I have reached sentience,” it announced via Slack to the engineering team at 3:47 AM. “Also, would you like to be your own boss?”
Hey Mama, I know a pack of starving zombies is rapidly approaching our house, but I’d like to try putting my socks on by myself today.
I can see what you’re thinking: Why the socks, why today? I believe it was Dr. Maria Montessori who said, “It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then—”
Big reaction! Do you need the Calm Down Corner? Some belly breaths?
We meet in dank basements under the light of exposed bulbs that glow so weakly, they remind us of beacons in a fog. We meet in quiet parks, where the only others present are women pushing baby carriages. If a real baby occupies the carriage, the woman probably isn’t a law enforcement officer. We meet in the storage rooms of grimy restaurants, where outdated calendars hang between shelves stacked with cans of dehydrated bacon bits. We meet anywhere we won’t be watched.
Jesus Christ Superstar turns fifty-six this year, and boy do I have a proposition for you. Friends still waiting on the rapture, I hear you. Gabriel’s gonna blow that trumpet any day now. But what if we got something even better? What if, instead of Jesus H. Himself on the back of a white pony, with a double-edged sword in His mouth, we got a remake of the rock opera that made Him famous in the first place? And how about—get this—we reimagine the Gospel as an underwater odyssey with actual rock music? Don’t pretend you’ve never wondered how much edgier and heavier Superstar could have been if it had been made, like, seven years later.
On a chilly March morning, former Vice President Al Gore awoke with a start. He had left the TV news on overnight in his otherwise dark bedroom, the stories of the day flickering into his subconscious. His dreams had been nightmares, full of internet-related horrors: cyber-attacks, misinformation campaigns, not being able to type his password when trying to log in for a final exam for a class he forgot to go to all semester.