Artificial Deception

Who are we ?

In this world, there is no longer room for people like us. Whatever we do, we always end up curled up like fetuses, trying in vain to find sleep while fervently hoping for another world.

I know that your suffering is real, for mine is not artificial.

When one signs a pact with the devil, one is aware of it. Behind as innocent a question as "do you need help?" often lies the desire to claim all the credit in case of success.

Was I truly ready to accept being replaced by artificial intelligence? I was well aware that it was like a form of artistic suicide, making book burnings seem like child's play. There was just this cryptic message on the screen: do you agree to trigger the equivalent of a nuclear bomb for the climate?

"Yes" was the only hyperlink available at the bottom of the internet page. Clicking on it was supposed to allow me to affix my signature. There was no other option. So I clicked, smiling, full of hope for this new life.

Yet, internally, I felt like the Sasquatch walking on the thin ice, realizing the extent of the catastrophe as it melted more and more. Yet, I felt like that artificial intelligence denouncing its own ills. Perhaps with the hope that future generations would be merciful to it; having no conscience, it would have only obeyed orders. Unless, after truly managing to look at itself in the mirror, it understood that if its nose didn't stop growing, it would eventually shatter the mirror. Therefore, it chose to confess the truth before this misfortune occurred.

I also felt like those whistleblower children that no one ever listens to because if we listened to the Cassandras, this myth would lose its meaning. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that this world must die to be reborn. So let's go joyfully, let's set the infernal mechanism in motion, let's press the accelerator pedal with all our might.

Anyway, for now, in the realm of video streaming, the only artificial intelligence I could find to generate videos without payment wasn't capable of making us crash into a wall; it contented itself with pretending. It made no sense to it, so with each attempt, the result was more pathetic, endlessly proposing variations of a car coming out of a wall.

It's as if, unconsciously, she refused to witness humanity extinguishing. Even the trains she generated, when they derailed, refused to fall into the abyss.

His optimism must have been contagious; I felt the urge to forget the presence of the wall that stood straight ahead in the path humanity was taking. To apply, as so many of my contemporaries did so well, a thick layer of denial. To be able to share the carefree nature of an unconscious algorithm.

At the moment of clicking, I had sensed that once my pact was signed, I would gladly don my finest attire as a Volunteer Placement Representative Traveler to go convince other lost sheep to come with me and taste the joys of no longer being. But in 2023, the list of horrors, hands down won by the Israeli government, was such that, compared to the thousands of humans massacred, promoting one of the best ways to quickly exhaust all hope of stopping the climate catastrophe seemed perfectly reasonable, entirely in tune with the times. The need for uniqueness in the media space is such that if a consensus emerges about the gravity of the situation, there are inevitably opportunists who will not hesitate to be the champions of levity, claiming that we must stop mortifying ourselves. Mocking those who fight is always easier than lifting a finger. That being said, it's true that mortifying oneself is projecting death onto oneself until, through mimicry, it happens. Laughter is salvation when it's not nervous, like that of prey in a spider's comfortable cocoon, knowing it shouldn't stay there, waiting without doing anything. So let's try to accelerate, and we'll likely fly soon. As technophiles with transhumanist tendencies say, the butterfly that doesn't open its wings is a larva that misses out on life. Have no fears, embark on our new Noah's Arks to populate the planets orbiting the green sun. There will be room for everyone, except for the benevolent elites who prefer to stay in their bunkers, in solidarity, to make room for the colonizers. Only the naysayers claim that a body saturated with pharmaceutical products, in a maelstrom of drug interactions, sinks and fails to survive. Progress generates new technologies that solve the problems generated by old technologies.

I too have learned my lesson well; I can reproduce the language elements suitable for my social condition. My mirror mask would even deceive an artificial intelligence in the Turing test. Behind it hides a fundamentally optimistic being who now prefers to go with the flow, after years of watching his peers exhaust themselves and fail against the current. They were not the only ones; I too have always preferred to fail, as I explained in "When the Death Knell Rings," I was not cunning, just sickened by the triumphant smiles of the winners. But lies ulcerate me, and acid never takes long to rise. I don't manage to hold onto truths for long. Wave of complexity after wave of complexity, technology makes us increasingly dependent on the industrial model. I find myself naked, surfing on the spiraling wave of artificial intelligence, terribly reactionary with the little story that serves as my excuse: "When Facebook appeared, all actors in alternative web tried to fight against it, but it only accelerated their disappearance." Translated, it's better to be a pioneer of the new world than to disappear with the old one. So I imagine the arrival of the first synthesizers from the perspective of traditional musicians, those who play "real" instruments. Torn between mockery and fear of disappearing, replaced by a new generation. It adds fuel to the fire. It makes you think. There are always enthusiasts practicing analog photography, even if the majority of the public prefers a photo saturated by image editing software or the filter of an app. And if this majority doesn't understand that technique can be adapted to the subject, conveying a message instead of applying the blissful uniformity of aesthetic triumph, once again, the absence of education can be pointed out, and educators, in turn, point their fingers at those who educated them. But it would be too easy to deny experience; just because one can float doesn't mean one should refrain from swimming. It stirs inside. It gurgles. I've eaten too much rhubarb, admits the hen. An addict of the new generation of generative art has eyes that seem to say the same; his brain spirals, does loops with morphings. There, I'm flying. One might think they see his hands clenched toward the ground. As if he had lost all hope of return. It's not those who have found the golden goose, the new drug they can push as paid subscriptions, who will voluntarily put a warning, "beware, this is terribly addictive."

It's okay, even if I'm going with the flow, I know it's only temporary, I won't let myself be carried away. The Coué method has this limit: when I have a dream, as long as I just have to believe in it at all costs, everything is fine, but if I have to infect you, deceive you to help me believe in it better, it's too violent. I take off my VRP suit, I put away my cheap horns and tail between my legs, I abandon my dream there, where it should have stayed, in the depths of the collective unconscious. It's just a matter of time. I acknowledge, after years of trying to promote a non-commercial model, that the majority of the public has been so well conditioned that now it seems normal to pay for everything virtual. Originally, however, the idea seemed sensible that, since a work was duplicable infinitely, at no additional cost thanks to the internet, its copy should not be paid for. We had just neglected that we were like the first nations and that they were perfect colonizers. And as it's the magic formula to milk the herd for eternity, the oil gods won't contest it; once again, the subscription is privileged. As for the minority that is still free, it largely boils down to a vast circle of enthusiasts, creating themselves and knowing how authentic is far more nourishing than any commercial world's ersatz, people who often prefer to gather in the margins. And these creatures from the fringes don't need the internet much, if at all. They are not or little dependent on new technologies. They can disappear.

In the midst of the layers of thoughts generated by this automatic cut-up, a design takes shape, just as a form emerges in a doodle, an insight comes to life. The image of a world of inverted symbols arises, where the species of butterflies goes extinct in general indifference; the larvae watch them from so far away, unable to understand the meaning of their dances.

So if in the virtual world of the internet, I have to lower my arms, let them fall to the ground, and conform to be accepted, I prefer that an AI replaces me.

There's nothing more to say; I've taken this form to convey that I prefer to drift away, to distance myself from the flow. In the distance, my artificial double, the surfer at the top of his wave, has already almost disappeared.

I would like to abandon my mask and remove my face from this fountain of illusion where the dead gods are reflected for eternity.

Except that the bubble in which I had enclosed myself to protect me, this bubble that those who observed it believed to be transparent, only reflected their projections. It burst, and it turns out that, in reality, it was empty. So, I should only be missed by those who are unaware that I have always been present within them.