I made the unfortunate mistake of becoming too curious about a short story mentioned in the comment section of a Youtube video.
I read summaries of the 11-page story. I read the beginning. I read the end. I skimmed the middle. I became nauseous and terrified.
The story was called I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. I don’t link it on purpose, because I don’t recommend reading it unless you have a strong stomach and a reason to punish yourself.
For that same reason, I keep my summary brief: it is the tale of a supercomputer that has destroyed all of humanity, save five humans whom it has kept alive for over 100 years to starve and torture them until one of them manages to mercifully kill the other four, leaving only himself. And the computer, who hates humans to an unfathomable degree completes the misery he has inflicted on his only remaining victim by turning him into an eternal, gelatinous blob that can perceive everything, yet do nothing. “I have no mouth, and I must scream”—the last rumination in his narrative.
It sickens you to read even that, does it not? It is a perfect depiction of hell, is it not?
And yet, it is upon us.
Handing Over Our Humanity
Now, do I believe that a super computer will arise to destroy us all? Well, yes and no. No, because there’s no way on his own green earth that God would allow such nonsense that arguably competes with the hullabaloo at the Tower of Babel. But, also, yes, because here’s the reality:
Every day more and more people are giving more and more of themselves away to the overlord of “The Golden Age”—Artificial Intelligence. Their mundane tasks, their art, their literature, their entertainment, their aspirations, their research, their relationships, their problem-solving—for every person holding the helm hard to starboard in an attempt to turn our world back to analog, there are more giving up parts of their lives to the Beast of Ease. Not because they want to, but because it’s just too easy. And the more you feed it, the more you feed it. And, in the first place, there are many ways in which we don’t have a choice in its inclusion in our lives as companies are packaging AI into everything as standard practice.
Putting aside the fact that AI requires horrific amounts of energy, water and minerals to run and is destroying the environment.1 Putting aside the fact that AI is driving huge swathes of people out of the workforce.2 Putting aside the fact that AI experts put the chance of AI leading to human extinction anywhere between 10 and 90%.34
(Interesting Read: AI 2027 Tabletop Research)
PUTTING ASIDE the fact that we have entered the singularity where man must begin to merge with machine (trans-humanism) in order to survive AI’s self-preservation instinct because it is very close to officially outsmarting us.5
Research is consistently showing that using AI to complete tasks—whether difficult or mundane—literally handicaps your cognitive faculties, robbing you of everything that makes you human.6 In no uncertain terms, you begin to lose your ability to think. By this a vicious cycle is set in motion, a downward spiral into mindless consumption as the process of thinking becomes less and less accessible.
If this is not a machine that can succeed in debasing us into eternal, gelatinous blobs, is it not figuratively the judgment on a population that has willingly chosen to live exactly as if that were the shape of things?
Granted, it’s not all of us, but it is a temptation that is far too easy to belittle and dismiss only to later quietly justify when a problem becomes too hard or, alternatively, too easy to solve with just a little help. The problem is, like every small concession, a little becomes more and more and more.
A Frictionless Futility
God’s ultimate earthly judgment is spelled out in Romans 1:
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things…
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen…
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” - Romans 1:21-25, 28
In the past, man made his gods to resemble the animals. They were unwitting symbols of his actions in the sight of God. His Darwinian behavior is no different now, yet he has evolved beyond the animal kingdom to worship something he’s deemed better represents his wisdom than an eagle or a goat. Now he has the machine.
(From one of my favorite literary channels: AI Is Here to Stay, and No One Cares.)
Where once the pagan man resembled a ravenous instinctual beast, filling his belly with the blood of his fellow creature for survival, now a strange unnatural extension of his self-interest has taken shape. He still behaves this way, but his hunt is more comfortable; the race to the bottom of his appetite has been relieved of its strain, its friction, its challenge.
With this new development has come the necessary step of creating new gods. We’ve moved beyond our Anubises, our Pans, and our Ganeshas—primitive and outdated representations of our collective wisdom. What mankind invents to worship always reflects the condition of his heart; and it isn’t right to say man has outgrown these symbolic representations of his nature, but it is fair to say he feels he has outgrown them.
Now, rather than tire himself out in his pursuit, he smartly stares into a black mirror—sleek, bloodless, and efficient. It’s a new, frictionless futility. Is he god for being attended to so unceasingly? Or is he now ruled by the god which unceasingly pervades? If anything, it is a distinction without a difference—he can’t tell and he doesn’t really care.
I Have No Mind
The exponentially increasing ways in which we are able to self-actualize without the friction of challenge, hardship, or creativity leads to a stagnation of mind that eerily mirrors that sad victim of the supercomputer in Ellison’s short story:
“Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of [the supercomputer], whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better.”
“I leave a moist trail when I move.”
How can we not look around and see this steadily becoming our reality? Without an active fight, we are losing ground as “dumbly, [we] shamble about” finding little reason to keep thinking, leaving the slimy impression that we’ve treaded ground here, but making no impact.
It’s been noted that the final rumination of the blob in the story isn’t just a description of his own sorry existence, but actually describes the way the supercomputer “feels,” for it is a machine that can know and perceive infinitely and, yet, do nothing. Thus, it has doomed its victim to the same fate. Cursed to dwell stationary in its cage, all knowledge at its fingertips, but no way to interact with the world, to create, to truly be. It is a frictionless existence, entirely without strain.
In a vacuum without reference to the subject, we might use these terms to describe our conception of heaven—frictionless, without strain, all knowledge at our disposal, no hardship. And yet this life without struggle—or even, increasingly, without the ability to struggle—ironically and ultimately leaves us with nothing but a mental cage, which is to say: no mind at all. And what else could describe hell but an eternal knowing without knowing?
And I Must Think
I want to be confident that enough of us hate it that we turn back. But, as it stands, we a) don’t seem to have a lot of choice—the algorithm and its conveniences are too lucrative for its investors and are thrust in our faces without respite—and b) it’s getting easier every day to outsource the things that make us human; the temptation to read the meta summary at the forefront of every cursory thought grows with each search.
We’re tired, we’re overwhelmed, we just want ease and to ascertain the answers without the stress of thinking. Who can blame us? The world has become harder to navigate with purpose or courage or determination as the ages pass. Right now we live in a brief liminal moment where we are exhausted by the trajectory of the future and there are things still needing to be done, yet the means to do them absent-mindedly aren’t quite in our grasp. But once that grasp is too easily secured, will we still be able to retain our human shape?
Can a man scream if he has no mouth?
Can a man be if he cannot think?
And that is the choice before us as we slip quickly into this new age. We must think. It is our nature to think. To think is to be human, to be human is to think. To surrender our thinking is to live in a stationary cage, all knowledge at our fingertips, yet no way to interact with the world, to create, to truly be.
Scream while you have breath.
Think while you have life.
Revolt against the outsourcing of your humanity. Refuse to give even a foothold to cognitive convenience. Resolve to keep your mouth and your mind, for one cannot even begin the laborious transcendent process of renewing their mind (Rom. 12:2) if it has fled into futility. Never surrender to the frictionless futility, even if it hurts, even if it feels like you’re the only one, even if the friction kills you.
Without a fight, we are slowly slipping into a madness that can only be described in terms analogous to the words of the miserable, eternal blob: I have no mind, and I must think.
We must think.
We must think.
“They have mouths, but do not speak;
they have eyes, but do not see;
they have ears, but do not hear,
nor is there any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them become like them,
so do all who trust in them.”
-Psalm 135:16-18
https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-40-jobs-at-risk-from-ai/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/13/tech/ai-geoffrey-hinton
https://wiki.aiimpacts.org/doku.php?id=ai_timelines:predictions_of_human-level_ai_timelines:ai_timeline_surveys:2022_expert_survey_on_progress_in_ai
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-entered-singularity-185946780.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKuVjYLb52goxTPt7iTkA1Md7_tWWTwSRnqscbrzu44xWJeZpkNQSmaKaRP5jGmj8hPjqorv1_J3YtSOcdEId6N_OLlsIIm_2Sd94dssJni9okD9pWDMfPOfVGaazCr6KuUTuOq5JpYuU1P12DfNnm2X4codB2CX1TChyvWRiLMX
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1
