‘The Ghost in the Shell’ or How Actual Cyberpunk Reminds Us of Our Humanity

Right now, in no uncertain terms, we are currently living in a very shitty cyberpunk dystopia. It is 2026. Tech oligarchs are forcing the construction of hyperscale data centers to provide computation power to programs that can approximate human speech and are being passed off as the next step to Artificial General Intelligence. They are proudly claiming that there is about a 10% chance that the software they are developing could one day end humanity, and instead of stopping to think about whether or not that’s a good thing, they are instead asking for more money. I am not an AI-doomer. I don’t think AI programs went rogue. I think people were bad at their job. I am just personally more concerned about the environmental and social devastation that the technology is currently causing. I am personally more concerned with the mass theft and lack of consent that the entire technology is predicated upon. I am personally more concerned about the constant surveillance state, between Flock cameras (and police abusing access to Flock cameras) and every single personal digital device constantly recording anything and everything without consent, whether it is Meta glasses of the new always listening iPhone. I have much more pressing issues like the increasing amount of ghost work required to keep the facade of progression alive and well as the economy reports record highs as common people struggle to survive. As someone born in 1991 and essentially grew up with most modern digital techn…