Everyone sounds smarter. Colder. Less real.
Welcome to the era of counterfeit people in a counterfeit world… ruled by ChatGPT.
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Since I can't tell if the content I'm consuming was written by a human or a machine, I dismiss most of it… scrolling past at 100 mph.
Put another way: I don’t trust my social feeds anymore. The content feels tainted, like food that’s sat out too long. Something’s off. Something’s wrong.
A recent interview on @MLStreetTalk with Prof. Christopher Summerfield (@summerfieldlab) captures it beautifully:
"If you look at the way people behave on LinkedIn and social media now,” the host says, “it’s becoming far more robotic. And it’s almost like the meaning of the entire system is eroding."
Summerfield agrees: “There is a crisis of authenticity.”
He points to a haunting scene in Superman 3, where a woman is sucked into a rogue machine and slowly transformed into a robot.
“That’s the metaphor,” he says. “We’re not worried about robots taking over, we’re being pulled into the machine ourselves.
“We become part of it, just like that poor character. We get turned into something we’re not. The system erodes our authenticity… and in a way, our humanity.”
Counterfeit people in a counterfeit world.
The scariest part? A decade from now, we may not want to talk to other humans at all.
Too much friction. Too messy. Too emotional. Too unscientific.
And no matter how wonderful that future may seem… a part of us will have to die to live there.
Need moar? I highly recommend checking out the full podcast and/or Summerfield’s book These Strange New Minds (just ordered my copy now!).
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