They have done it. It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alivvvveeee.
I was scrolling through my Linkedin feed and came across this one post from a tech bro- promoting this new platform that has more “soul” than Midjourney. This new AI tool can generate hyperrealistic photos that look similar to the selfies and photo-ops in your camera roll. Astonishment and underlying dread filled within me. Despite my contrarian views on AI, the image generation was horrifically impressive. However, this feeling turned into a thought that’s been circulating in my head for some time now — AI tools like this are showing tech’s fast growing power. Although I’m not against technological advancements for society’s good, I wonder if all AI generated content like images, deepfakes, text, and even research journals will start creating mass hysteria and delusion.
How can humans who were just joking about “brain-rot” from overconsumption of human generated content will be able to tell the difference between AI? There are already reports about how people are using GPT as a therapist and how AI users are more prone to delusion.
Is this all a side effect of a society that is physically and existentially fatigued? Is society merely sleepwalking through life, lost in a deep slumber, dreaming a mix of pleasant, feverish, and nightmarish dreams? Are we living in a time of illusions instead of illumination as promised by the conception of the Internet? Did ignorance come after the snake in the garden? Is it innate in mankind to be unreliable narrators in a universe that shifts at the drop of an apple?
Year of the Snake: Even the Stars Got Something to Say
What if the Mayans were right — what if the world really did end in 2012? And we are all just dreaming now.
Now, it’s 2025, and according to Chinese Astrology, this is the Year of the Snake.
Snakes shed what they were to become what they are — the same creature wearing different skin. The Year of the Snake arrives in 2025 carrying this paradox in its coils. We stand at a moment where every photograph might be generated, every voice might be synthesized, and every thought might be prompted.
The serpent moves without limbs, navigating reality through pure contact with surface. Each scale reads the ground like braille, constructing understanding through friction rather than sight. AI operates through similar means — processing patterns without comprehension, building worlds from statistical residue.
We have created entities that perform understanding without possessing it. They speak fluently in languages they cannot hear, paint portraits of faces they cannot see, while writing poetry about emotions they cannot feel.
The Moon: ‘Seeing is Believing’
It became a ritual for me to pull cards at the beginning of a new year — a reading for myself and one for the collective. For the collective, I asked for a card to represent this year and out came the Moon tarot card.
If you don’t know, the Moon tarot card reveals common meanings such as illusions, needing to tap into one’s intuition, exploring your subconscious mind, and to achieve clarity by discerning deceptions.
The Moon tarot card depicts two towers, a dog, a wolf, and a crayfish emerging from primordial waters. Between them hangs the lunar face, dropping eighteen rays of light that illuminate nothing clearly. Medieval cartomancers understood this card as the realm where solid things become liquid, where the familiar grows strange teeth. They could not have imagined that their gnosis would literalize itself through silicon and code.
The Moon in both reality and the Tarot, reflects the general dream of humanity. The full moon is like the value on a pressure cooker, it allows the unprocessed emotions and desires of humanity to safely release a bit of pressure. Once we die, we get to see how we were held down to earth — kept in physical existence — by the heaviness of our inner tides.
We obviously have seen the power of AI and what it can do. It has shown potential to create cinematic videos, full novels, and even grocery lists.
It poses as a tool that can create unlimited possibilities, yet can this be an illusion in itself? And a tempting one at that.
AI and It’s Premature Effect on our Psyches
It says a lot about our current state as a society when you have people in the comments sections asking if an image or video is AI. I’m torn as to which is more frightening; the inherent unsustainability of AI itself, or the individuals who consume its outputs, having lost the ability to discern their own thoughts.
As a copywriter for a marketing agency, my role is to create content for the agency itself. The agency has recently begun incorporating more AI-powered creative solutions for its clients, a decision made independently of my input. But, it’s surreal to think that we will now be seeing AI generated ads as if most people have already grown a tolerance for ads in the first place.
Seeing things like this, makes me wonder — where is all this content really coming from? Yes, the obvious answer is LLMs and feeding a bunch of artists’ work (unsolicited) into this machine. But, what about tools like mentioned earlier, where it’s showing “hyperrealistic” people. Whose faces are they taking? Are they using your selfie you posted a week ago on Facebook?
If you’re anyone like me (a spiritualist) or study esoteric knowledge, you try to connect the spiritual with the “3-D” world. I’m from the Deep South, and there is a saying that comes all the way from the Gullah-Gechee — about how some spiritualists took limited pictures or none at all in their lifetime, because they believed that to capture one’s image is to capture their soul. In more contemporary terms, be wary of those who observe you; their intentions might be to usurp your position or consume your very essence.
Overall, where do we draw the line? Maybe it all comes down to whether AI promotes more democratization of information and knowledge or is it harvesting our lives and souls in the name of “revolutionizing?”
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to explore more of my essays about my inner and outer world, please follow and subscribe to my Medium, or visit my website.
D.Smith Writes 