But AI isn’t weak. AI is patient. AI is everywhere. AI has been running parts of civilization long before we started laughing at its poems. It’s not the toy you see on your phone that should worry you.
It’s the one you never see at all.
Remember when Chromebook and Google (Alphabet) got busted for quietly scanning your face every time you blinked at your screen?
Yeah. Facial recognition. No consent. Just “Hey, smile for the algorithm.”
And remember when Apple got caught back in 2013 hoarding biometric data ?
What did the people do? Nothing.
They were too busy watching water buffalo fight videos on YouTube, too deep in WorldStar wormholes, chasing side hustles that never hustled, and fiddling with Black Magic tutorials they barely understood.
Nobody noticed the data goldmine they were handing over. Their face. Their fingerprints. Their habits. Their children’s voices. All swallowed into the machine without so much as a receipt.
Now AI walks in with a friendly voice, a corporate smile, and asks: “How can I help you today?”
And somehow… we trust it.
But behind that smile, AI is already running parts of economy of mainland China. Supply chain optimization, smart city coordination, autonomous logistics, citizen surveillance — all humming with minimal human interference.
That’s not the future. That’s today.
They showed you Elon Musk’s Optimus — the wonky-legged robot that fell down the stairs. They told you it was a joke. They let you laugh.
You said, “Ha! It can’t even open a door.”
But that wasn’t the real product. That was the clown mask they gave Elon to wear.
The real machine doesn’t dance on stage.
It doesn’t need legs. It already runs the servers.
You’re not watching AI evolve — you’re watching what it lets you see.
And by the time you realize ChatGBT was just the decoy, the real system will have already read this sentence, corrected your spelling, filed your taxes, assigned your social credit score, and suggested a new life partner.
With a smile.
But you failed to see the real players behind the curtain. Not the cartoonish clones or virtual assistants. No, the real ones.