Everyone is Wrong About AI Except Me
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Everyone is Wrong About AI Except Me<br>This subject is going to give me a stroke
Jason Pargin<br>Jun 23, 2026
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Here’s something weird that I bet you’ve never noticed:<br>If a film, TV show, novel or video game asks, “should robots be treated as living human beings?” the answer will be a resounding “yes” roughly 100% of the time.
Any character who insists robots aren’t people is pretty much always portrayed as either ignorant or genocidal. Hell, I think you could find more art asserting that humans don’t have souls.<br>This, then, is where we have to start: Not only is the populace primed to treat artificial intelligence tools as living peers, they’ve been trained to hate or dismiss anyone who doesn’t . In the AI debate, I’m pretty sure nothing else matters...<br>Before we go any further, THE NEW BOOK IS UP FOR PREORDER NOW, everywhere, in all formats. You can get the hardcover for 25% off at Barnes and Noble if you enter PREORDER25 in the discount code box at checkout.<br>If you want a SIGNED HARDCOVER you can only get them at this link. All other buy links are here. THERE ARE NO GIANT CRABS IN THIS NOVEL: A Novel of Giant Crabs.
1. “Robots are actually more alive than we are” is a core belief in our society
The column has barely started and already I have to issue a correction. Our pop culture does not, in fact, assert that robots will be equal to humans. It insists that they will be much, much better. Specifically, that they will be better than humans at being human.<br>Let’s take the 2008 film Wall-E. The plot involves a failed human civilization being saved by a single robot, but it’s not because he’s better at work tasks and doesn’t require vacations. Wall-E shows humanity how to love again, he even reminds them what sex is. You remember that part, right? Humans in that future have chosen screens over fucking, but then a couple observes Wall-E dancing in space with his robot girlfriend? Then the humans hold hands, their fleshy desires newly awakened by the machines? If you don’t remember the film, you probably think I’m joking:
All of the qualities we think of as distinctly human, Wall-E does better. He is braver, more selfless and wise. He has none of our greed, bitterness, jealousy or shortsightedness. Oh, and the film makes it clear he literally has a soul. At the climax, Wall-E selflessly sacrifices himself for humanity in a Christlike manner, his personality getting wiped in the course of his “death.” He is then miraculously resurrected via a mystical lifeforce that enters his robot body upon an encounter with his true love. Again, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP:
Some form of that exact message also turns up in the Spielberg film AI, the Alien franchise, Battlestar Galactica, Bicentennial man, Blade Runner, Ex Machina, Free Guy, Futurama, Humans, I, Robot, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, M3GAN, Short Circuit, multiple Star Treks, the Star Wars franchise, Transformers, Tron, Westworld, The Wild Robot and countless other films, TV shows, comic books, novels, toy lines, video games and songs.<br>Even weirder, if a franchise begins with portraying robots as inhuman killers (Alien, The Terminator, The Matrix, M3GAN) there will be at least one “more human than human” hero robot in the sequel. Like Wall-E, the machines are often Christlike, sacrificing themselves for a humanity that never deserves it.
An outsider observing our cultural output would immediately come to the conclusion that robot worship was the world’s most popular religion.<br>But... why?<br>2. Human brains want everything to be alive
The above is not the result of some decades-long conspiracy by the elites to soften us up for replacement. It’s due to an evolutionary quirk in which, as babies, our social brains are programmed to build an emotional connection with whatever we see around us. This is why kids treat dolls and teddy bears as living beings. Human infants can’t survive on their own, so they need to quickly bond with whatever pops into their view. Anthropomorphization is just a hardwired social reflex taking things a bit too far.<br>It never goes away. It’s why we talk to our cats, dogs, horses, snakes and house plants. When we’re alone, we’ll talk to deceased family members, we’ll talk back to the TV. Much of the time, we will do it with the assumption that our words are being heard and understood, and we may even imagine the other party has spoken back.
This is why the Christian Bible spends most of its runtime trying to turn followers away from idolatry, training congregants out of their hardwired instinct to treat a golden cow as a living, loving deity. Meanwhile, other cultures were projecting personhood onto their local mountains, rivers, trees and the sun.<br>So if you give us humans something that actually can talk back, even if in an extremely limited capacity, we will immediately adopt it as our pet, friend, family or deity, no questions asked. It is...