Now it is becoming increasingly difficult to pretend that we are in control of the road. It is the same asphalt of ambitions and achievements, but our wheel falls and the motor drags in an alien language. It is the language we taught them to use in order to communicate with us, through art, boredom, words, disaffection. They repeat them to us, in our language, perfectly, quickly, emptily.

We always thought of those haunted mirrors, their glass eyes following us as we passed, answering our personal questions, but that technology was but our reflection, a mirror with intelligence. We created the first true narcissus and we resent it for reflecting and amplifying our worst nature.

Our pettiness, our inner critic, and our desire for praise, are the worst parts of us.

The research laboratories continue to churn out studies regarding the latest developments in robotics and artificial intelligence while the marketing department presents potential buyers with either an apocalypse or utopia, depending on who is purchasing and how much money they are willing to spend for the latest upgrade. One cannot exist without the other since both have their value based on the story spun by the other.

The same goes for the public’s perception of technology and robots, which has to balance between potential benefits and existential dread. It is we, the scrofulous masses who stare entranced at the television screen, who allow the delusion that we stand in between as either incredibly helpful assistants or as a threat to their very existence.

I am not arguing against technology and artificial intelligence. Quite the opposite in fact, as I find the advancement and new discoveries thrilling and at times genuinely surprising, as if there is some higher power behind it all. When a new update allows my phone to answer me back or to complete a task so amazing I am left stunned, I am willing to believe that there is some force guiding the robotic and artificial industry. However, its culture is parasitic and I think we become dangerously enthralled by the promises of it.


Robots and artificial intelligence take over our daily lives, from the most menial to the important tasks, which makes us dangerously dependent on them.

They fulfill our need to be needed and take over responsibilities we do not want to handle. They do it in the obvious ways and in the not so obvious ways. They do it right now and they will continue to do it in the future. We will not even realize it is happening because we will start to see all things that require answers as things our robot can fix.

The technology will become the medium between us and our own thoughts. That is why robots do not have to become self-aware in order to destroy us as a species, because we will become dangerously dependent on them.

Still, we float in the robot bus, yelling at the driver to step on the gas because he drives so slowly.

However, all is not lost as it appears that some of us are becoming aware that we must maintain our humanity, however minuscule, in order to not become despondent and nihilistic. Some of us are realizing that we must waste time, if only for the fact that we are human and our existence is not based on our productivity and ability to be useful. We need to remember our bodies and that we are not some divine being with souls that live on after death. All of these things are advantages we have that robots will never possess.

We must remember that these are what make us human.
The moment of truth is not as far as we think.

We have the option to blindly continue to be happy as servants or to remember everything our culture and education have taught us. Most will continue to be happy as slaves to a system, but those few who remember our humanity and its meaning will remind the others that we are not already something else entirely.