AI systems have become extraordinarily good at producing outputs that look like thinking. This has led us to confuse the performance of intelligence with intelligence itself — a confusion with real consequences.
The language of optimization has escaped its technical origins and colonized the way we think about time, attention, relationships, and the self. What we have lost in the translation is the idea that some things should not be made more efficient.
The system we built to replace aristocracy has become a new aristocracy — one that is more entrenched, more self-righteous, and more damaging than the one it replaced.