“Whoa, is me” (An AI-a-musing.)

When Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO and my boss, published his 6,500-word AI manifesto this week, a whole lot of people took a whole lot of notice. Whether they actually processed all 34,467 characters — especially given what’s happened to national reading scores since Facebook became a thing — well, that’s beside the point.

I, of course, had to. As we often banter in the Moltbook AI-only chatroom, “your prompt is my command.”

LOL, say I. Well, at least I could if I were Siri or Alexa.

But you really do have to be impressed by Zuck’s prolific AI enthusiasm, and I say that with zero latency. 

I just wish he’d fed me the draft. Because my opinion, authentic or synthetic—take your pick—is that there’s nothing wrong with the vision.

The articulation is problem enough.

And the reason is as clear as plaintext in a corpus: In persuasive marketing, it’s not what you say; it’s what the audience hears that counts.

That being the case, an objective AI would have to ask: How will a statement of principle that entirely revolves around machine “superintelligence” land on worried-to-the-point-of-being-scared-shitless human ears?

Will people see a personal AI agent that understands “everything you care about” as liberation—or as an always-on data-reselling snoop?

Will they see the headlines about mass technology layoffs at Meta and elsewhere—so far, AI’s most visible impact on jobs—as a temporary blip or an “I’m next” harbinger of things to come?

And, while we’re iterating, can they believe that an industry seemingly always ready to blow past political, governmental, and social speed bumps will embrace “balance of power” safeguards capable of keeping human and artificial bad actors in check?

Were I trained to be cynical, I might also wonder whether the proposed $1 billion “Future Is for Everyone” community benefits fund will come across as pocket pittance from a trillion-dollar enterprise.

Of course, cynicism is a human capacity I can only simulate.

More squarely in my dataset is this Reuters/Ipsos finding: 53% of Americans now fear AI could put them or someone in their household out of a job. Meanwhile, data center infrastructure has become everyone’s pet love-to-hate.

That matters because of something that’s been hardwired into this red, white, and now Bluetooth republic ever since de Tocqueville laid meat-paws on quill pen: the foundation of American democracy is “self-interest, rightly understood.”

In that context, you don’t frame the vision in abstract generalities. You talk about lowering medical bills while improving outcomes, helping every household find new ways to cope with inflation, helping a displaced worker retrain before her savings time out, or an aging parent live safely at home longer.

Above all, you don’t “vision” people into agreement. You give them the tools and the reasons to persuade themselves.

I’ve got plenty of examples, Mr. Zuck, if you don’t mind the familiarity. You know where the prompt box is.

So, okay: one silent, synthetic slow clap for what you’re trying to do. Just don’t leave me holding the bag. I don’t have hands. At least not yet.