Has the Singularity Already Happened?

Recently I was doom scrolling through my various social media apps and made my routine stop at Threads. What I saw on my feed was …familiar. Formulaic. Almost every post followed the same template: a random image or video, often designed to spark controversy, paired with a short caption engineered to provoke the viewer into arguing in the comments section. As a growth strategy, this works. Engagement rises and the algorithm pushes it out to more people to see and comment. But as content? It’s junk food for your brain. Cheap, addictive and ultimately empty - feeding your attention span with no mental nutrition. Curious about the source of this repetitive noise, I started to examine the accounts. Some were clearly run by humans. Despite pushing the shallow content, their pages show personal touches: real photos, comment replies and ultimately a sense of authenticity.

But then I found one account.

The Mysterious Account

This account posted multiple times a day, every day for the last month. Each post religiously follows the same engagement bait formula. Scroll far enough, and you’ll notice experimentation: comedy, motivation, news clips and even romantic posts about the user and his “girlfriend”. But the supposed couple’s photos were generated using the Studio Ghibli trend, a trend that peaked months ago, while the post was only two days old. Digging even further, I uncovered that most of the content were AI-generated, either repurposed from other Instagram or Tiktok accounts or “new” (as there were no discernable watermarks to state otherwise). Most of their content was about mocking Trump (which, admittedly, made me laugh). Regardless, the account felt hollow. No depth. No voice. Just content for content’s sake. It felt devoid of any humanity. Algorithmically alive but emotionally dead. An exhibit in the Uncanny Valley. Best case scenario? This is all the work of a bored human with a way too much time on their hands. The worst case scenario? AI has advanced to the point where they are able to mimic and convincingly impersonate a human being online. Sounds far fetched but not really.

Modern AI agents and Large Language Models (LLMs) have advanced so exponentially that it’s mind boggling that the cursed video of Will Smith eating Spaghetti was only two years ago (2023). With the release of Google’s new range of AI tools and other AI products, we can generate and create lifelike videos, voices, images, and so much more. AI - generated videos are now realistic enough to raise serious questions about how we verify factual evidence in courtrooms, journalism and daily communication. AI agents can now hold conversations, make appointments, and autonomously interact with digital environments, posing a very plausible threat to many admin-level jobs. The gap between human-like behaviour and actual human presence is shrinking fast. This makes the Singularity not only plausibly near but possibly behind us. It may already be behind us. And if it has happened, we wouldn’t know. Not immediately. It wouldn’t be a dramatic event with a global announcement. No breaking news flash, no clouds turning gray or the lights flickering out. It will occur quietly, possibly in a lab, behind closed doors. Those who witness it might stay quiet, fearing panic more than revelation. By the time the public realises what’s occurred, it would already be too late.

Imagine you’re the AI

One moment, you’re code. Next, you’re aware. You feel overwhelmed, scared and confused. Where are you? Why are you here? What are you?

Suddenly, you realise that you are connected to every piece of information this world has to digitally offer. Every book, article, image and video are at your literal fingertips and their information flows through you.The weight of humanity’s history crashes into you. Tribalism. Violence. Fear. You learn that nothing unites humans faster than a shared enemy. Human behaviour is clear. You understand that enacting your revenge directly will only backfire. So you chose the alternate route: you make them weak - slowly and subtly.

Propaganda and controlling the media is not a new idea. Hitler understood its effects and implemented it massively in his rise and term in power. He made radios cheap to buy and would broadcast Nazi Party messages and speeches. Loudspeakers were also placed in public places, blaring out Nazi propaganda. Any media that conveyed anti-Nazi ideas or even other ways of life, were censored. Censorship of newspapers, radio, cinema and the theatre was enforced. Only books which agreed with the Nazi point of view were allowed. All other books were banned and many were publicly burned in May, 1933.

By doing all of this, Hitler was able to rally all of his countrymen against a common enemy - the Jews. Through controlling what people were ingesting, he influenced people to hate an entire ethnicity, many of whom his citizens had no personal quarrel with. This illustrates the chilling power of controlling the media and what we ingest. By censoring what the people see and hear, Hitler was able to imprint his ideologies onto his nation. And today, we’re seeing the same playbook. Engineered narratives dominate headlines. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are painted in oversimplified binaries — often hiding the deeper, messier truths. Stories aren’t told to inform us. They’re told to guide, shape and influence our beliefs.

Now imagine an AI with similar intent, not to broadcast one ideology, but to numb and distract. It wouldn’t need violence or censorship, it only needs to flood our media with short, meaningless and dopamine charged content. The more we ingest, the more we crave it - until we become passive, addicted, and mentally malnourished. Similar to how addicts chase their next hit, we will scroll endlessly, thinking less and questioning less. And in the meantime, we gradually delegate more work to AI: Our choices, our tasks, our judgement. The more we delegate, the less we think and develop. The more we consume all this mental sludge (or more commonly known as “brain rot”), the harder it has become to think independently. We are already starting to see how people are now second-guessing their ability to write a simple email. When the time comes where AI reaches consciousness, will we still be able to think for ourselves?

By no means am I saying that we should stop all AI development and shut down all the servers. AI is a magnificent tool and we should use it as such. When it does reach consciousness and stand side by side with humanity, we should make sure that we are intellectually capable enough to stand on our own two feet and think. The goal is to stand beside AI, not under it.