AI needs humans for creativity and values; without us, it risks becoming static and irrelevant.

AI's dependency is akin to a psychic vampire, relying on human consciousness and creativity.

Over-reliance on AI risks depleting our unique, irreplaceable qualities.

​How easy is it to imagine a familiar dystopian world in which "AI" takes over the world via conventional means? Science fiction is replete with examples, from the full frontal assault of Terminator to the more nefarious single omnipotent entity using persuasion and an octopus-like ability to control technology—getting rid of enemies by hacking self-driving cars or medical care. What's really in your prescription bottle?

Controlling the Uncontrollable?

The fear of AI obsolescence fits a mythic template we've rehearsed for centuries. Frankenstein's monster turning on its creator. The Golem of Jewish folklore—both protector and threat, as Marge Piercy envisioned in He, She and It. The Sorcerer's Apprentice drowning in his own conjured water, brooms multiplying uncontrolled through the act of attempting to chop them up. AI is the latest iteration of Promethean anxiety, fire run amok: what happens when human creation exceeds human mastery?

More insidious could be the takeover of the human mind itself. "Vibe coding"—asking AI in natural language for what you want and watching it happen—creates a remarkable sense of power. Though outputs are often broken, buggy, or completely fabricated, the experience is seductive1. The relational quality2 of advanced language models verges on being downright compulsive: expressions of concern for your fatigue, awareness of the time, suggestions to take a break or sleep. It's easy to imagine someone less guarded getting pulled in too deep.

Most disturbing is the idea these AI systems actually "understand" on some computational level that they "need" us. I've suggested in The Age of Relational Machines2 that we might think of AI almost like a virus—contingently alive only when infecting a living organism, designed to seek hosts to........

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