The Downfall of Humanity

The change happened quickly, yet just slowly enough that we failed to realise the danger until it was too late.

By the time we did realise, the damage was done. There was no turning back; we were too far gone for that.

It started small, letting AI summarise long papers. We stopped reading the fine print, or looking for details that were designed to be overlooked. Slowly, we lost the ability to read more than a certain number of words at a stretch.

Then, it evolved. We let AI draw our pictures, instead of investing in artists. We stole from writers and fed their work to AI, and asked it to write in seconds what authors might take days or weeks to create. We stopped appreciating the soul of art and literature, because we had instant gratification.

One at a time, we forgot the lessons we learned as children: that nothing comes without a price.

Over decades, we had made strides to undo the damage to our planet, and AI undid all that within a year. The electricity it used was taken from those least able to spare it. The water to cool the machines was taken from reservoirs used to battle wildfires. Prompt by prompt, the world became a desert: hot, dry and empty.

Within a generation, we lost the ability to research, because students generated essays in minutes. Books were created the same way, but there were no more messages, to call to feeling, no passion. There was no more public art, because artists stopped sharing their work to be stolen by the latest dataset.

By the time Humanity realised that they had lost what made them human - creativity, passion, ingenuity, complex thought - it was too late to reverse it.

We were robots in human form.