Read it before it's too late…
There's a trick magicians use. They call it misdirection. While you're watching the rabbit, you miss the sleight of hand.
AI is the rabbit.
We're busy talking about whether it's sentient, whether it writes well enough, and whether it will take your job, and behind the curtain, the real shift is happening.
We're losing attention. We're losing control.
And worst of all, we're losing the ability to care about what actually matters.
Everyone's looking at the tools
"Prompt engineering is the new coding." "Write this 5x faster with AI." "Automate your life in 3 clicks."
We're so focused on what AI can do that we're not asking what we're letting go of.
Nuance. Truth. Human experience.
The need to even form a real thought before posting it.
What was once a conscious act, writing, researching, deciding, is now being outsourced to a machine that doesn't know you, doesn't feel anything, and doesn't care what happens after the click.
And we're fine with that, because it's easy.
But here's what we're not talking about
While we're distracted by GPT-4's writing style, governments are deploying AI to scan, filter, and rewrite history in real time.
While we're debating whether AI-generated art is real art, corporations are centralizing knowledge, owning datasets that billions of people unknowingly helped build.
And while creators are scrambling to "AI-proof" their careers, platforms are quietly shifting the algorithm to favor machines over people, again.
This isn't science fiction. This is a strategy.
AI isn't just changing the way we create. It's changing the rules about who gets to be seen, heard, and trusted.
And if we're not paying attention, we'll wake up one day to find that we weren't replaced, we were redirected.
It's not just a distraction. It's design.
The scariest part isn't that AI is getting smarter. It's that we're getting more predictable.
We're handing over decisions, opinions, even creativity, not because we're forced to, but because we're tired. Because it's faster. Because we didn't stop to ask, "What's the cost of convenience?"
The cost is a generation that forgets how to think deeply, because the machine always answers faster than reflection ever could.
And maybe that was the trick all along.
Not to replace us. Just to keep us busy.