Ordering our destruction with AI Agents

OpenAI just mentioned that while testing the “computer use” API they ordered many many shirts and now want to use the API again to issue the returns. The fact that they’re not embarrassed shows that their world view doesn’t factor in the true cost. Most of us in the western world are part of the problem here, sadly. I understand the irony of using technology to disseminate this message but this is warranted because people need to wake up!

We laugh about ordering mountains of shirts we don’t need, about generating waste on an industrial scale, as if it’s just a funny quirk of the system. We’ve become so desensitized to our own destruction that we can chuckle while we’re digging our own graves. Daniel Schmachtenberger talks about how we’ve become a ‘superorganism’ driven by short-term gains, blind to the long-term consequences. We’re so focused on efficiency, on maximizing output, that we’re destroying the very foundations of our existence. And the scariest part? We’re doing it with a smile. The progress narrative is broken, and it continues to break. We’re told that more technology, more consumption, more ‘innovation’ will solve our problems. But this video, in its own small way, exposes the lie. It shows how our pursuit of convenience and novelty is creating a mountain of waste, both physical and existential. We’re not just consuming resources; we’re consuming our future. We’re trading our planet for cheap thrills and fleeting distractions. And we’re so caught up in the spectacle that we don’t even realize we’re playing a losing game. We need to wake up. We need to question our assumptions. We need to prioritize wisdom over intelligence. We need to choose life over profit. We need to recognize that laughing about our own destruction is not a sign of progress, it’s a sign of a profound and dangerous disconnect. This video is a painful reminder of how far we’ve strayed from the path. But perhaps, by acknowledging the darkness, we can begin to find the light.

I highly recommend taking the time to listen to this podcast. It changed my mind and reinforced what I already knew to be true: we can’t separate ourselves from the impacts we have on our environments and we’re fooling ourselves if we think we can go on like this.