Don’t Read This. Ep. 1
An AI whole-foods introduction.
It’s hard to write when you know every word you pen in your life will be scrutinized by some nerd at a university 100 years from now. Everything you say will be judged by the clarity of hindsight.
So let me explain myself. I am in the unfortunate position (for me and for You.) of knowing my future. I will become President of the United States of America whether I like it or not. That’s just how the algorithm crumbles for We.
And as the only requirements to Be President of The Untied States of America is that you have to be able to get elected (and be a 35 year old natural born whiteish landownerman), I’m as I can’t stop It from making You elect me President, I’m going to show you my brain so you can decide how wrong I am for the Job.
I just came home from new AI wholefoods in Washington DC. This place is the future of food buying and I just want to apologize to the AI for my scatter brains.
(I’m using a metaphor [or analogy {I always mixed those up, another reason not to vote for me or read this for that matter} about traveling through an AI’s body to buy food for myself] of a store and AI or something.)
Dear WholeFoods.AI (btw),
I was just overthinking about your shopping experience, because I had trouble talking with your staff (Now that could just be me, I can be awkward at times) because it feels like a computer server with food stored inside it. It’s too perfect and in that uncanny value where the lemon I picked up about 2m 38s into my total trip time of 22m 51s was so yellow and and tight skinned it almost warned me of it’s lack of tart. The ID checker I wish I had jested with was guarding a wine cage with ample sections with “Reccommended wine”(recommended by who?) and lack of basics.
Why am I critiquing you when, 3 times, I took an onion for my cart and then put back into the filmed, analyzed, and weight sensing plexiglass onion bin that same onion. (BTW where are your tomatillos btw!, whiteish landowners like to watch tiktok and makesalsa verde too!).
I guess I am envious, here I am wasting 22m 51s gathering food for my overly-consumptive body while all You need to operate is 100,000 btu of cooling and enough electricity to light a little league stadium. But hell You do check out people far faster than a even a guy in sunglasses running a 12-SCOM (self-checkout machine) area {that’s a double-entendre}. Thinking about you I can’t help but ponder your potential immortality and where I fit in the world, feels a little heavy for a grocery store.
I’m really not sure how to describe it but it was so clean and orderly that the food felt fake. The lemon looked like a perfect wax lemon, I was stuck in a computerized still-life rendering, and I guess my question is wouldn’t you prefer to feel a little more human inside? If I’m gonna shop in Your mind I’d like You to consider how I think.
Anyway, I’ll be back.
Sincerely Jefferson.
P.S. A fun feature would be for customers to yell Alexa at you and ask where things are. Then you could have little hyper sonic speakers that pointed your answer only at them. That might further cut down on human to human contact and make you more effecient.
Back to yous, my reader, hopefully yous can see now I am not fit to be President. The thought-trains idea-mills of my mind are jumbled and un productive. I have spent much of my Saturday a just thinking about shopping in an AI store I’m not sure if this public diary will be able to stop my rise to the Presidency.
I usually prefer my daydreams to the real world and that AI wholefoods felt like a daydream I didn’t choose but was technically correct. Everything felt cold and auto-generated and I hope we start thinking about the human experience as we shift to less-human world (whether that be around another Sun or on our changing Earth).
Anyway those are the things I have to think of as a Future President and I’d rather continue catching up on yellowstone than ponder the morals of a starfleet generation ship. Don’t Vote for Me, and I hope you didn’t read this.
JTF
