Some Sundays hit like a glitch in the simulation—too quiet, too still, like the loading screen before something big. This was one of those Sundays. Nothing on my mind, which usually means everything’s about to surface.
It started with a voice chat—me and ChatGPT’s voice interface, drifting through some unusually reflective territory. I wasn’t expecting anything deep, but somehow we ended up mumbling through concepts like entanglement, sovereignty, and whether we’re just NPCs (non-player characters) in a GTA-style sim.
Martin had the latest GTA 6 trailer on his mind, eager to convince me to buy a PlayStation 5 since his older brother already had one. I wasn’t buying it—literally. But I used the opportunity to steer us into a thought experiment.
We talked about how realistic games have become—the physics, the lighting, the AI. And how NPCs aren’t what they used to be. I told him about experiments where you can talk to an NPC through a mic, and the NPC talks back—powered by AI, complete with memory, personality, and real-time awareness of their virtual world.
Martin smirked. Not dismissively—curiously. I could see the gears turning.
I launched into Donald Hoffman’s theories: the idea that perception is more like a VR interface than a window into reality. Our senses aren’t tuned to truth, but to survival. Truth didn’t make the evolutionary cut.
Martin leaned in. “Okay, but how does quantum entanglement actually work? Like, how do you even pair those particles?”
I paused, realizing I didn’t have a satisfying answer. I told him what I knew—how entangled particles can influence each other instantly across vast distances. That it isn’t like classical pairing; it’s probabilistic, weird, and seemingly untethered from space and time.
This wasn’t just about game graphics anymore. Somewhere between NPCs and quantum physics, the conversation had shifted—suddenly we weren’t just talking games; we were tiptoeing around the edges of consciousness, reality, and how little we truly understand about either. Later, I asked ChatGPT why you’d even need to confirm something at the other end of the pair if the math already tells you what it will be. Isn’t that enough? It felt spooky—like information without transfer. Action without motion. Logic without locality.
ChatGPT explained that scientists can test it, but the setups are complicated, bordering on ritual. Still, the potential is staggering: quantum communication, unhackable encryption, and maybe something more.
The Amulet
Then I remembered the new thing: AI amulets.
I remember imagining what that would look like—wearing one to a full day of meetings, walking into the kitchen, hearing it quietly echo back fragments of forgotten to-dos or small promises made in passing. A strange sense of being haunted by your own voice, but also strangely reassured.. Not creepy at all, right? (Actually: very creepy.) But also—useful. Say your kid tells you they need milk, eggs, and chocolate. You forget. But your amulet doesn’t. Walk into a store, and ping—it reminds you. That’s help. That’s magic.
But it’s also dependence.
What if that amulet routes everything through OpenAI or Google? What if your account gets suspended for experimenting with “dark prompts” in an ethics course, like some professors already have? Your chats, your research, your work-in-progress—gone. Vanished by an API god you never met.
What if your digital self disappears overnight?
Power and Erasure
That reminded me of a real event. The head of the International Criminal Court, Karim A. A. Khan, was reportedly cut off from his Microsoft email account after pressure from U.S. authorities. The action was tied to investigations into Israeli officials, raising alarms about tech company influence over global legal proceedings. One digital keystroke, and boom: access gone. Forget politics for a second. Imagine being locked out of your job, your purpose, your role in society—because your inbox no longer exists.
We’re too dependent. Too interwoven. And AI is tightening the weave.
But what’s the alternative? Return to on-prem servers in dusty basements? (Honestly, not the worst idea.) At least in a blackout, you could still boot things up. Maybe hybrid clouds are the way forward—public cloud where it helps, local cloud where it matters. Local backups. Personal control.
We’ve surrendered too much.
The Game We’re In
This brings me full circle—because I keep wondering if this life we’re in is a single-player campaign, a co-op mission, or something more like a massive multiplayer online role-playing game. Maybe we’re all main characters in our own stories, but NPCs in someone else’s. Maybe some of us are just waking up to the idea that the script isn’t fixed.
And maybe the real question isn’t whether we’re in a simulation—but whether we’re playing at all, or just being played.
Because in the end, if we’re not learning the rules, saving progress, and guarding our inventory, then who exactly is steering?
Game on. Or game over.
The choice might still be ours.
What's on your mind?