I recently told someone about a video of a possum investigating a bowl of Halloween candy, getting startled by a jumping decoration, and falling over like one of those fainting goats.

“I saw that same video, except it was a racoon,” someone else said. Another person was like “yeah, same. But with a bear.”

Folks, when I tell you I am sick of AI, I mean I am tired of what it’s done to human discourse.  What am I supposed to be talking about at social gatherings, if I can’t trust a video of a cute, woodland creature who just wants a KitKat and can’t catch a freaking break?

And when I’m talking about AI, I mostly mean the art and video division. I’m not worried about the writing. People ask writers all the time if they’re worried about AI taking over their jobs, and first we’re like “Haha, joke’s on you! We don’t have jobs!” But also, I’m here to tell you I’ve read some emails from folks who I’m pretty sure used ChatGPT, and I don’t think anyone who actually does get paid cash money for writing needs to worry.

Even if you’re using a robot to craft your sales pitch or e-introduction of your friend Bob who wants to network, or whatever, you still need a certain level of skill to determine whether AI’s hit the mark.

Have you ever talked to a writer about the prospect of making any kind of money from writing? You think a mega machine intent on taking over the world is going to be like “first, I’ll become a great writer, then buy a yacht with all my millions, and then take over the WORLD!”?

If it did, that mega machine would be a whole lot less like Skynet and more like me in the 8^th grade.

I’m far less terrified about an artificial intelligence with the aspirations of an 8^th grader than I am worried AI is deliberately feeding me fainting possums for entertainment–to what nefarious intent, I have no idea. Mostly, though, I’m pissed that all this is ruining small talk at parties.

That’s not the only morning rumination I’ve got going on over here, I’m sorry to say. The universe just hit me up with, “hey, I’ll see your existential crisis about what the existence of fake possums says about the world and raise you eleventy-billion cave-dwelling arachnids.” Which is what it just did.

I stumbled on this article about scientists discovering the world’s biggest web in an Albanian cave with 111,000 spiders living together in the dark, eating midges that feed off the microbial biofilms from sulfur oxidizing bacteria. As a bonus, there’s also a video of a guy with a headlamp pushing on this gigantic glob of web (that looks like someone made a giant rubber band ball, and it’s somehow malleable. And maybe pulsating).

Yeah, so, there’s a new night terror unlocked.

The scientists in the article are amazed by the fact that different species of spiders are living together because spiders of different species would normally eat each other and they’re thinking maybe these spiders just can’t see well enough in the dark to know they’re not compadres.

I love scientists. But here I am thinking there’s probably not enough Prozac to keep me from thinking about that gob of eleventy billion spiders the next time I’m awake at 2 am.

Not to mention the fact that I think my science-friends are missing the entire freaking point.

Which is: how can we possibly be more worried about AI taking over the world when an inter-species spider mega colony living together in harmony in a pitch-dark Albanian cave exists in real life?

Another part of me wonders if there’s a bigger takeaway to this this spider thing and their ability to get along as long as it’s dark and they can’t tell they aren’t the same species. Like maybe if we lock congress in a room and turn out the lights until they cooperate, we stand a chance at ending this whole shutdown-thing?

Maybe in addition to locking them up in the dark we mention there’s a mega colony of spiders living together in a cave in Albania as an example of peacefully coexisting, and let them ponder that?

And no, I’m not going to want to talk about a mega colony of spiders living together in the dark the next time you see me at a social gathering.

Or about congress.

Maybe ask me about possums.