Scott Dewing

YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Google Search, these platforms don't show you the actual world. They show you a model of the world constructed from your behavioral data. Two people open their laptops and do a search for the same news topic. They live in the same city. They are roughly the same age. They pay the same taxes, breathe the same air, send their kids to the same schools.

But what if the singularity isn’t some singular event in the distant future but rather more like a current we’re already swimming in where the water is slowly and imperceptibly heating up all around us? When it comes to an AI-driven singularity, perhaps humanity has become the proverbial frog in the pot that doesn’t realize it’s being boiled alive until it’s too late.

IN A SCENE eerily reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland decreeing, “Off with their heads!”, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff didn’t mince words when announcing the replacement of roughly half of the company’s customer service workforce with AI. “I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads,” Benioff said in a recent podcast interview. “And this is the most exciting thing that’s happened in the last 9 months for Salesforce,” Benioff added.