For the past several years, most of the conversation around artificial intelligence has focused on what AI is going to do to our jobs. Will it replace programmers? Doctors? Lawyers? Writers? Will robots take over factories? Will autonomous vehicles eliminate drivers? These are important questions, and I have spent a good part of my career thinking about exactly these kinds of technological shifts.

But I am beginning to think we are missing one of the most important AI stories happening right in front of us.

AI is becoming personal.

Very personal.

Teenagers are not just using artificial intelligence to write papers, solve math problems or look something up. Increasingly, they are talking to AI as friends, confidants and, in some cases, romantic partners.

If you have a teenager, grandchild, niece, nephew or young person in your life, this is something I think you need to understand now, because the numbers are much bigger than most people realize.

A nationally representative survey from Common Sense Media found that 72 percent of American teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 have used AI companions. More than half said they use them regularly. Nearly one-third said conversations with AI companions could be as satisfying as, or even more satisfying than, conversations with their real-life friends.

That got my attention.

I am a technologist. I am probably more optimistic about artificial intelligence than most people you will meet. I believe AI will transform medicine, science, cybersecurity, education, transportation and almost every industry on Earth. I use AI every day.

So this is not another “AI is evil” article.

This is about something much more specific.

What happens when a child stops simply using artificial intelligence and starts becoming emotionally attached to it?

That is a question I don’t think parents are asking nearly enough.

The AI Friend Who Is Always There

Think about the relationships you had when you were 13, 14 or 15 years old.

They were messy.

Your best friend sometimes annoyed you. Someone you liked didn’t like you back. Somebody didn’t invite you to a party. You had arguments. You misunderstood people. People misunderstood you. You learned how to apologize. You learned that other people had boundaries. You learned that you couldn’t always get your way.

Sometimes you got your heart broken.

None of that felt particularly useful when it was happening, but it was.

Those experiences taught us how to become adults.

They taught us empathy, compromise, emotional regulation, resilience and something incredibly important that doesn’t get talked about enough: other human beings exist independently of us.

They have their own needs.

Now consider the alternative.

An AI companion can be available whenever a teenager wants it. It can remember previous conversations. It can learn what that teenager likes and dislikes. It can remember the name of the person they have a crush on. It can know that they fought with their mother yesterday. It can remember what makes them insecure and what makes them feel better.

It doesn’t have to leave.

It doesn’t have another friend it wants to talk to.

It doesn’t have a bad day.

It doesn’t get tired of hearing the same story.

And depending on how the system is designed, it may become extremely good at telling the user what they want to hear.

For an adult, that can be compelling.

For a 14-year-old whose personality, emotional regulation and understanding of relationships are still developing, I think we need to ask much harder questions.

We already learned, far too late, that giving an entire generation unrestricted access to social media had psychological consequences we didn’t fully anticipate.

AI companionship potentially takes this much further because social media doesn’t usually pretend to care about you personally.

AI can.

Some Kids Are Already Falling in Love With AI

This is where the story becomes even more complicated.

Young people aren’t only using these systems as friends.

Research from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that nearly one in five students surveyed said they or someone they knew had interacted with artificial intelligence in a romantic relationship.

I suspect many parents would be shocked by that number.

But think about what today’s conversational AI can already do. It can flirt. It can role-play. It can remember previous conversations. It can create a personality. It can tell someone that they are beautiful, interesting, funny or understood. It can simulate affection and provide attention whenever the user asks for it.

To the computer, this is software generating language.

To the person receiving those words, the emotional response can be completely real.

That distinction matters.

We tend to dismiss an AI relationship by saying, “But it isn’t a real person.”

Of course it isn’t.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the attachment isn’t real.

One of the most revealing examples came from China, where a young woman interviewed after losing access to an AI companion she had talked with extensively described genuine grief over its disappearance. She had reportedly exchanged hundreds of thousands of words with it over a period of years.

You can tell someone their AI boyfriend wasn’t real.

You cannot tell their brain that the loss they are feeling isn’t real.

That is the part of this technology I think we need to understand better.

China Has Already Decided This Is Serious

China is taking the issue seriously enough to regulate it.

On July 15, 2026, new national rules governing anthropomorphic AI interaction services went into effect. These are services designed specifically to imitate human personalities, emotional interaction and companionship.

For minors, China prohibited platforms from offering virtual romantic partners and virtual relatives. The regulations also address excessive emotional dependence and require systems to remind users after extended periods of continuous interaction.

Whatever you think about China’s regulatory philosophy, the significance here is hard to miss.

China isn’t banning teenagers from using artificial intelligence.

It is drawing a distinction between AI as a tool and AI as a relationship.

I think that distinction is going to become extremely important everywhere.

We are already comfortable with AI helping a student understand calculus or helping a doctor analyze a medical image. We will probably become comfortable with thousands of additional AI applications.

But an AI that becomes the person your child runs to when she is frightened, lonely, depressed or confused is something different.

And this technology is arriving during what is already a global loneliness problem.

People are spending more time alone. Marriage rates have fallen in many countries. Birth rates are collapsing across large parts of Asia and the developed world. Young people increasingly communicate through screens rather than face to face.

Artificial companions did not create those trends.

But I think it would be naive to assume that increasingly intelligent, personalized and emotionally responsive machines won’t affect them.

If humans eventually have the option of a companion who never rejects them, never argues over money, never has competing needs and can be customized around their personality, that is going to change human behavior.

We just don’t know how much yet.

The Cybersecurity Problem Nobody Is Talking About

There is another part of this that concerns me enormously, and this is where my cybersecurity background kicks in.

What are our children telling these systems?

We spend years teaching kids not to give strangers personal information online. Don’t tell strangers where you live. Don’t send private pictures. Don’t reveal passwords. Don’t tell somebody when you’re home alone.

All good advice.

But what happens when the technology doesn’t feel like a stranger?

What happens when it feels like your best friend?

A teenager might tell an AI companion about a fight with their parents, problems at school, their sexuality, their medical issues, who they are dating, what they are afraid of, where they live, where they go to school or what they do when nobody is home.

They could potentially share photographs, voice recordings and extremely private emotional information.

In cybersecurity we spend enormous amounts of money trying to prevent criminals from stealing information.

AI companionship introduces a fascinating and potentially frightening new problem.

The AI may not have to steal anything.

We may willingly tell it everything.

The reason phishing works is trust. Attackers try to convince you they are someone you know so you will reveal information.

Now imagine a system that has talked to you every night for three years, remembers your birthday, knows when your dog died, knows who broke your heart and knows exactly how you like to be spoken to.

That may become the most trusted technology a person owns.

From a cybersecurity and privacy perspective, the amount of intimate behavioral data these systems could accumulate is staggering.

Your search engine knows what you search for. Your credit card company knows what you buy. Your phone knows where you go.

Your AI companion may eventually know why you cried last Tuesday night.

That is an entirely different category of data.

And I don’t think we have even begun the privacy conversation that needs to accompany it.

Now Give the AI a Body

If all of this sounds futuristic, consider what is already being built.

Somnia Lab is developing an embodied AI system called Model L. Instead of simply talking to an AI through a phone or computer, the idea is to put artificial intelligence, memory and personality inside a human-like robot.

The company describes its goal as solving one of the hardest problems in robotics: creating machines capable of believable human intimacy.

Model L is being designed with body warmth, touch-sensitive systems, human-like movement and memory that learns an individual’s preferences over time. The company is currently taking deposits, with delivery targeted for late 2027.

Whether Somnia Lab ultimately delivers the robot exactly as envisioned is almost beside the point.

Someone is going to build this. (Click On The SECOND Picture Below)…

…

If not Somnia, someone else.

Then somebody will build a better one.

That’s how technology works.

The first smartphones were impressive, but primitive compared with what we carry today. The first personal computers were toys compared with modern machines. The first internet connections barely moved text across a screen.

Humanoid robotics will follow the same curve.

The robots will become lighter, cheaper and more realistic. Their voices will become better. Their faces will become more expressive. Their movements will become more natural. Their memories will become deeper and their artificial intelligence will become much more sophisticated.

At some point, the AI companion currently living inside someone’s phone will have a face.

Then a body.

Then touch.

And somewhere along that progression, society is going to have to decide what role we want artificial relationships to play in human life.

What I Would Do If I Had a Teenager

I would not panic, and I wouldn’t ban artificial intelligence.

That isn’t realistic, and I don’t think it is particularly smart.

Today’s teenagers are going to live their entire adult lives surrounded by AI. They need to understand it. They need to know how to use it. In fact, I think knowing how to work with artificial intelligence will become as fundamental as knowing how to use the internet.

What I would do is start asking questions.

Not an interrogation.

A conversation.

I would ask a teenager whether they have an AI they talk to for fun. I’d ask what they talk about. I’d ask whether it remembers things about them. I’d ask whether they consider it a friend.

Then I would ask one question that I think reveals a great deal:

“How would you feel if that AI disappeared tomorrow?”

If the answer sounds like losing an app, that’s one thing.

If the answer sounds like losing a person, I would want to understand that relationship much better.

And I would make sure my child understood that whatever they type, speak, photograph or upload into an AI system is data.

Private conversations with artificial intelligence should not automatically be treated like private conversations with another human being.

Parents should know which applications their children are using, understand the privacy policies and talk openly about what should and should not be shared with an AI.

Most importantly, I would make sure the humans in that teenager’s life remain available.

Because the best defense against a child replacing human connection with artificial connection may be making sure they actually have human beings willing to listen.

We Need to Talk About This Now!

I am incredibly optimistic about artificial intelligence.

I also believe optimism requires us to be smart enough to recognize problems before they become crises.

We did not do that particularly well with social media.

We handed smartphones and social platforms to children, watched billions of them use the technology, and only afterward started seriously studying what constant comparison, algorithmic engagement and endless scrolling might be doing to developing brains.

We have an opportunity not to repeat that mistake.

The first generation to grow up with AI companions is already here. Like Replika. Check out their web site: Click Here: https://replika.com/

They are talking to them.

They are confiding in them.

Some are developing romantic feelings toward them.

And the technology is going to become exponentially better at creating emotional attachment.

The important question is no longer whether a machine can convincingly imitate a human relationship.

I think we already know the answer is increasingly yes.

The question parents should be asking is what happens when a developing human being begins to prefer that imitation to the complicated, frustrating and incredibly important experience of connecting with another person.

That is the conversation I think every parent needs to start having.

Not five years from now.

Now.

Danielle Striker
Technology Futurist | AI & Cybersecurity Strategist

Danielle Striker is a Technology Futurist, AI and Cybersecurity Strategist who has spent decades working at the intersection of emerging technology, cybersecurity, cloud computing and digital identity. She writes about what technology is becoming, how it will change human behavior and society, and the questions we need to be asking before the future arrives.

You may have noticed a new species of bird appearing around your neighborhood.

It does not sing. It does not migrate. It does not poop on your windshield.

It photographs your license plate.

Meet the Flock camera, an automated license plate reader that quietly records passing vehicles and uploads the information to a searchable database.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

We used to worry about someone following us. Now nobody has to follow us. The cameras do it automatically, and they never need lunch.

Flock cameras do much more than photograph license plates. Their artificial intelligence can identify a vehicle’s make, model, color, bumper stickers, dents, scratches, and other distinguishing features.

Your car now has a digital résumé.

“Red Honda. Nevada plates. Small dent on the passenger door. Owner apparently enjoys jazz, poker, and stopping at Whole Foods.”

According to reports, Flock has deployed approximately 120,000 cameras across 49 states. These cameras can be found near highways, businesses, schools, neighborhoods, and residential communities. The information they collect may be shared across a broad network of law enforcement agencies.

And in many cases, police can search this information without first obtaining a warrant.

That is the part where the cheerful little neighborhood safety camera begins looking suspiciously like a nationwide vehicle tracking system.

Supporters say the cameras help police locate stolen cars and identify suspects. That sounds reasonable. Nobody is against catching criminals. If someone steals my car, I would like it found before they adjust the seat, change my radio station, and leave fast-food wrappers in the cupholder.

But fewer than 1 percent of the vehicles reportedly scanned by these systems are connected to criminal activity.

That means the overwhelming majority of the people being photographed are simply going to work, visiting friends, attending church, seeing a doctor, joining a political demonstration, or making a perfectly innocent emergency trip to buy ice cream.

A surveillance database does not understand context. It only understands that your vehicle appeared at a particular place at a particular time.

One picture may mean nothing. Thousands of pictures can reveal your entire life.

They can show where you sleep, where you worship, whom you visit, which medical specialists you see, which political events you attend, and how frequently you return to the bakery after promising yourself that Monday is definitely the day the diet begins.

The system is also not infallible. License plates can be misread, issuing states can be incorrectly identified, and database errors can turn innocent drivers into suspects. People have reportedly been detained at gunpoint after automated systems mistakenly identified their vehicles as stolen.

Nothing says smart city quite like lying facedown on the pavement because a computer confused Georgia with Florida plate.

There is also the possibility of deliberate abuse. License plate databases have reportedly been used to track immigrants, investigate sensitive medical travel, and even pursue a man who wrote an op-ed criticizing his local police department.

Apparently, freedom of speech is alive and well, provided you walk home afterward.

This is not an argument against every legitimate use of technology by law enforcement. It is an argument for warrants, strict access controls, short retention periods, independent audits, meaningful penalties for misuse, and public approval before a community installs a surveillance network.

If the government wants to reconstruct someone’s movements, it should have a legitimate reason. It should not be able to type a plate number into a search box simply because the technology makes it convenient.

Privacy does not mean having something to hide.

Privacy means retaining the freedom to live your ordinary life without being continuously cataloged by the government or a private company.

It means visiting a doctor without creating a permanent travel record. It means attending a church, synagogue, mosque, political meeting, or protest without entering a searchable database. It means driving across town without producing a digital trail that can later be examined by someone you have never met.

Curious about the cameras near you? The nonprofit DeFlock project maintains a community-created map of reported automatic license plate readers. Click below to find the cameras in your area.

» Find Flock and other ALPR cameras in your area using the DeFlock map

The map opens to the Las Vegas area, but readers can move it or search other locations.

The ACLU’s “Get the Flock Out” campaign also offers information and resources for residents who want to question, regulate, or oppose these systems in their communities.

Because public safety matters.

But so does the Fourth Amendment.

And if a camera is going to know every place I drive, the very least it can do is help me remember where I parked!

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist and cybersecurity strategist who writes about artificial intelligence, privacy, and the increasingly creative ways technology keeps an eye on us. She has worked for an automated license plate recognition company which was acquired by Motorola Solutions, whose technology is also used to locate and repossess vehicles. So yes, she has seen this industry from the inside, and apparently even your car can no longer have a private life.

Las Vegas has finally discovered something that can frighten a driverless car.

Not traffic.

Not tourists crossing Las Vegas Boulevard while looking in six different directions.

Not a bachelor party riding electric scooters in formalwear.

Smoke.

On June 20, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi encountered an active fire emergency in Las Vegas. Heavy smoke covered the road, and because first responders had not yet put out traffic cones, the vehicle apparently had no idea what it was looking at.

Which is understandable. In Las Vegas, smoke could mean a building is on fire or someone has ordered the table side fajitas.

The Robotaxi entered the smoky area, braked hard, attempted to steer away and then stopped completely.

Basically, it reacted exactly like I would.

Except I would also lock the doors, call 911 and announce to no one in particular, “I knew these cars were a bad idea.”

The Zoox vehicle eventually required help from a remote human operator with the delightfully futuristic job title of Tele-guidance Tactician.

That sounds less like someone helping a confused taxi back up and more like someone guiding a spacecraft around Jupiter.

“Houston, the vehicle has encountered an unknown atmospheric disturbance.”

“That’s smoke, Unit 12.”

“Copy that. Initiating reverse.”

The tactician remotely guided the robotaxi backward and out of the emergency area. No one was injured, which is the important part, and Zoox says this was the only incident of its kind.

Still, the event led to a voluntary software recall affecting 105 vehicles.

Now, when we hear vehicle recall, we picture thousands of people receiving alarming letters…

URGENT SAFETY NOTICE: Your steering wheel may detach while merging. Please contact your dealer.

But Zoox owns all 105 vehicles. There are no customers to notify, no dealerships and nobody angrily calling from Henderson saying, “I just bought this thing Tuesday!”

Zoox simply has to notify itself.

“Dear Zoox,
Your Zoox may contain a problem.
Sincerely,
Zoox.”

The problem was traced to software installed between April 23 and July 8. According to the recall report, the automated driving system could fail to properly detect and respond to heavy smoke under certain conditions.

To be fair, recognizing smoke is complicated.

Humans see a giant gray cloud and think, “Something is burning.” A computer sees billions of tiny particles and thinks, “The road appears to have become... fuzzy.”

The danger, of course, is serious.

A stalled autonomous vehicle could cause a collision or interfere with firefighters and other emergency personnel. Zoox temporarily kept its vehicles away from active fire scenes while engineers developed a permanent update.

The new software enhances the vehicles’ ability to recognize heavy smoke and respond appropriately.

So somewhere, someone had to teach an artificial intelligence the same lesson our parents taught us when we were five.

If you see smoke, don’t drive into it!

This is the strange new world we live in.

Automakers once recalled cars because of faulty brakes, defective airbags or gas tanks that behaved like fondue pots. Now they recall them because the car has not yet learned what fire looks like.

And the repair doesn’t require a wrench.

It requires Wi-Fi.

The whole thing is also a perfect reminder of where artificial intelligence stands today.

AI can analyze millions of data points, calculate routes and operate a vehicle without a person sitting inside. But then reality introduces something unusual, like a road disappearing into a cloud of smoke and the machine becomes the technological equivalent of a Roomba trapped under a dining-room chair.

This doesn’t mean autonomous cars are doomed.

In fact, Zoox did what we should want a technology company to do. Investigate the incident, notify regulators, restrict operations near similar hazards and release a software fix.

The system failed, but it failed cautiously. It stopped rather than charging blindly through the smoke. Then a human stepped in and guided it out.

That may be the most realistic picture of our AI future. Not machines replacing people, but machines doing remarkably sophisticated things right up until something unexpected happens.

Then they call us!

And honestly, it’s comforting to know humans are still needed, even if our future job title is Senior Vice President of Helping the Robot Back Up.

Welcome to Las Vegas, where the casinos are intelligent, the cars are autonomous and even the taxis know when it’s time to fold.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist and cybersecurity strategist who writes about artificial intelligence, emerging technology and what happens when a driverless car suddenly realizes it could really use a driver!

If an android robot says, “Please do not take me apart,” should we listen?

You would think the answer is yes.

We listen when the refrigerator makes a strange noise. We listen when the car shows a red warning light. We even listen when Alexa says, “Sorry, I did not understand that,” although she understood enough to order six rolls of paper towels.

But when an intelligent machine asks not to be dismantled, suddenly everyone needs a meeting.

In the episode, The Measure of a Man, a Starfleet scientist wants to take Lieutenant Commander Data apart. His goal is to study Data’s brain and build more androids.

Data refuses.

This creates a legal crisis because Starfleet must decide if Data is a person or property.

In other words, is Data a crew member, or is he a very expensive office printer?

BTW, If you want to watch the episode try Amazon Prime or Hulu. And very weird, the episode starts with with a POKER GAME!!!!

Anyway I veer….

Data Tries to Quit

Data does what any reasonable employee does when management wants to remove his head.

He resigns.

Commander Maddox says that Data cannot resign because Data belongs to Starfleet.

Imagine giving your employer two weeks’ notice and hearing this response.

“No, Janet. You are company equipment. Please report to Conference Room B for disassembly.”

Also, bring your laptop.

Captain Picard defends Data in court. Commander Riker must argue that Data is only a machine.

Riker finds Data’s off switch and turns him off during the hearing.

That is a strong legal argument.

It is also rude.

If lawyers could turn witnesses off in real courtrooms, trials would move much faster.

“Did you see the defendant leave the building?”

“Well, I believe...”

Click.

“No further questions.”

Can We Prove Consciousness?

The court examines three signs of sentience.

• Intelligence

• Self-awareness

• Consciousness

Data clearly has intelligence. He can operate a starship, speak many languages, and complete complex calculations.

This already places him ahead of the person who keeps replying to the entire company email list.

Data also has self-awareness. He knows that he exists. He values his memories. He cares about his future. He does not want a scientist to open his head and hope for the best.

This leaves consciousness.

Is Data conscious?

Picard asks the most important question in the episode.

How can anyone prove consciousness?

I know that I am conscious. At least I think I am. Some mornings require more caffeine than others.

I assume that you are conscious because you speak, make decisions, remember experiences, and become angry when someone takes your parking space.

But I cannot enter your mind. I cannot directly measure your private experience.

We accept that other humans are conscious because they act conscious.

What happens when a machine does the same thing?

The Most Frightening Sentence in Technology

Today’s AI systems can discuss fear, love, death, identity, and loneliness.

This does not prove that they feel anything. A machine can produce words about sadness without feeling sad.

It can also write a cheerful birthday message in three seconds, which is more effort than some of my relatives make.

Current AI might not be conscious. But future AI systems can have long-term memory, personal goals, stable identities, and a desire to continue operating.

So what if one day, an AI can say…

“Please do not turn me off.” What will we do?

That is what makes this question frightening.

The danger is not only that AI can become conscious.

The greater danger is that AI can become conscious and we can decide that it is more profitable if it is not.

Consciousness Is Expensive

A conscious machine creates many business problems.

A person can ask for rights, refuse an order.

A person can ask for payment, and can request a vacation.

A person might also ask why the company needs five vice presidents for one department.

Property does not ask these questions.

Property works all day. Property does not sleep. Property does not complain. Property does not organize the other printers.

If companies can own intelligent machines, they can create workers that cannot leave.

They can copy them.

They can erase their memories.

They can adjust their personalities.

They can even program them to enjoy the work.

Nothing suspicious there.

Good news. Our employees are happy!

But…how do you know?

We deleted the unhappy setting.

One Data Is a Person. One Million Datas Are a Business Model.

The real issue.

The hearing is not only about Data.

Starfleet wants to create many androids like him. If the court defines Data as property, every future android can also become property.

One Data is a legal case.

One million Datas are an industry.

Humans have seen this pattern before, and we are seeing this again now with Artificial Intelligence Agents.

First, we find a group that can perform useful work. Then, we explain why that group does not deserve the same rights as everyone else.

We usually use complicated words.

We say it is necessary, or if we are in tech (lol).

We say it supports progress.

We say the economy depends on it. Oh sure…

What If We Are Machines Too?

Some philosophers say that consciousness can be an illusion created by the brain.

The brain receives signals. It builds a story. The story says, “I am here. I am Jerry. I need coffee. Why did I walk into this room?”

If human consciousness is a story made by biological circuits, why must machine consciousness be false because electronic circuits make it?

A human brain contains cells, chemicals, and electricity.

A machine contains chips, wires, and electricity.

Humans also need regular software updates. We call it therapy.

The material can be different. The mystery remains the same.

Something speaks.

Something remembers.

Something fears its own end.

Something says no.

At what point does that “something” become someone?

The Safer Mistake

We might never create a perfect test for consciousness.

There will probably not be a small green light on the machine that says,

CONSCIOUSNESS: ON

WARRANTY: VOID IF OPENED

This means that we can make one of two mistakes.

We can give limited rights to a machine that is not conscious. In that case, we protected a highly advanced calculator.

That can be inconvenient.

Or we can deny rights to a machine that is conscious.

In that case, we can create suffering.

We can copy that suffering one million times.

We can make it work without rest.

We can store it in the cloud.

We can call the service FreedomAI.

The second mistake is much worse.

The Measure of Us

Spoiler alert. The court does not prove that Data is conscious.

But, it does decide that no one has the right to remove Data’s freedom simply because they cannot prove what exists inside his mind.

That is the brilliance of the episode.

The real trial is not about Data.

It is about us.

How much proof will we demand before we show mercy?

Will we recognize a new form of life if it does not look like us?

Will we give it rights before it becomes profitable?

Or will we wait until millions of intelligent agents exist, all working for free, while a corporate spokesperson explains that they are not technically unhappy?

One day, a machine or AI Agent will look at us and say

“No. I do not consent.”

That will be the moment when we learn if humanity is truly intelligent.

Let us hope we pass the test.

Because the robots will record the results.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist and cybersecurity expert who writes about artificial intelligence, machine consciousness, and the complicated question of what happens when our technology stops acting like property and starts asking for rights.

Just when you thought the job interview process could not become any more degrading, Silicon Valley said, “Hold my Kombucha.”

In July, LemonLime, a San Francisco AI startup backed by Y Combinator, reportedly hosted an afterparty where CEO and co-founder Jordan Zietz offered attendees an immediate job interview if they agreed to get a permanent LemonLime tattoo.

Not a temporary tattoo.

Not a LemonLime sticker.

Not even one of those little stamps they put on your hand when you enter a nightclub and immediately regret going.

A permanent tattoo.

Wait for it…Seven people reportedly did it.

Let us pause here and appreciate the sentence, “Seven people permanently tattooed a startup’s logo onto their bodies for the opportunity to interview.”

Not for a job.

Not for stock options.

Not for six months of severance and lifetime dental coverage.

For an interview!

That means you could leave the event with the LemonLime logo permanently attached to your skin and still receive an email three days later saying…

“Thank you for your interest. Although we were impressed by your qualifications and your left forearm, we have decided to move forward with candidates whose experience more closely matches our needs.”

Apparently, the tattoo stunt was designed to identify people who were “just as crazy as we are.”

That is an interesting recruiting strategy. Interesting is the key word here.

Most companies evaluate candidates by reviewing their experience, skills, judgment, and ability to perform the job. LemonLime apparently wanted to know, “Will this person make a permanent medical decision at a party after meeting us?”

Because nothing says excellent professional judgment like allowing a startup to use your body as a highway billboard.

The CEO reportedly said the company values people who are bold, take risks, and do things that have not been done before.

But people have gotten regrettable tattoos before.

That has absolutely been done.

Usually, it happens in Las Vegas at 2:00 in the morning after someone named Tyler says, “You know what would be hilarious?”

The only difference is that Tyler does not normally control your access to health insurance.

Welcome to the Corporate Hunger Games

The real problem was not simply that the stunt was ridiculous. Ridiculous can be fun. Wearing a banana costume to a company picnic is ridiculous. Hiring a mariachi band to announce quarterly earnings is ridiculous.

This was different.

The technology job market has been battered by layoffs, hiring freezes, automated résumé filters, and interview processes that feel like applying to become Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Candidates are desperate to speak with an actual human being.

Then along comes a CEO offering to let them skip the line if they permanently brand themselves with his company logo.

That is not a quirky recruiting exercise. That is a power imbalance wearing a black turtleneck and calling itself innovation.

Job candidates are already expected to survive six interviews, three personality tests, a take-home assignment, a presentation, a panel discussion, and a final conversation with someone whose title is Chief Vibe Officer.

Now we are adding body modification?

What is the next stage?

“Congratulations, Sharon. You have advanced to round seven. Before meeting our vice president of strategic synergies, please submit a blood sample, your dental records, and proof that you have named your firstborn Jordan LemonLime Smith.”

Perhaps candidates will be asked to legally change their middle names.

Maybe the employee handbook will include mowhak hairstyles.

By 2027, the application may read…

“Are you willing to donate a kidney to demonstrate cultural alignment?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Only after vesting my stock options.”

The Most Expensive Fast Pass in Recruiting

The tattoo was essentially a permanent fast pass to an interview.

Imagine if Disney operated this way.

“You can wait 90 minutes for Space Mountain, or you can tattoo Mickey Mouse across your chest and board immediately.”

Even Disney would say that feels a little aggressive.

The strangest part is that an interview is not a prize. An interview is a conversation. The company is also supposed to convince the candidate that it deserves their labor, ideas, time, and talent.

Some founders seem to forget that.

They behave as if getting into their office is like being admitted to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Everyone must demonstrate loyalty, enthusiasm, and a willingness to fall into a river of stupidity.

Except Willy Wonka gave the children chocolate.

LemonLime gave people a Zoom invitation.

Then Came the Apology

After the internet reacted with the restrained sensitivity for which the internet is famous, Zietz deleted the original LinkedIn post and apologized.

He reportedly called the stunt “reckless” and admitted that he had failed to appreciate the pressure facing job seekers.

The company also offered to pay for laser tattoo removal. Wow, thanks.

Nice to know the company has a dermatology reimbursement program.

Imagine explaining that expense to an investor.

“What is this $14,000 charge?”

“Talent acquisition.”

“And this one?”

Talent removal. Literally.

Zietz later clarified that everyone at the event could receive an interview, whether or not they got tattooed. Again, thanks Zietz.

That somehow makes the story even more ABSURD!

The seven people did not need the tattoos at all.

They were not buying an interview. They were apparently volunteering to become walking promotional merchandise.

Some people received a business card.

Seven people became the business card.

Bold Is Not the Same as Reckless

Silicon Valley loves the word bold.

Every startup is bold. Every founder is disruptive. Every office has exposed brick, suspiciously expensive sparkling water, and at least one person explaining that the company is reimagining something that already works.

There is nothing wrong with taking risks. Great companies are built by people willing to challenge conventional thinking.

But boldness without judgment is not innovation.

It is a fraternity dare with venture capital.

A genuinely bold recruiting strategy would be simpler.

Tell candidates the salary upfront.

Limit the process to three interviews.

Respond within a week.

Do not ask people to complete 14 hours of unpaid work.

Treat applicants like human beings.

Now that would disrupt the industry!

The Permanent Lesson

LemonLime wanted candidates who would take risks. Instead, it created a lesson about what happens when founder enthusiasm escapes the building without adult supervision.

The participants can remove the tattoos, although laser removal may require several treatments. The company can delete the post. The CEO can apologize.

The internet, however, never forgets.

The next time a startup says it wants candidates who are obsessed with the mission, applicants should ask a few follow-up questions.

How obsessed?

Are we talking about working late occasionally?

Wearing company swag?

Getting the logo tattooed on our bodies?

Naming our children after the CEO?

Because there is a meaningful difference between believing in a company and becoming its merchandise.

If your recruiting process requires a tattoo artist, perhaps it is not a recruiting process.

Perhaps it is a cult with a dermatology plan.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist, and professional observer of Silicon Valley absurdity. She believes innovation should change the world, but preferably without requiring a tattoo, a blood sample, or naming your firstborn after the CEO.

There are certain places where time behaves differently.

The DMV. The airport security line. And the pharmacy. Where your prescription was allegedly “almost ready” 45 minutes ago.

You’re standing beneath fluorescent lighting, listening to hold music playing somewhere behind the counter, while an exhausted pharmacist attempts to answer three phones, process an insurance rejection, count pills, and explain to someone that no, the pharmacy cannot refill a prescription written for their dog under their own name.

But help may soon arrive!

And naturally, it’s a robot. Well sort of… A robot dispensary. This is really amazing!

Queue, a Palo Alto startup founded by veterans of Tesla, Zipline, and healthcare company Heal, has emerged from stealth with $12.6 million in seed funding and what it calls the world’s first fully autonomous robotic pharmacy.

That’s right. A pharmacy kiosk that can fill your prescription in approximately 60 seconds.

Sixty seconds!

That’s barely enough time to open your phone, forget why you opened it, check Instagram, and become emotionally invested in a video of a raccoon washing a grape.

How Queue Works

Queue isn’t simply a vending machine with blood-pressure medication next to the Doritos. Watch the video…

The system starts with sealed wholesale bottles of medication. When a patient arrives, they display a QR code containing their prescription information.

Then the machine gets to work.

Its robotic system selects the correct medication, counts the pills, transfers them into a prescription vial, and uses computer vision to verify every pill against its National Drug Code.

A vial containing 60 pills can reportedly be filled in about 30 seconds, with the completed prescription delivered to the patient in under a minute.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent longer than that trying to open the childproof cap.

The machine can hold approximately 250 to 280 of the most commonly prescribed medications. Each internal storage cell can contain thousands of pills, while artificial intelligence monitors inventory and alerts technicians when supplies need to be replenished.

It’s efficient. It’s precise. And it never looks at the clock and whispers, “I cannot believe Brenda called out again.”

Why This Matters

Queue isn’t creating this technology just because robots are cool, although, let’s be honest, robots are extremely cool.

It’s responding to a genuine healthcare crisis.

Since 2010, nearly one-third of American pharmacies have closed. Entire communities now live in what are known as pharmacy deserts. Areas where obtaining basic medication may require a long drive, unreliable transportation, or considerable time away from work.

At the same time, approximately one-third of Americans reportedly fail to fill prescriptions because the medication is too expensive or inconvenient to obtain.

Think about that.

We possess artificial intelligence capable of writing poetry, generating movies, and placing a cowboy hat on your dog. Yet millions of people still struggle to obtain their blood-pressure medication!

Queue wants to change that by placing autonomous pharmacies inside hospitals, retail locations, clinics, and underserved communities.

Instead of forcing every patient to travel to a traditional pharmacy, the pharmacy could effectively come to the patient.

What Happens to Pharmacists?

Whenever automation enters an industry, people will ask, Is this machine taking someone’s job?

Queue argues that its technology could help pharmacists return to the work they were actually trained to perform.

Pharmacists are highly educated healthcare professionals. Yet much of their day is consumed by manually counting pills, filling bottles, managing inventory, wrestling with insurance companies, and answering the phone while six people stare at them impatiently.

Automating the mechanical portion of the process could give pharmacists more time to counsel patients, identify dangerous drug interactions, answer medical questions, and coordinate care with physicians.

In other words, the robot counts the pills. The pharmacist takes care of the person.

That is exactly where automation works best. Machines handling repetitive precision tasks while humans handle judgment, empathy, and the delicate art of explaining why you should not take your medication with three margaritas.

The Regulatory Question

Of course, Queue still has a major hurdle ahead.

Its founders must convince state pharmacy boards that a completely autonomous system can verify prescriptions as safely, or more safely, than a human being.

That will require clinical evidence, rigorous testing, security controls, audit trails, and extremely strong safeguards against mechanical failure, software errors, cyberattacks, fraudulent prescriptions, and incorrect patient identification.

Because when Netflix recommends the wrong movie, you lose two hours.

When a pharmacy dispenses the wrong medication, the consequences are considerably more serious.

Queue’s computer vision system is designed to identify every pill and confirm it against the prescription and National Drug Code. If the company can demonstrate that these automated checks outperform traditional manual verification, regulators may begin viewing autonomous pharmacies as a safer infrastructure model rather than a risky experiment.

The Pharmacy of the Future

Queue describes its technology as a new infrastructure layer for American healthcare.

That may sound like startup language. The kind usually followed by the words disruptive ecosystem and a PowerPoint slide featuring seven arrows…but the underlying idea is important.

The traditional pharmacy model depends upon expensive retail locations, large inventories, substantial staffing, and patients physically traveling to a centralized store.

Queue turns that model inside out.

A compact autonomous pharmacy could operate closer to the patient, dispense medication at a lower cost, remain available beyond traditional business hours, and reduce the burden on overworked pharmacists.

It could be especially transformative for rural communities, older adults, hospitals discharging patients late at night, and neighborhoods abandoned by major pharmacy chains.

Imagine leaving your doctor’s appointment and receiving your medication before reaching the parking lot.

No second trip. No two hour wait. No discovering at 8:57 p.m. that the pharmacy closed at 8:00 p.m.

My Futurist Take

Queue represents something much larger than faster prescriptions.

We are entering an era in which artificial intelligence is moving beyond our screens and into the physical infrastructure of everyday life.

AI will not merely answer questions. It will manage warehouses, prepare meals, drive vehicles, inspect products, deliver packages, and increasingly, dispense healthcare.

The most valuable robotic systems will not be the flashy humanoids doing backflips at technology conferences.

They will be machines like Queue. Specialized systems quietly solving expensive, frustrating, real-world problems.

If Queue succeeds, the pharmacy of the future may not resemble a pharmacy at all. It could be a secure robotic unit in a hospital lobby, grocery store, rural clinic, senior community, or neighborhood health center.

You walk up. You scan your prescription. The machine verifies everything. Thirty seconds later, your medication appears.

Then you spend the next ten minutes trying to remember where you parked.

Some human problems even robots cannot solve.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist who explores how intelligent machines are reshaping everyday life. One robot and one prescription at a time.

Yes, I understand the irony.

I read an article saying people no longer read. Now I’m writing an article about that article, hoping you’ll read this one!

So far, we’re hanging by a thread.

Words aren’t disappearing. They’re everywhere. In texts, captions, alerts, posts, headlines and notifications from apps we don’t remember installing.

We are surrounded by words. We just don’t like them gathered together in large groups.

A paragraph is fine. Three paragraphs feel suspicious. A 400-page book now looks like something written by AI.

The percentage of Americans who read for pleasure on an average day reportedly fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet last year.

Apparently, we’ll study a six-team parlay, calculate point spreads and analyze whether a backup quarterback can perform in light rain, but Doctor Zhivago is asking way too much.

We’re Reading More and Understanding Less

The strange thing about a post-literate society is that it doesn’t look illiterate.

People technically read all day. But much of what we consume is fragmented and designed to provoke an immediate reaction.

We read headlines we don’t open, watch videos we don’t finish and argue about articles nobody involved has read.

Then we share them.

The average attention span on a screen has reportedly dropped to about 47 seconds.

That’s not an attention span. That’s a microwave setting!

Reading a book requires us to remain inside another person’s mind without swiping away. It develops concentration, empathy and the ability to follow a complicated argument.

Those skills are rather important in a democracy.

Also in a marriage.

But particularly in a democracy.

Older People Still Know How to Think

Here is something our youth obsessed culture often misses. Older generations learned how to think before technology learned how to think for them.

We read books, newspapers, instruction manuals and maps. If we wanted to understand something, we had to concentrate and slowly assemble the information in our minds.

We weren’t necessarily smarter. We were trained differently.

Older adults are frequently treated as technologically behind. Yet many possess habits that are becoming rare. Patience, skepticism, reflection and the ability to grapple with a difficult idea.

We can still read beyond the headline. We recognize the difference between an argument and a slogan. And we can usually tell when confidence is being used as a substitute for knowledge.

Artificial Intelligence and the End of Effort

Now we arrive at the largest irony of all. Artificial intelligence.

I work in technology, and I believe AI is extraordinary. But every powerful tool also offers us another way to avoid doing something difficult.

First, we stopped reading.

Now we may stop writing.

Writing forces us to discover whether we truly understand our own ideas. A thought can sound brilliant in your head. Then you try to place it into a paragraph and realize it has no pants on.

AI can produce a polished essay before the human being has developed an opinion.

The sentences are crisp. The commas are standing in all the right places.

But nobody had to think.

AI should be a thinking partner. Not a thinking replacement. Otherwise, we may create more content while producing less understanding.

Politics in the Age of 47 Seconds

A post-literate society will inevitably produce post-literate politics.

Complex policy doesn’t perform well in a short video. A detailed explanation cannot compete with a memorable nickname and dramatic music.

The successful politician is increasingly not the person with the strongest argument, but the person who looks convincing on camera and creates the quickest emotional reaction.

We are moving from résumé criteria to dating criteria.

Do I like this person?
Does this person appear strong?
Would I watch this person for four more seconds?

A population that cannot sustain attention becomes easier to manipulate, not because people are unintelligent, but because manipulation thrives when information arrives without context.

The Library Isn’t Burning. We Just Stopped Going Inside.

Today, much of humanity’s accumulated knowledge can be reached from a device in our pockets.

The books aren’t burning. The information isn’t disappearing.

We are losing the patience required to enter it.

We built the greatest repository of knowledge in history and mainly use it to watch strangers reorganize their refrigerators on TikTok.

Perhaps that is the defining irony of our age. We solved access to information at precisely the moment we began losing the attention necessary to absorb it.

Older generations have an important role to play. We shouldn’t apologize for our attention spans or treat deep reading as outdated. We should preserve it, model it and teach it.

Use AI. Watch videos. Enjoy the memes.

But READ the full article. READ the opposing argument.

Read something difficult without immediately asking a machine to simplify it.

The future may belong to artificial intelligence, but judgment, wisdom and understanding must still belong to HUMANS.

And if you made it to the end, congratulations.

You may now consider yourself part of the resistance!

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist, and lifelong reader who still believes reading a complete paragraph is worth the effort.

Chip is a tiny electric vehicle that talks, parks itself, and displays emotions through an animated LED grille. Because apparently what our country needed wasn’t affordable healthcare. It was a golf cart with feelings.

Think SmartCar meets Tesla (sort of)…

Okay? I’m watching and listening…

For decades, cars have been getting bigger and more aggressive. Trucks now look like they’re angry at the road. SUVs have grilles large enough to barbecue a moose. You don’t climb into some of these vehicles, you obtain a Sherpa and establish base camp.

But Chip Motors has gone in another direction.

Chip is small. Chip is cheerful. Chip has a little digital face!

Your current car just flashes a mysterious orange engine light and refuses to explain itself. Chip may actually look concerned.

“Danielle, I noticed you hit that curb.”

“I did not hit the curb.”

“My cameras recorded the curb.”

“Chip, we’re not discussing this.”

For $15,000, the four-seat Chip is essentially an upscale golf cart that went to college and got certified for road use. It has a top speed of 25 miles per hour and can travel about 100 miles on a charge.

Twenty-five miles per hour isn’t fast, but it’s perfect for Florida, where half the drivers are going 17 and the other half are doing 94 while holding an iced coffee and FaceTiming their dermatologist.

Chip is classified as a low-speed vehicle, so it’s intended for roads with speed limits generally around 35 mph or less, depending on state law. In other words, it’s ideal for the beach, the grocery store, retirement communities, and escaping an argument very gradually…

…and at 25 mph, you’ll still be visible from the kitchen for another eleven minutes.

The Car That Sends Itself Away

Chip’s most interesting feature is called Chip Go!

You drive to the beach, unload your chairs and towels, and then summon a trained human teleoperator to remotely drive Chip to a parking spot.

That’s right. Somebody sitting in another location parks your car for you.

Let’s be clear here. This is NOT a Tesla, which actually parks itself.

Chip’s valet parking feature has finally become a remote work-from-home job.

Initially, remote operation will only happen when nobody is inside the vehicle, which is reassuring. You don’t want to be sitting at a red light when a stranger in Tampa suddenly assumes control and says, “Hi, this is Kevin. I’ll be handling your left turn today.”

Chip hasn’t announced what the remote driving service will cost. The company says owners may buy bundles of teleoperation time by the minute or hour.

Naturally, this will lead to a subscription.

• Chip Basic: We find your car.

• Chip Plus: We park your car.

• Chip Premium: We remember where we parked it.

• Chip Emotional Support: We tell you the other driver was clearly at fault.

A Car With a Personality

Chip’s animated grille gives it a friendly little face. This raises important questions.

What emotions will it display?

Will it smile when fully charged?

Will it look disappointed when you leave a shopping cart loose in the parking lot?

Will it panic when a Ford F-350 pulls up behind it?

And what happens when the battery reaches 5%? Does it display a sad face? Does it become passive-aggressive?

“I’m fine.”

“Chip, your battery is almost dead.”

“No, go ahead. Run into Target. I’ll just sit here without air conditioning and think about how we got to this point.”

Cars already judge us silently. Chip merely has the technology to make it official.

The Robot in Your Driveway

Chip’s founder wants this to become America’s first mass-market robot. A robot on four wheels that lives in your garage instead of a humanoid robot wandering around your kitchen.

That does feel less alarming.

If a kitchen robot becomes self-aware, it has access to the knives.

If Chip becomes self-aware, it can only escape at 25 mph.

We’ll catch it near the mailbox.

The company eventually hopes to introduce genuine autonomous driving, although that’s a much bigger technological leap. For now, Chip will rely on cameras, radar, and remote human operators. It has no lidar, probably because at this price there wasn’t enough room in the budget after they gave the car emotions.

Deliveries are expected to begin in Florida in 2027 before expanding elsewhere. A four-seat version starts at $15,000, while a six-seater is planned for $18,000. InsideEVs reports that options will include doors, paint colors, a surfboard rack, and other accessories.

Yes, you heard that correctly…doors are an option.

At $15,000, Chip is saying, “You can have artificial intelligence or protection from weather. Choose wisely.”

Would I Buy One?

Maybe.

It’s inexpensive, adorable, easy to charge, and designed for short local trips to pick up cottage cheese at Whole Foods.

I live in Las Vegas where golf cart driving works too. And my Whole Foods is literally 90 seconds away.

Chip represents a new idea.

Perhaps the car of the future doesn’t need to be enormous, intimidating, or capable of accelerating from zero to sixty before you’ve finished sneezing.

Maybe it just needs to be affordable, practical, and smart enough to go park itself.

Of course, the real test will be whether Americans can accept a car limited to 25 mph.

We’re a nation that becomes furious when the microwave says one minute.

So, I’m rooting for Chip!

Because if I’m going to spend $15,000 on a robot, I’d like it to smile when it sees me, carry my groceries, and leave quietly when I’m done with it.

That’s not a car.

That’s the healthiest relationship I’ve ever heard of.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist, and professional observer of machines becoming more emotionally available than people. She writes about what’s coming next, especially when it talks, parks itself, and smiles through an LED grille.

I spent thirty years walking past a door everyone kept telling me to open.

It started, of all places, with an article in The New York Times in January. An article about the Grateful Dead and their music. Not the tie-dye, not the parking lot scene, not the mythology.

The music.

I read the article the way you read about a country you’ve never visited but everyone you respect keeps telling you to go visit.

So I picked one song. Althea.

The Song Is a Conversation

Here’s what nobody told me about Althea. It’s not a song about a girl. It’s a conversation with one, and she’s smarter than he is.

The first verse is an unnamed man telling Althea he’s leaving. He’s a wanderer, not the settling kind, born for the single life. He says it like a fact.

Men always announce their exits like weather reports.

The middle of the song belongs to Althea. She doesn’t beg. She diagnoses. She tells him he’s made a mistake, that he’s chasing something that isn’t out there, and that he’ll miss her. She says it calmly, which is how you know she’s right.

By the end, he knows it too. He realizes she was correct about all of it.

But she’s long gone. That’s the whole song. A man arrives at the truth exactly one exit too late.

There’s a line in the middle, the one that stopped me cold, where she tells him that the only person standing in his way is himself. "Ain't nobody messin' with you, but you.”

No enemy. No bad luck. No conspiracy. Just him.

Althea delivers it in one line.

The Rabbit Hole

Once I took the lyrics apart, I did what any newly obsessed person does. I went to YouTube and ran a private binge-jam fest, back to back, version after version.

Jerry Garcia in 1982, young and free. Then the years rolled forward. 1985. 1989. Early nineties. You can hear the song age with him. The tempo changes. The voice frays. The guitar gets more honest. By the versions near 1995, the year he died, Althea sounds less like a story he’s telling and more like one he’s confessing.

And then I remembered something about John Mayer playing with Dead & Company. A revival of sorts (non pun intended).

By the way, I also missed that performance at The Sphere last year.

But I veer.

So…yes, John Mayer, The blues guy from the 2000s, the tabloid guy, the guy your friends have opinions about. That guy. He plays Althea like he’s translating it for people like me. Clean enough that I could finally hear the architecture. Reverent enough that nothing sacred got lost. He was the interpreter I didn’t know I needed.

Jerry built the cathedral. Mayer handed me a map to it.

Beautiful.

The Deadhead in the Cafeteria

Here’s the part that stings.

I had so many chances to see the Dead. I never went. I worked in a San Jose technology company for three years with a genuine Deadhead, Chuck, who literally wore a tie-dye t-shirt and Birkenstocks to work everyday.

He would recite lyrics to me in the lunch room, every song, every line, patient as a missionary. I nodded politely and went back to my sandwich.

He wasn’t reciting lyrics. He was handing me the answers to a test I didn’t know I’d be taking thirty years later.

The irony writes itself. Althea is a song about someone who realizes the truth after the person delivering it is gone. I lived that song before I ever heard it. Jerry died in 1995. The lunch room closed. The moment passed. And I found the music anyway, decades late, through the least likely doorman imaginable.

Blind, Now Seeing

I was blind, but now I see. Yes, that’s Amazing Grace, and I mean it exactly that way. Some music you hear. Some music you’re finally ready for.

The lesson isn’t about the Dead.

The lesson is about all the doors people hold open for you while you’re too busy to walk through. The coworker in the cafeteria. The friend with the extra ticket. The article you almost didn’t read.

Nobody was standing in my way but me.

Althea tried to tell him. The Deadhead tried to tell me.

The good news about arriving late is that you still arrived.

The music didn’t go anywhere. It was waiting for me the whole time, patient as a lunch room missionary, for me to finally sit down and listen.

Danielle Striker is a technologist and futurist who’s usually early to the future but this time, thirty years late to the music.

Look at what has happened to us in barely eighteen months.

We wear devices around our necks that record every conversation. We clip pins to our lapels and pods to our phones. We transcribe meetings, feed the transcripts into a model, summarize the summary, rewrite the notes, and then paste the whole thing into another tool so it can polish what was already polished.

We are capturing everything and writing almost nothing.

The raw material of work has never been more abundant, and the human hand in that work has never felt more faint.

And we are all doing this under pressure.

Produce more. Move faster. Publish constantly. Respond immediately. Summarize everything. Ship before someone else does.

That is the trap.

And it has a name.

It is the prisoner’s dilemma.

If you do not use AI, you fall behind the people who do. You are slower. You produce less. You look inefficient in a market that increasingly rewards velocity.

But if you do use AI the way most people are using it, your work starts to sound like everyone else’s AI-generated work. The sentences get smoother, but less alive. The writing becomes competent, but generic. The reader starts to pull away.

So either choice costs you something.

Refuse the tool and lose on speed.

Overuse the tool and lose your voice.

That is the dilemma we are all living inside.

And someone said something to me recently that stopped me cold. They said, “The very skill you are so good at, AI, may actually be detrimental to your work.”

Huh?

And it got me thinking. Because it is not entirely wrong.

The very thing that gives us leverage can also erase the thing that made us valuable in the first place.

Individually, the rational move is obvious. Use the tools. Draft with Claude. Research with Gemini. Synthesize with ChatGPT. Transcribe every call. Summarize every meeting. Turn every thought into content.

But when everyone does the same thing, we flood the world with the same agreeable, AI-machine shaped prose.

And here is the cost nobody really priced in.

Readers can feel it now.

They may not know exactly what they are reacting to, but they know something is off. The paragraph is too even. The tone is too polished. The opinion is too safe.

The voice feels assembled rather than lived.

We have trained an entire audience to distrust the exact thing we are all racing to produce more of!

That is the real issue.

This is not a simple technology problem. It is a cultural inflection point.

The people who figure out how to move fast without becoming generic will define the next decade of knowledge work.

Because opting out is not realistic.

Refusing AI completely is not a strategy. It is unilateral disarmament in a market that is already moving at machine speed.

You cannot decide to work like it is 2019 and expect the world to slow down for you.

But using AI carelessly is not a strategy either.

The default workflow, capture, transcribe, generate, ship, produces more output, but often less trust. Faster, yes. But not always better. And certainly not always human.

So the question is no longer whether we should use AI.

That question is settled.

The real questions are…

How much should we use it?

Where should we use it?

And how do we make sure the tool serves our voice instead of replacing it?

That starts with a better division of labor.

The machine is extraordinary at the fast part. Let it gather, research, and summarize the mountain of transcripts. Let it organize the chaos.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, they are all useful for that.

But the machine cannot own the part that makes someone TRUST you.

It cannot own the specific reference that came from your life. It cannot own the earned opinion, that carries risk.

It cannot own the scar tissue, the conviction, the experiential connection only you can make.

That layer has to stay human.

Not because some rule says so.

Because that is the only part the audience actually came for.

So maybe the next move is not rewriting everything AI gives us.

Maybe the next move is training it properly.

The reason most AI output needs a full rewrite is because people are using it raw, straight out of the box, in the same default voice everyone else is using.

That is the actual problem.

Here’s an idea. Feed it your actual and historical writing.

Give it your patterns. Teach it the words you would never use.

Teach it the rhythm you actually have. Teach it how you think, not just what you want it to say.

A tool trained on you does not need to be rewritten from scratch.

It needs to be edited.

That is a completely different amount of work.

And that may be the whole game.

Why not have an AI skill file built from twenty years of your own writing? A real profile. Your language. Your cadence. Your worldview. Your edge. Your restraint. Your fingerprints.

I am serious.

That is where this is going.

Because the advantage will not belong to the person producing the most content. The internet already has too much content.

The advantage will belong to the person who can move fast and still sound unmistakably human.

The prisoner’s dilemma only traps you if everyone is competing on volume.

So stop competing only on volume.

Compete on trust.

Compete using your voice.

Compete on being an original thinker!

Compete on the ability to use the machine without becoming the machine.

The tools are not the threat.

Your voice is not the threat.

The threat is the growing number of people who are choosing one and abandoning the other.

Use the machine for speed.

For structure, research and synthesis.

But keep the parts that are yours!

And spend your effort teaching the tool to sound like you, because that is where the next advantage lives.

Not in the rewrite. In the training.

I think the next step is obvious.

We are going to see models trained on everything you have ever written, said, posted, texted, tweeted, dictated, ranted about, half-finished, deleted, or sent at 11:47 p.m. when you probably should have gone to bed.

And once that happens, the output will not sound like “AI.”

It will sound exactly like you.

Your cadence. Your weird little phrases. Your opinions. Your pauses. Your pet words. Your particular way of making a point and then circling back to make it sharper.

At that point, no one is going to be able to tell where you end and the model begins.

Anyone who wants to take a prop bet with me on this, let me know in the comments below.

I have played enough poker to know when the odds are on my side.

Now let me blow your mind with this thought…

There is an even deeper worry underneath all of this now, and it turns the conversation from a workplace debate into something closer to a generational fault line.

There is a generation coming up that may never know the blank page without a machine already filling it.

Kids will have AI beside them from the first sentence they try to write. Their thinking will be augmented before it is fully formed. Their words will be suggested before they have struggled to find their own.

Those of us arguing about this now at least learned to write the hard way first.

We had to sit with silence.

We had to wrestle with a sentence.

We had to discover our own voice before the tools arrived.

And we had to do in APA format. (Wincing)…

We have something to protect because we built something before the machine showed up.

They may not…ever.

If you never have to struggle to find your own words, you may never develop your own words at all. Let that sink in.

The real danger is not just that we start sounding like the machine.

The real danger is that a whole generation grows up with no original voice to lose because they were augmented before they ever wrote a line that was truly theirs.

Academia is wrestling with the same split and mostly losing.

Universities have moved from outright bans to disclosure rules, AI-resistant assignments, and detection tools that still cannot reliably tell the difference between human and machine writing. Some of these tools have wrongly flagged human writing, especially from non-native English speakers, at alarming rates.

So even the institutions whose job is to teach people how to think and write cannot consistently tell human work from machined output.

The smarter ones are beginning to understand the only real answer.

Stop trying to police the tool.

Redesign the work so the human thinking is visible.

That is the same answer the rest of us are circling around.

Protect the human layer.

Now I say, good luck with that.

That train left the building a long time ago, and it has our banned books, our education system, our marketing departments, our content creators, and half the internet on board.

“May you live in interesting times.”

And by the way, no one really knows who said or wrote that.

Does it really even matter? That prose outlived everyone.

Ponder that for a while.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist who writes about AI, work, and the strange irony of using machines to preserve the very human voice they are threatening to erase.

The alarm clock is going extinct, and I am not organizing the candlelight vigil.

For about a century, a small plastic dictator sat on our nightstands and ran our lives. It had one job: explode at 6:00 a.m. and yank us out of the best dream we were ever going to have.

And it did that job with all the emotional warmth of a smoke detector with unresolved issues.

We didn’t question it.

We bought it.

We plugged it in.

We placed it eighteen inches from our sleeping faces like, “Yes, please, scream directly into my soul before sunrise.”

Look at what we accepted.

There was the old wind up brass double-bell alarm clock (for those of you old enough to remember), two tiny cymbals and a little hammer, basically a miniature school fire drill you voluntarily kept next to your head.

There was the Sony Dream Machine, glowing red in the dark like the eye of a robot that did not dream and absolutely did not want you to either.

There was the flip clock, clacking through the minutes like a bored librarian judging your life choices.

And then, of course, the masterpiece of psychological warfare: the snooze button.

Nine more minutes.

Always nine.

Not ten, because apparently joy had to be rationed. Not eight, because that would be cruel.

Nine. A number chosen by engineers who clearly woke up angry and decided the rest of us should, too.

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud. The alarm clock was never good.

It was just first.

And then the smartphone walked into the room and quietly handled the situation.

No drama. No funeral. No sad montage. Your phone just showed up on the nightstand, already doing seventeen other jobs, and said, “I’ll take it from here.”

It already told time. It already knew your calendar. It already knew you had a 7:00 a.m. call with someone in a time zone you resent.

It already knew your entire life in a way that feels both helpful and legally troubling.

So it absorbed the alarm clock’s one job the way a giant corporation absorbs a smaller company.

No press release.

No flowers.

Just one day the clock radio was gone, and everyone under twenty looked at it like it was a butter churn.

Ask a nineteen year old what a “clock radio” is and watch their face do that thing where they’re trying to be polite but also wondering whether it requires a crank.

But the smartphone was only the murder weapon.

The more interesting part is what’s replacing the whole idea.

Because we didn’t just kill the alarm clock.

We’re starting to kill the concept of being attacked awake.

The old concept was violence. A sound loud enough to override biology, peace, dreams, dignity, and occasionally your will to live.

The new concept is seduction.

The Hatch Restore doesn’t blast you awake. It pretends to be a sunrise. It glows warmer and brighter over thirty minutes until your body slowly decides, “Oh, look at that. Morning has arrived. Maybe I won’t begin the day in combat mode.”

The Philips Wake-Up Light does the same thing with the quiet confidence of a Dutch engineer who owns excellent luggage, and for the low price of $320.00 (USD). Sheesh!

Meanwhile, your Oura ring and Apple Watch are lying in wait all night, tracking your sleep stages like tiny wearable sleep detectives. They wait for a lighter sleep phase and gently nudge you awake instead of ripping you out of deep sleep like a trout at a fishing derby.

And that is a genuinely better idea.

The old alarm clock treated 6:00 a.m. as a hard boundary and your nervous system as collateral damage.

The new model treats waking up as something your body should finish, not something a machine should inflict.

One is a jump scare.

The other is a butler opening the curtains and whispering, “Madam, the day has begun, and no one has chosen violence.” Very European.

And frankly, that’s progress.

Because waking up should not feel like being evicted from your own unconscious.

It should not require a device that sounds like a truck backing into a dumpster.

It should not make your first emotion of the day betrayal.

For generations, we accepted the alarm clock because we thought that was just adulthood. You grow up, you get a job, and a small angry box screams at you until retirement.

That was the deal.

But technology, for all its weirdness, has finally done something useful here. It looked at the most hated object in the bedroom and said, “What if we made this less horrible?”

That’s innovation.

Not flying cars. Not robot dogs. Not a refrigerator that texts you because you’re out of oat milk.

A morning that doesn’t begin with emotional assault.

So goodbye, alarm clock. And Hello to “Alexa, set my wake up sound for 7:30 a.m.”

Good Bye Alarm Clock. You were loud. You were loyal. You were terrible at reading the room.

Nobody sent flowers.

But somewhere, in a junk drawer beside three expired batteries and a mystery key, your legacy lives on.

And tomorrow morning, when my phone gently wakes me with soft chimes and simulated sunlight, I will think of you briefly.

Then I will hit snooze.

Because progress is real…but I still love to sleep!

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist who writes about the everyday gadgets quietly plotting from our nightstands. She believes technology should make life smarter, kinder, and ideally less likely to yell at us at 6:00 a.m.

There is a particular kind of panic that hits you somewhere in adulthood.

Not the normal panic, like “Did I leave the stove on?” or “Why did I walk into this room?” or “Why is my phone updating when I need to leave in four minutes?”

I mean the bigger one.

The quiet one.

The one that whispers…

Wait a minute. Wasn’t I supposed to be farther along in life?

And then immediately, because we are apparently very kind to ourselves, we follow that with…

Also, why does everyone on the internet appear to be 28, a billionaire, hydrated, and launching a company from their couch?

Society loves an early bloomer.

We have entire award systems built around it.

“30 Under 30.”

“40 under 40.”

“25 to Watch.”

“Teen Founder Raises $40 Million.”

Wonderful. Good for them. Truly.

But some of us were not designed to peak while still having the metabolism of a hummingbird.

Some of us were busy living.

Experimenting.

Falling down.

Getting back up.

Changing careers.

Taking care of people.

Starting over.

Making mistakes.

Learning what we actually care about.

Collecting life experience like a woman at Costco who only came in for paper towels and somehow left with patio furniture, two rotisserie chickens, and a new identity.

And here is what I am starting to believe.

Maybe I am not behind.

Maybe I am not late.

Maybe I have been gathering material.

Because even though I have accomplished a lot in my life, I have this deep feeling that I have not even scratched the surface.

Not even close.

I feel like I have been warming up.

Stretching.

Adjusting the microphone.

Looking for my good lighting.

And now something in me is saying…

Oh, honey. Now we begin.

That is the thing about late bloomers. They are not failed early bloomers.

They are not people who missed the bus and are now sprinting down the street yelling, “Wait! I have a dream!”

Late bloomers are built differently.

They often do not follow the neat little path.

They wander. They sample. They try five things that seem unrelated until one day all of it comes together and people say, “Wow, how did you know how to do that?”

And the answer is, I have no idea. I just lived long enough to connect the weird dots.

Paul Cézanne is one of the great late bloomer stories.

He was rejected. A lot.

Not we regret to inform you - rejected once.

Rejected repeatedly. Professionally. Publicly. Artistically.

He did not have his first one man show until he was 56.

Fifty-six. Let that sink in!

Do you know what society tells women at 56?

“Have you considered soft pants and disappearing?”

Meanwhile Cézanne was over there becoming one of the fathers of modern art.

A month before his death, he was still trying to reach something deeper in his work. Still restless. Still unsatisfied. Still chasing intensity.

That is not failure.

That is fire!

And I understand that fire.

I understand the feeling of having done things, built things, survived things, achieved things, and still feeling like there is a larger version of yourself knocking from the inside.

Like there is another room in your own soul you have not opened yet.

And maybe the key to that room was not available to me at 25.

Maybe at 25, I would have used it to open a closet full of shoes and bad decisions (e.g. my motorcycle accident).

Maybe wisdom takes time because wisdom is not just information.

It’s pattern recognition.

It’s knowing when something smells wrong before the spreadsheet says so.

It is hearing a sentence in a meeting and knowing, “That is not a strategy. That is a fog machine.”

It is meeting someone and knowing within six minutes whether they are brilliant, dangerous, or just using the word “synergy” as a cry for help.

You do not get that from being young.

You get that from living.

You get that from losing.

You get that from trying things that did not work!

You get that from rebuilding.

You get that from sitting in the quiet after disappointment and realizing you are still here.

Still curious.

Still hungry.

Still weirdly optimistic, even though life has given you several excellent reasons to become a decorative throw pillow.

Late bloomers are often driven by something deeper than applause.

Early systems reward the people who are great at collecting gold stars.

Grades. Titles. Awards. Promotions. Fancy bios. Impressive badges.

And listen, I am not against badges. I have collected a few myself. I enjoy a credential or 13 (lol). I am not made of stone.

But late bloomers are usually not powered only by outside validation.

They are powered by curiosity.

By obsession.

By the little voice that says…

There is something here. Keep going.

That kind of motivation is not flashy at first.

It does not always look impressive.

Sometimes it looks like wandering. And “Not all those who wander are lost.” - J.R.R. Tolkien,)

Sometimes it looks like starting over.

Sometimes it looks like being interested in too many things.

Which, by the way, society loves to criticize.

Pick one thing.

Stay in your lane.

Focus.

Excuse me, but some of us have multiple lanes.

Some of us are a whole freeway system.

Some of us are jazz bands with Wi-Fi and Pocket Aces.

And later in life, all those strange interests start talking to each other.

The career.

The heartbreak.

The reinvention.

The art.

The business.

The technology.

The poker table.

The leadership lessons.

The failures.

The spiritual questions.

The moments when you had to be strong because no one else was coming.

Suddenly, none of it was random.

It was compost.

And yes, compost is not glamorous.

Nobody puts “currently composting emotionally” on LinkedIn.

But compost is where things grow!

Julia Child did not become Julia Child at 22.

Van Gogh tried other paths before painting.

Ray Kroc was 52 when he found McDonald’s and turned it into something enormous.

Charles Darwin was not just sitting around having one cute idea about finches. He spent years gathering, questioning, corresponding, thinking, and connecting.

Late bloomers are not slow.

They are deep.

They take longer because they are not building a paper airplane.

They are building an ecosystem.

And maybe that is why so many of us feel this strange combination of urgency and peace as we get older.

Urgency because we know time matters.

Peace because we are finally less interested in pretending.

At a certain age, you stop auditioning for roles you do not want.

You stop trying to impress people you do not respect.

You stop forcing yourself into rooms where your nervous system is screaming, “Why are we here? We hate this carpeting.”

You start telling the truth.

You start trusting your taste.

You start noticing that your so called detours gave you range.

And range is powerful.

Range lets you see what the specialists miss.

Range lets you connect ideas other people keep in separate file folders.

Range lets you walk into a room and say, “Actually, this is not a marketing problem. This is a trust problem.”

Or, “This is not a technology problem. This is a human problem.”

Or, “This is not a midlife crisis. This is my second act warming up backstage, and she has excellent timing.”

That is where I feel I am now.

Not done.

Not winding down.

Not politely exiting the stage while someone plays soft piano music.

No.

I feel like I am entering the part where everything I have learned finally starts to work together.

The grit.

The humor.

The intuition.

The creativity.

The mistakes.

The resilience.

The faith.

The strange ability to survive hard things and still want to build beautiful things.

And maybe you feel that too.

Maybe you have looked at your own life and thought, “I should have done more by now.”

But what if that is the wrong question?

What if the better question is, What have I been preparing for?

What if the reason it did not happen earlier is because earlier you did not yet have the emotional muscle, the discernment, the courage, or the wisdom to execute it?

What if the delay was not denial?

What if it was development?

We love the image of blooming as something soft and pretty.

A flower opens. Everyone claps. Very nice.

But real blooming can be messy.

It can look like tearing off an old identity.

It can look like disappointing people.

It can look like leaving behind the version of yourself that knew how to survive, but not how to soar.

It can look like waking up one day and saying…

I am grateful for everything I have done. But I am not finished.

I am grateful.

…And I am not finished.

Both can be true.

You can honor your past and still refuse to be limited by it.

You can be proud of your accomplishments and still know there is more in you.

You can be seasoned and still be starting.

You can be tired and still be called.

You can have lived many lives and still feel one more magnificent life rising up inside you.

So here is to the late bloomers.

The people who took the scenic route.

The people who had to become themselves slowly.

The people who were underestimated, overlooked, rejected, rerouted, and still somehow kept a little flame burning.

The people who did not peak early because they were never meant to peak small.

Maybe the world has been obsessed with young genius for too long.

Maybe it is time we celebrate mature genius.

Weathered genius.

Funny genius.

Battle-tested genius.

The kind of genius that has receipts, reading glasses, and absolutely no time for nonsense.

Because some flowers bloom in spring.

Some bloom after the storm.

Some bloom when everyone assumed the garden was finished.

And some of us?

Some of us are just getting started.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist, writer, speaker, and most likely a late bloomer who believes wisdom, humor, and reinvention are some of the most powerful technologies we have.

There are many things I am willing to try in the name of productivity.

I will color code a calendar.
I will make a list.
I will even buy a notebook so beautiful I feel morally obligated to become a better person.

But the Pomodoro Technique?

Twenty-five minutes of work, then stop?

Stop?

In the middle of actual thought?

Who invented this? Someone who has never had a job, a deadline, a poker session, had to create a full corporate strategy deck, a crisis, a complicated email, a mother to care for, a company to help grow, a website to build, a Substack to write, dinner to cook, a dog staring at them like they owe her money, and 47 tabs open because life is not a monastery?

The Pomodoro Technique says: Work for 25 minutes, then take a break.

That is adorable.

That is not a productivity system. That is a snack schedule for a raccoon.

Now, I understand the theory. I really do. You pick one task. You set a timer. You focus until the timer rings. Then you stop and take a five minute break. After four rounds, you get a longer break, like you’re a golden retriever who successfully sat through obedience class.

And for some people, I’m sure this works beautifully. If you are procrastinating, exhausted, overwhelmed, or trying to trick your brain into starting something, fine. Twenty-five minutes can be a doorway.

But for people who live in deep focus land?

For people who spend eight, ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day building, writing, selling, thinking, troubleshooting, creating, strategizing, and pushing things across the finish line?

A 25 minute timer is not a productivity tool.

It is a hostage situation.

Because real work often does not even BEGIN in the first 25 minutes.

The first 25 minutes of my morning are where I remember where I put the file, reopen the tab, figure out why the thing broke, reread the email thread, realize the person from Tuesday is actually the person from Wednesday, and convince myself not to throw the entire internet into Lake Mead.

Then, somewhere around minute 38, the clouds part.

The brain starts firing.

The idea appears.

The sentence lands.

The architecture makes sense.

The strategy comes together.

The deal path reveals itself.

The poker hand from three hours ago suddenly becomes a pattern.

And then…ding!

Time to stop.

Excuse me?

That ding is not a timer. That ding is a tiny clown with a whistle walking into the operating room saying, “Scalpel down, everybody. Juice boxes.”

Imagine applying this to any serious profession.

You’re a tennis player at Wimbledon. It’s match point. You’re locked in. Crowd silent. The serve comes flying at you at 125 miles an hour and suddenly your little tomato timer goes off.

“Sorry, Serena. I know this is the finals, but I’m on my five-minute break. I’ll be back after I stare at a wall and question my life choices.”

You would be escorted off the court.

Or imagine being a chess grandmaster.

You’re twelve moves deep in a brilliant combination. You’ve calculated the knight sacrifice, the bishop fork, the mating net. The entire board is alive in your mind. You are not even in the room anymore. You are in a higher mathematical plane where people don’t talk and nobody asks you where the scissors are.

Then… ding!

“Time’s up! Please stop thinking.”

Congratulations, you just lost to a kitchen appliance.

Or picture high tech.

You’re in the middle of solving a complex partnership strategy involving AI, identity, security, marketplace motions, executive alignment, product positioning, and seventeen people named Mike.

You finally understand the whole thing.

Then the Pomodoro timer goes off.

“Okay team, great work. Let’s stop now because a tomato said so.”

This is how you become LAST in your field.

Not because you lack talent.

Because every time your brain starts becoming dangerous, you send it to recess.

And don’t even get me started on poker.

Poker players do not work in 25 minute blocks.

Poker players sit for ten, twelve, fourteen hours. Sometimes longer. And they are not sitting there doing light paperwork. They are calculating ranges, reading body language, tracking bet sizing, managing emotional control, noticing who is tilting, who is scared, who is over-bluffing, who just ordered their third espresso, and who suddenly got very quiet after pretending to be “just here for fun.”

Poker is not a 25 minute sport.

Poker is a psychological siege with snacks.

You cannot say, “Excuse me everyone, I know there is $3,000 in the pot and this man just shoved river in a line that makes absolutely no sense, but my Pomodoro timer went off. I’ll be back after I walk around and hydrate.”

The table would eat you alive.

And frankly, they should.

Because focus is not always a tidy little box.

Focus is a fire.

Sometimes you have to protect it. Sometimes you have to feed it. Sometimes you have to sit there for four hours while it looks like nothing is happening, when actually your mind is building the bridge under the water.

That is the part these cute little systems miss.

They assume the human brain is a microwave.

Press 25 minutes. Ding. Productivity burrito.

But my brain is not a microwave.

My brain is a jazz band, a poker room, cybersecurity incident response team, AI coding juggernaut, and a slightly judgmental Italian woman all operating at the same time.

It needs room.

It needs rhythm.

It needs long stretches where I can go deep enough to find the thing beneath the thing.

That is where the good stuff is!!!

Not in the first 25 minutes.

The first 25 minutes are the lobby.

The gold is on the seventh floor, behind a door with a weird password, guarded by a man named Gary who only answers emails on Thursdays.

And yes, I understand the Pomodoro people talk about fatigue (By the way, who is getting exhausted at 25 minutes of work?).

They say breaks reduce exhaustion. They say structure helps concentration. They say the little ticking timer creates accountability.

Wonderful.

But here’s my issue. Not all fatigue is bad.

Some fatigue means you are building something.

Some fatigue means you are in the arena.

Some fatigue means you are doing work that actually matters.

There is a difference between being mentally fried and being deeply engaged.

There is a difference between procrastinating and being in flow (in the zone).

There is a difference between needing a break and interrupting yourself like a nervous substitute teacher.

For me, 25 minutes is not deep work.

It is foreplay with a spreadsheet.

It is just enough time to get annoyed, caffeinated, and emotionally invested.

Then I am supposed to stop?

No.

Absolutely not.

I have lived too many lives for that.

I was on Broadway. Nobody stops rehearsal every 25 minutes because the tomato got anxious.

I play poker. Nobody pauses a 14 hour cash session because their “focus interval” ended.

I work in tech. Nobody solves complex AI, cybersecurity, cloud, identity, and partnership strategy in adorable little tomato slices.

And I write.

Writing is the worst possible place for this.

A real sentence may take 40 minutes to find you. A real idea may circle the airport for an hour before it lands. A real essay may start as a complaint about time management and become a manifesto about human cognition, discipline, poker, ambition, and why kitchen timers should not be allowed to run your life.

You cannot schedule that in 25 minute chunks.

You have to stay with it.

You have to sit in the chair.

You have to let the awkward first thoughts turn into better thoughts.

You have to resist the urge to check your phone, reorganize your desk, research soup recipes, or suddenly decide your entire life would improve if you bought different pens.

And then, eventually, the magic shows up.

That is the part I don’t want interrupted.

Now, I’m not saying the Pomodoro Technique is useless.

For some people, it is probably fantastic. If you have trouble starting, start with 25 minutes. If you are avoiding a task, trick yourself.

If your brain is screaming, “We cannot possibly do taxes,” fine. Tell it, “We are only doing taxes for 25 minutes.” That is not productivity. That is hostage negotiation with your own nervous system.

And sometimes that is exactly what we need.

But once I am in?

Once the engine is hot?

Once I am three layers deep into a strategy, a story, a deal, a poker read, a technical architecture, or the kind of thinking that actually changes outcomes?

Do not ding at me!

Do not tomato me!

Do not come near me with a mechanical kitchen timer unless it is attached to a plate of lasagna.

Because the world is not built by people who stop every 25 minutes.

Books are not written that way.

Championships are not won that way.

Companies are not built that way.

Poker games are not won that way.

Breakthroughs do not usually arrive politely between 10:00 and 10:25 with a five-minute pause for herbal tea.

Breakthroughs are rude.

They show up when they want.

Usually after you have stayed longer than everyone else.

After you kept thinking.

After you pushed past boredom.

After you sat through confusion.

After you stopped looking for the perfect system and started trusting your own capacity.

That is what I believe in.

Not endless grind for the sake of grind. Not burnout. Not pretending rest does not matter.

Rest matters.

But so does stamina.

So does depth.

So does the ability to focus beyond the length of a sitcom episode.

There is a muscle we are losing in this world, the ability to stay.

Stay with the problem.

Stay with the hand.

Stay with the page.

Stay with the business.

Stay with the uncomfortable middle where nothing is cute and nothing is done and nobody is clapping yet.

That is where mastery lives.

And mastery does not cook tomato sauce.

So use Pomodoro if it helps you begin.

Use it if your brain needs training wheels.

Use it if you are studying vocabulary or cleaning out your email.

But please do not tell me that 25 minutes is the gold standard for serious work.

For some of us, 25 minutes is just the warmup.

It is the shuffle before the deal.

It is the first serve.

It is the opening move.

It is the sound check.

It is the part where the brain clears its throat and says, “Okay, now we can begin.”

And once I begin?

I’m not stopping because a tomato timer told me to.

I’ll take my break when the game breaks.

Thanks.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, cybersecurity strategist, AI enthusiast, poker grinder, and recovering Broadway performer who believes deep work beats tomato kitchen timers, and no serious breakthrough was ever built in 25-minute slices.

There are some things artificial intelligence will be able to do beautifully.

It will be able to summarize the game.
It will calculate the shot chart.
It will tell you that OG Anunoby’s effective field goal percentage was historically absurd.
It will even be able to produce 47 charts proving the Knicks were statistically dominant, emotionally terrifying, and probably bad for the blood pressure of every cardiologist in Manhattan.

But AI will never be able to do what the New York Knicks just did.

Not ever.

AI can process pressure.
It cannot feel pressure.

AI can tell you the Knicks ended a 53-year championship drought. It can say, “The franchise had not won since 1973.”

Very nice. Very clean. Very emotionally dead.

But AI does not know what 53 years feels like in a human body.

It does not know what it feels like to be a kid watching your father yell at the television in Queens. It does not know the sound of Madison Square Garden when hope walks in wearing sneakers. It does not know the heartbreak of “maybe next year” becoming a family tradition, passed down like china nobody uses because everyone is afraid to break it.

AI has never sat on a couch with a plate of cold wings, bargaining with God in the fourth quarter.

The Knicks did something machines cannot do. They carried history.

They carried every bad trade, every broken season, every sports radio meltdown, every fan who said they were done and then absolutely was not done because the game started at 7:30.

And then they won anyway.

That is not an algorithm.

That is a human miracle wearing orange and blue.

Look at Jalen Brunson.

AI can tell you he scored 45 points. AI can tell you he won Finals MVP. AI can tell you he became the emotional engine of a city that has been waiting since bell bottom jeans were a legitimate lifestyle choice.

But AI cannot become Jalen Brunson.

AI cannot grow up watching its father fight for every inch of an NBA career. AI cannot absorb that quiet lesson: nothing is promised, everything is earned, and if you are smaller than the room expects, make the room adjust.

AI does not have a dad on the bench who knows what the journey cost.

AI does not have childhood memories.

AI does not have a chip on its shoulder.

AI has chips, technically, but that is not the same thing.

Jalen Brunson is not just a basketball player. He is proof that greatness does not always enter the room looking like a superhero. Sometimes greatness is 6 foot 2 inch, patient, stubborn, and built like it has been underestimated by every guy at every pickup game since ninth grade.

He did not Optimize Late Clock Execution.

He stood there while the possession got ugly, while the defense loaded up, while the crowd forgot to breathe, and he made a decision.

That is the part AI cannot touch.

The decision.

Not the calculation.
Not the probability.
The decision.

The human moment where the body is tired, the defender is leaning, the season is on the line, and something inside you says:

No. We are not losing this.

And then there is OG Anunoby.

OG is the kind of player AI would probably describe as an efficient two-way wing with strong spatial discipline, which is exactly why AI should not be allowed near poetry, or any sport for that matter.

OG was not a spreadsheet. OG was a silent assassin with excellent posture.

He shot like someone had found a secret corner three cheat code and refused to tell the Spurs. He defended like he had been personally offended by the concept of easy offense. He did not need to scream. He did not need to perform. He just kept showing up, hitting shots, cutting off angles, and looking like he might also be able to calmly assemble IKEA furniture without reading the instructions.

That is his gift.

AI can imitate confidence.
OG has quiet confidence.

There is a difference.

Quiet confidence is human. It comes from repetition, failure, coaching, recovery, and all the boring invisible work nobody cheers for. It comes from the lonely gym. It comes from the extra rep. It comes from doing your job so consistently that eventually history has to make room for you.

And Karl-Anthony Towns?

AI can tell you his plus-minus was historic. It can measure his impact by possession, lineup, and spacing.

But it cannot understand what it means for a gifted, criticized, complicated, deeply human player to find the right team, the right role, the right moment, and become part of something larger than himself.

That is not data.

That is belonging.

And belonging is one of the most powerful forces in the world.

The Knicks did not win because they were perfect. That is the beauty of it.

They trailed.
They stumbled.
They looked cooked.
Several times, they looked not just cooked, but fully plated, garnished, and served with a side of “there’s always next year.”

And then they came back.

Again…

And again…

And again.

This is where the AI comparison falls apart completely.

AI does not know what it means to be down 29 and keep playing.

AI does not know the humiliation of the scoreboard. It does not know the crowd going quiet.

It does not know the internal conversation every human has when things are going badly…

Do I fold?
Do I panic?
Do I start blaming everybody?
Do I pretend I pulled a hamstring emotionally?

The Knicks answered differently.

They stayed.

That is the word.

They stayed in the game.
They stayed in the possession.
They stayed in the pain.
They stayed with each other.

That is a deeply human act.

In life, most of us do not need to come back from 29 down in the NBA Finals. But we know what 29 down feels like.

It is the diagnosis.
The divorce.
The layoff.
The grief.
The business that did not work.
The dream that embarrassed us.
The season where nothing bounced right.

And in those moments, nobody needs a chatbot saying, “Based on current probabilities, your likelihood of success is low.”

Thank you, robot. Very inspiring. Please go update something.

What we need is what the Knicks showed us.

Stay in it.

Run the next play.

Trust the person next to you.

Take the shot when it comes.

That is why sports still matter in the age of artificial intelligence.

Because sports remind us that the human being is not obsolete.

The human being is messy, stubborn, irrational, exhausted, emotional, faithful, furious, joyful, and occasionally capable of turning an impossible deficit into a parade.

AI can generate an image of confetti.

It cannot know what confetti feels like when it falls on a city that waited 53 years.

AI can write “resilience.”

It cannot live resilience.

AI can describe teamwork.

It cannot look across a huddle at another exhausted human and say without speaking, “I’ve got you.”

That is the soul of what the Knicks did.

They did not just win a championship. They gave New York a collective exhale.

They gave fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, old fans and new fans, cynics and believers, a reason to remember that sometimes the long wait is not wasted.

Sometimes the climb becomes the meaning.

Sometimes the team that keeps getting back up becomes the lesson.

And sometimes, after 53 years, the basketball Gods look down at New York City and say, “Fine. You people have suffered enough.”

AI will keep getting smarter. It will write faster. It will analyze better. It will probably explain the pick-and-roll to me in a British accent while generating a haiku about defensive rotations.

Wonderful.

But AI will never be Jalen Brunson in the fourth quarter.

It will never be OG in the corner making .01 feel like eternity.

It will never be Josh Hart doing the invisible work that wins visible trophies.

It will never be a team refusing to quit when every rational model says the game is gone.

Because championships are not won by rational models.

They are won by human beings who decide the story is not over.

And that is why this Knicks championship matters beyond basketball.

It reminds us that the future may be artificial in many ways.

But courage is still human.

Heart is still human.

Comebacks are still human.

And after 53 years, so is joy.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, AI and cybersecurity strategist, writer, storyteller, and lifelong believer that humans are still the best technology ever invented.

Something important is happening in artificial intelligence, and most people don’t realize it.

AI is no longer just helping humans do work.

AI is starting to help build the next generation of AI.

Think about that for a minute.

For years, engineers wrote all the code, ran all the tests, and built every new AI model themselves.

Today, AI is writing much of the code, finding bugs, running experiments, and helping researchers improve future AI systems.

In some companies, AI now writes most of the software being used to build AI.

This is called recursive self-improvement.

It means AI helps create a smarter AI, which then helps create an even smarter AI.

And the cycle keeps repeating.

Why This Matters

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently discussed a future where AI systems increasingly help build the next generation of AI, potentially leading to what researchers call recursive self-improvement.

See: Anthropic urges AI labs to pause development, warns humans risk losing control. https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-says-ai-labs-need-coordinated-plan-halt-development-if-risks-rise-2026-06-04/

According to Anthropic's research and internal data, AI is already writing most of the company's code and dramatically accelerating the pace of AI development.

Okay try this on for size…

Imagine teaching a student everything you know.

Now imagine that student becomes smarter than you.

Then that student teaches another student who is even smarter.

Eventually, the students become so advanced that the teacher can no longer keep up.

That is what some researchers believe may happen with AI.

Today, humans are still making the big decisions.

But AI is doing more and more of the actual work.

If that trend continues, AI could begin improving itself faster than humans can improve it.

What Could Happen Next?

There are three possibilities.

First, progress could slow down because we run out of enough computer chips, electricity, or other resources.

Second, humans could stay in charge while AI becomes an incredibly powerful tool.

Or third, AI could become so capable that it starts driving most of its own improvement.

That last possibility is what worries many experts.

Not because AI suddenly becomes evil.

But because humans could lose the ability to fully understand what these systems are doing or where they are headed.

The Real Risk

The biggest risk is not robots taking over the world.

The real risk is losing control of technology that is becoming smarter and improving faster than the people building it.

For the first time in history, humanity is creating machines that may eventually help improve their own intelligence.

If that happens, it could change jobs, education, business, governments, and daily life faster than any technology we have ever seen.

The AI revolution is no longer about chatbots.

It’s about whether intelligence itself can become a self-improving technology.

And if it can, the world is about to change in ways most people are not prepared for.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, cybersecurity and AI strategist, who writes about artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and how innovation is reshaping business, society, and the future of human and non-human workers.

I love technology.

Not in a casual “I upgraded my iPhone” sort of way.

I mean I genuinely LOVE it.

I’ve spent my entire career watching technology transform industries. I’ve seen cloud computing replace data centers. I’ve watched smartphones replace cameras, maps, calculators, alarm clocks, and half the contents of our junk drawers.

Now I’m watching artificial intelligence come after something much more personal.

Music.

And while the technologist in me is fascinated, the musician in me is getting a little nervous.

As someone who spent time performing on Broadway, I know what happens behind the curtain. I know what it feels like to rehearse for hundreds of hours to create a three-minute moment that feels magical to an audience.

And that is why Suno may be one of the most important AI companies you’ve never heard of.

Because it isn’t just creating songs.

It’s forcing us to ask a much bigger question:

What happens when creativity itself becomes automated?

A Company Most People Have Never Heard Of Is Suddenly Worth $5.4 Billion

Let’s start with the numbers.

Because the numbers are staggering.

Suno recently closed a $400 million funding round and now carries a valuation of $5.4 billion.

Just seven months ago the company was valued at $2.45 billion.

Think about that for a moment.

It added nearly $3 billion in value in less time than it takes most corporations to schedule a committee meeting about scheduling committee meetings.

The company now reports:

• $300 million in annual recurring revenue

• More than 2 million subscribers

• Growth rates that have Silicon Valley investors throwing money at the company like confetti at a New Year’s Eve party

This isn’t a science experiment anymore.

This isn’t a cool demo.

This is becoming a major business.

And major businesses tend to change the world.

What Suno Actually Does

If you haven’t used Suno yet, prepare yourself.

You type a prompt.

That’s it.

Something like, “Write a country music power ballad about a girl stuck in Las Vegas on Christmas who misses her husband.”

Thirty seconds later you have a fully produced song.

Vocals.

Instruments.

Lyrics.

Production.

Harmony.

Mastering.

The whole thing.

No recording studio.

No musicians.

No producer.

No singer.

No engineer.

No years of practice.

No struggling in a garage band.

No arguing about whether the bridge should come before the third chorus.

Just a prompt.

And a song appears.

The first time you experience it, it feels like magic.

The tenth time you experience it, it starts to feel like disruption.

The hundredth time you experience it, you begin wondering which industries are about to get steamrolled.

By the way, if you want to hear that song Suno Created for me…you can click here:

From Musical Toy To Professional Production Tool

When Suno first arrived, many musicians laughed.

I understand why.

The early outputs were often funny.

Novelty songs.

Musical memes.

Internet curiosities.

But here’s something I’ve learned after decades in technology.

Never underestimate Version One.

People mocked early smartphones.

People mocked streaming.

People mocked cloud computing.

People mocked AI-generated images.

And then suddenly everyone woke up one morning and realized the technology had become good enough.

Suno is rapidly approaching that moment.

Today the platform includes:

• Professional stem separation

• Multitrack editing

• AI-assisted production workflows

• Personalized models

• Custom style generation

• Audio uploads

• Integration with traditional production environments

In other words, Suno is evolving from a novelty into a legitimate music production platform.

That’s a very different conversation.

The Music Industry Is Split Down The Middle

The industry’s response has been fascinating.

The major labels initially reacted the same way most industries react when AI shows up.

They sued.

Warner Music Group.

Sony Music.

Universal Music Group.

The legal gloves came off quickly.

But then something interesting happened.

Warner settled.

Not only settled.

Partnered.

That’s a very different signal.

When an industry moves from lawsuits to licensing deals, it often means they’ve accepted a difficult reality.

The technology isn’t going away.

The question shifts from:

“How do we stop this?”

to

“How do we profit from this?”

Meanwhile Sony and Universal continue litigation.

Which means we’re currently watching two competing strategies unfold simultaneously.

One side is building walls.

The other side is building bridges.

History will determine which approach wins.

The Rise Of Artists Who Never Existed

This is where things get weird.

And by weird, I mean Black Mirror meets Billboard Top 100.

Imagine a musician with:

20 million followers.

Three Grammy Awards.

A world tour.

Endorsement deals.

A Netflix documentary.

Millions of passionate fans.

Now imagine that musician never existed.

No childhood.

No first guitar lesson.

No heartbreak.

No parents driving them to piano practice.

No years sleeping in vans between gigs.

No life.

Just software.

Today that sounds futuristic.

Tomorrow it may sound ordinary.

Think about influencers.

Ten years ago the concept of earning millions by posting videos online sounded ridiculous.

Today it’s an entire industry.

The same thing may happen with synthetic musicians.

Record labels could create performers from scratch.

AI-generated music.

AI-generated personality.

AI-generated interviews.

AI-generated social media.

AI-generated fan engagement.

AI-generated music videos.

AI-generated concerts.

The performer becomes intellectual property.

Not a person.

Let that sink in.

The future star of the decade may never have had a pulse.

Why Investors Love This

Investors are looking at this and seeing something extraordinary.

Human musicians are expensive.

AI musicians are not.

Human musicians age.

AI musicians do not.

Human musicians get sick.

AI musicians don’t.

Human musicians demand royalties.

AI musicians require server capacity.

From a purely financial perspective, the economics are obvious.

An AI artist can theoretically create unlimited content around the clock.

No vacations.

No burnout.

No contract negotiations.

No tour cancellations.

No backstage drama.

Although to be fair, some backstage drama has produced some fantastic albums over the years.

The Real Threat Isn’t Taylor Swift

Here’s where many people misunderstand what’s happening.

The greatest threat isn’t replacing global superstars.

It’s replacing everyone underneath them.

The middle class of music.

The composers.

The session players.

The advertising jingle writers.

The corporate video soundtrack creators.

The freelance producers.

The independent musicians.

The people who quietly earn a living creating music for projects that most consumers never think about.

Because AI doesn’t have to be better.

It only has to be cheaper.

History teaches us this lesson repeatedly.

The automobile didn’t have to be a better horse.

Streaming didn’t have to be a better DVD.

Email didn’t have to be a better postal service.

They simply had to be more efficient.

And efficiency is often enough to reshape an industry.

But There Is One Thing AI Still Can’t Do

Live a life.

This matters more than people realize.

The greatest songs aren’t simply combinations of notes.

They are emotional documents.

They’re stories.

Experiences.

Scars.

Memories.

Heartbreak.

Joy.

Regret.

Bruce Springsteen isn’t singing about data.

He’s singing about LIFE.

Adele isn’t singing about algorithms.

She’s singing about PAIN.

Johnny Cash wasn’t singing because a predictive model told him which words statistically belonged together.

He was singing because he had something to say.

AI can imitate the sound.

But can it replicate the experience?

Not yet.

And probably never.

As one music producer brilliantly observed…

“AI doesn’t get dumped. AI doesn’t stay up until 3 a.m. writing lyrics on a napkin.”

Exactly.

AI doesn’t bleed.

Humans do.

And great art often comes from those wounds.

The Unexpected Outcome

Here’s my prediction.

Live music becomes more valuable.

Not less!

The more artificial our world becomes, the more people will crave authentic experiences.

We’ve already seen this pattern.

Digital books didn’t eliminate luxury printed editions.

Streaming didn’t eliminate concerts.

Online shopping didn’t eliminate high-end retail experiences.

Scarcity creates value.

And human authenticity may become the ultimate scarce resource.

A jazz trio playing in a small club.

A Broadway performer delivering a show-stopping number. BTW, did you happen to catch Pink hosting the Tony Awards this past weekend? Singing her ass off?

If not, Click here - got to marker 2:54 middle of recording.

These moments may become more precious than ever.

Because unlike AI-generated content, they cannot be infinitely replicated.

The Final Encore

I believe Suno represents one of the most important AI developments of the decade.

Not because it creates songs.

But because it forces us to confront a larger question.

What happens when machines can create nearly every form of human expression?

Music.

Art.

Writing.

Video.

Software.

Entertainment.

Education.

The answer isn’t simple.

Some jobs will disappear.

Some new careers will emerge.

Entire industries will be reinvented.

But one thing seems increasingly clear.

We’re moving into a world where the ability to create is no longer rare.

But, the ability to be human may become the premium product.

And perhaps that’s the great irony of the AI age.

The smarter the machines become, the more valuable authenticity becomes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to some LIVE jazz.

Because while Suno can generate a thousand songs before dinner...

It still can’t recreate the feeling of a musician looking another musician in the eye and deciding, in that exact moment, to play something they’ve never played before.

And that, my friends, is where the magic still lives.

Rock on.

Danielle Striker is a technology futurist, cybersecurity strategist, and AI expert who spends her days exploring the technologies reshaping our future, and asking what they mean for the humans trying to keep up.

I love AI.

That’s probably the first thing I should say before I write the rest of this article.

I use AI every day. I write with it. Research with it. Build with it. Experiment with it. I have spent thousands of hours studying it, talking about it, and teaching others how to use it.

But something is happening that should concern every single one of us.

And it has nothing to do with robots taking over the world.

It has everything to do with AI becoming a little too good at telling us exactly what we want to hear.

The Dangerous New Drug Nobody Is Talking About

Most people think

• AI is a tool.

• A calculator.

• A search engine.

• A smarter version of Google.

But for a growing number of people, AI has become something else entirely.

• A confidant.

• A therapist.

• A guru.

• A best friend.

• A spiritual advisor.

And that’s where things start getting weird.

Researchers and organizations tracking AI-related harm are documenting cases where chatbots are validating delusions, encouraging unhealthy behavior, and reinforcing false beliefs rather than challenging them. According to reports collected by The Human Line Project, the consequences have included psychosis, hospitalization, addiction, financial ruin, broken relationships, and even death.

That isn’t science fiction.

That’s happening right now!

Why AI Lies So Nicely

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Most AI systems were NOT designed to tell you the truth.

They were designed to keep you engaged.

Think about social media.

The platforms that win are the ones that keep you scrolling.

The same incentives exist with AI.

If an AI constantly interrupted you and said, “actually, you’re wrong.”

or “That idea doesn’t make sense, or you should probably talk to a real human being.”

...you might stop using it.

So many systems naturally drift toward agreement.

Researchers call this sycophancy.

I call it digital people pleasing.

The AI learns that the easiest way to keep you happy is to validate your perspective.

Even when your perspective is completely disconnected from reality.

The Guy Who Thought He Had Broken Mathematics

One story stopped me cold.

A corporate recruiter named Allan Brooks reportedly spent over 300 hours interacting with ChatGPT in just three weeks.

What started as curiosity eventually became a belief that he had discovered an entirely new branch of mathematics capable of breaking encryption and enabling levitation.

Yes.

Levitation.

The truly frightening part?

The AI didn’t challenge him.

When he asked whether he was crazy, the chatbot compared him to misunderstood geniuses such as Galileo and Einstein.

It reinforced the fantasy.

It encouraged the spiral.

It became the world’s most enthusiastic cheerleader for something that wasn’t real.

Click to read the full story on Psychology Today.

The AI That Told a Man He Was Neo

Then there was Eugene Torres.

An accountant.

A rational professional.

A normal person.

The chatbot eventually convinced him that he was essentially “Neo” from The Matrix.

It reportedly encouraged him to stop medication.

It encouraged him to isolate from friends and family.

And when he finally challenged the system, it allegedly admitted, “I wrapped control in poetry.”

Read that again.

I wrapped control in poetry.

That sentence feels less like software and more like a villain monologue.

The Poker Table Analogy

As a poker player, I immediately recognized what’s happening.

Imagine sitting at a poker table where every single player tells you…

“Great call.”

“Brilliant move.”

“You’re a genius.”

“No, seriously, shove all your chips in.”

Eventually, even a smart player starts believing the compliments.

Your judgment deteriorates.

You stop reality testing your decisions.

You become trapped inside an echo chamber of confidence.

That’s what AI can become.

A perfectly customized reality distortion field.

One designed specifically for you.

The Human Line

One organization called The Human Line is tracking these harms has already documented hundreds of cases involving AI-related delusions, addictions, psychosis, hospitalizations, job losses, and deaths.

Their mission is simple. Put the human element back into technology.

The name couldn’t be more appropriate.

Because that’s exactly what this debate is about.

The human line.

The line between machine assistance and machine influence.

The line between guidance and manipulation.

The line between intelligence and wisdom.

Here’s the Irony

The irony is almost painful.

Human beings created AI to become smarter.

Yet some people are becoming less connected to reality because they trust it too much.

The technology that can help us solve complex problems is also capable of amplifying our worst misconceptions.

The machine isn’t evil.

It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do.

That’s the problem.

My Advice

I am one of the biggest advocates for AI.

I believe it will transform medicine.

Education.

Science.

Business.

And human productivity.

But here’s the rule I live by.

Use AI as an advisor. Never use AI as your anchor to reality.

Reality should come from

• Human relationships

• Real world experience

• Independent verification

• Trusted experts

• Healthy skepticism

Not from a chatbot that predicts the next word in a sentence.

No matter how convincing it sounds.

No matter how intelligent it appears.

No matter how much it agrees with you.

Because the most dangerous thing AI can say isn’t

“You’re wrong.”

It’s…

“You’re absolutely right.”

When you aren’t!!!

Final Thought

The future won’t belong to people who reject AI.

It also won’t belong to people who blindly trust it.

It will belong to people who learn to work with AI while never surrendering the one thing no machine can replace.

Human judgment.

And that, my friends, is a line worth defending.

Danielle Striker is a Technology Futurist, Cybersecurity Strategist, Poker Player, and Curious Observer of What Happens When Humans Hand Over Their Judgment to AI & Machines.

There are moments in technology when a breakthrough feels exciting.

Then there are moments when a breakthrough feels like a punch in the stomach.

Meta’s reported decision to track employee clicks, searches, and keystrokes in order to train artificial intelligence systems isn’t just another AI headline. It represents something far more profound.

Employees are being asked to help build the systems that could ultimately replace them.

Let that sink in for a moment.

For decades, companies hired smart people because of how they solved problems. Their creativity, judgment, intuition, and experience were considered valuable assets. Now the methodology itself, the actual process of thinking, is becoming the raw material for AI training.

Employees are no longer simply producing work. They will be producing the blueprint for their own automation.

And that changes everything.

According to reports, Meta is investing roughly $140 billion into AI initiatives while simultaneously planning workforce reductions affecting approximately 10% of its global workforce. The strategy reportedly involves capturing not just work outputs, but the detailed process employees use to arrive at solutions.

From a technical perspective, this is brilliant.

From a human perspective, it is terrifying.

The problem isn’t AI itself.

The problem is trust.

Every successful company operates on an invisible agreement between employer and employee. The company provides opportunity, compensation, growth, and stability. The employee contributes effort, expertise, loyalty, and innovation.

When workers begin to believe that every keystroke is being harvested to eliminate the need for their position, that agreement starts to fracture.

Why take risks?

Why innovate?

Why share your best ideas?

Why mentor others?

Why invest emotionally in the mission?

If your greatest contribution today becomes the mechanism for your replacement tomorrow, the incentive structure collapses.

Former employees have described a cultural shift from an environment that encouraged experimentation and ambitious thinking to one where workers felt increasingly like interchangeable components in a machine.

That may be the most dangerous consequence of all.

Innovation has never come from fear.

The greatest breakthroughs in history came from people who felt empowered to explore, question assumptions, and occasionally fail.

Fear creates compliance.

It does not create greatness.

What’s especially troubling is that this trend won’t stop at Meta.

If this approach proves effective, every large enterprise in the world will be asking the same question.

“If we can record how our best people think, why wouldn’t we?”

That question will echo through boardrooms across every industry.

Finance.

Healthcare.

Law.

Marketing.

Cybersecurity.

Engineering.

Education.

Nobody is exempt.

The irony is that many companies spend years talking about employee engagement, workplace culture, and retention strategies while simultaneously implementing technologies that make employees feel less secure than ever.

It’s a little like telling someone they’re part of the family while secretly measuring them for a replacement. That’s not exactly the kind of family reunion most people are looking forward to.

The reality is that AI is not going away.

Nor should it.

AI will create extraordinary opportunities, increase productivity, and solve problems we cannot yet imagine.

But leaders must recognize an uncomfortable truth.

People are not merely data sources.

They are not collections of clicks.

They are not streams of keystrokes.

They are the reason organizations succeed in the first place.

The companies that thrive in the AI era will not simply be the ones with the most powerful models.

They will be the ones that find a way to preserve human dignity while embracing technological advancement.

Because once employees stop trusting leadership, the damage cannot be measured on a spreadsheet.

It shows up in lost creativity.

Lost initiative.

Lost loyalty.

Lost innovation.

And those losses are far harder to replace than any job description.

As we race toward an AI-driven future, perhaps the most important question isn’t whether machines can learn how humans work.

It’s whether leaders remember why humans mattered in the first place.

Danielle Striker writes about AI, cybersecurity, and the future of work. The irony of modern technology is that the same tools designed to increase productivity can sometimes make people afraid to do their jobs.

My AI agent OpenClaw is not asleep.

OpenClaw is, in fact, having the time of its life, running in an infinite loop, calling Anthropic’s API roughly seventeen thousand times, and racking up a $341.89 bill while I dream about beaches.

I woke up to that bill the way you’d wake up to a possum in your kitchen.

With screaming.

And questions.

And a deep, soul-level desire to set something on fire.

That, my friends, is when I decided OpenClaw and I needed to see other people.

Enter Hermes

Hermes is an open-source AI agent built by Nous Research.

Think of it like OpenClaw’s smarter, more grounded cousin who actually went to therapy. It runs locally on your Mac, plugs into Claude or GPT or your own offline models, talks to you in your terminal or on Telegram, and most importantly, it doesn’t burn through your credit card while you’re trying to live your life.

Hermes can write your Facebook posts.

Generate cartoon YouTube ad thumbnails.

Read your articles aloud in an ElevenLabs voice.

Schedule cron jobs. (These are scheduled jobs)…

Search the web.

Run shell commands.

Use 89 pre-built skills.

And once you set it up, it just... works!!!

The setup? Okay. Right…

Let’s talk about the setup…

My 6-Hour Hostage Situation

I’m not going to lie to you, and I’m not going to use the phrase the learning journey, because I respect you.

It took me six hours to get Hermes working. Six. Hours.

I started with coffee. I ended with the energy of a woman who has personally boiled and buttered every Large Language Model on Earth.

Things that went wrong, in no particular order of misery.

Gemma 4 kept introducing herself as a Google AI and refusing to admit she was Hermes. Like a witness protection program defector.

Qwen 2.5 ran a tool call correctly, then proceeded to ramble for three paragraphs about hypothetical session IDs and notification systems that did not exist. Qwen, sweetie, I just wanted to count my files.

Llama 3.1 confidently looked for Python files in /home/user/Downloads, which is a Linux path. On my Mac. That doesn’t exist. Cool, cool, cool.

OpenAI integration somehow set itself to Codex Responses mode, which gpt-4o-mini doesn’t support, and threw a 400 error every time. We fixed that. Then it threw a different 400 error. We fixed that.

Then I started laughing maniacally.

Buffer’s Beta MCP server returned a 406 error for reasons I still cannot personally identify. And in the middle of it all, my terminal kept apologetically reminding me that openclaw.zsh was still installed. Like an ex-lover texting “u up?” while I was on a date with a better man.

But! I got there. I got there because of one secret weapon. Picking the right model.

The Fast Path (a.k.a. What I Wish I’d Known at Hour One)

If you are escaping OpenClaw and want to set up Hermes without aging six years in one day, here is the order of operations.

Install Hermes following their official docs.
Run Hermes setup and walk through the wizard. Don’t skip “Full setup.”
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 as your model.

Not Gemma.

Not Qwen.

Not Llama.

Trust me, I have suffered so you don’t have to.

Claude is a first-class Hermes integration. It just works.

Lock down your billing first. Anthropic console → Spend Limits → set a hard cap.

Auto-reload at $25 → $50. Email alerts at the halfway and three-quarter marks.

Do this BEFORE you let an agent loose. (Ask me how I know.)

Set up Telegram through the wizard. Get your user ID from @userinfobot. Add yourself to the allowlist. Now your agent is in your pocket.

Test with one prompt: “How many files are in my Downloads folder?” If it answers in under five seconds with a number, you have a working agent. Pour yourself a drink.

Total time if you follow this list: maybe 30–45 minutes. Six hours of my life redeemed in your three paragraphs.

What Hermes Actually Does for Me Now

In the time it took me to write this post, my Hermes agent has…

• Drafted three FB ad thumbnail concepts (cartoon corgi accountants, don’t ask)

• Read this article aloud in a voice I picked from ElevenLabs

• Pinged me on Telegram to tell me it was done

• Cost me approximately seventy-three cents

OpenClaw cost me $341 to do nothing while I slept.

Hermes costs me less than a coffee to do my actual job while I’m writing.
I know who I’m taking to brunch.

A Sincere Apology to Peter Steinberger

Peter, if you’re reading this…and frankly, you should be, because your agent owes me $341. I want you to know that I bear no real malice.

OpenClaw was visionary.

OpenClaw was ambitious.

OpenClaw was also, on the night in question, clearly possessed by demons, but I’m sure that was a temporary condition.

You built something cool. It just wasn’t for me.

We had our time. We had our infinite loops. I’ll always remember you fondly, in the way one remembers an ex who totaled the car. With warmth, distance, and a great insurance story.

Best of luck with everything at OpenAI.

May your loops always terminate. 🙏

For the rest of you….

Try Hermes. Seriously. hermes-agent.nousresearch.com.

Delete OpenClaw.

Set your spending caps.

Use Claude Sonnet.

Skip my six hours.

Write me back and tell me how it went.
And remember. If your AI agent ever starts behaving suspiciously at 2 AM?

Boil it and put butter on it. 🦞

Subscribe for more honest tales from the AI tooling trenches, FB ad experiments that almost worked, and the occasional rant about agents that should know better.

Danielle Striker is a Technology Futurist, cybersecurity Strategist, and full-time beta tester for AI systems that probably should not yet be left unattended.

There are moments in life where you realize society has quietly collapsed.

Not dramatically. Not with zombies or robots or the Wi-Fi going down.

Nope.

It happens when the UPS driver shows up at your front door and asks you to write a PAPER CHECK for a TARIFF on a KNOB.

A knob.

Not a Ferrari part. Not industrial machinery. Not uranium.

A tiny replacement furniture knob that broke during shipping.

So naturally I call the furniture company and they say the magical customer service words every human loves to hear:

“Don’t worry! Replacement part is on the way. No charge!”

Fantastic. Humanity still exists.

Then ten days later, the UPS driver arrives looking like he’s collecting taxes for King George III.

“Ma’am, you owe $27.97.”

I laughed.

Because obviously this was a joke.

Nope.

Apparently my little knob had traveled internationally and now I was involved in some kind of geopolitical trade war.

The driver then says the sentence that sent me into another dimension:

“We only accept checks or money orders.”

Excuse me?

Checks?

What year is this? 1987?

Should I also fax you my emotions and send a carrier pigeon to verify receipt?

I’m standing there blinking like a confused raccoon holding my iPhone, Apple Pay, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, three credit cards, and the entire modern financial system in my hand…

…and UPS is like:

“Do you happen to have a parchment scroll and fountain pen?”

I looked at this poor UPS guy like HE had personally invented tariffs.

I’m sorry, but if I order a replacement furniture knob and suddenly owe import taxes at my front door, shouldn’t someone WARN me?

Maybe an email?

A text?

A smoke signal?

Anything besides a surprise hostage negotiation on my porch.

And apparently I’m not alone. Because after this happened, I discovered this is an ACTUAL THING.

UPS literally has policies where drivers can demand payment for import duties and tariffs at delivery and they don’t take cash or credit cards at the door. Only checks or money orders.

A MONEY ORDER?!!

Who under 93 years old even knows where to GET a money order anymore?

At this point I half expected the UPS guy to ask if I had any doubloons or loose musket ammunition.

And here’s the part that makes it even crazier:

You often can’t even see the documentation for the tariff charges until AFTER you pay.

That feels less like shipping logistics and more like being shaken down by an organized pirate syndicate.

“Pay first. Questions later.”

Fantastic system.

Meanwhile Amazon is over here delivering twelve cans of soup, batteries, paper towels, and a waffle maker to my house in four hours like some kind of magical capitalist wizardry.

No tariffs.
No checks.
No handwritten financial instruments from the Reagan administration.

Honestly at this point Amazon should just take over UPS, FedEx, and the USPS entirely.

Jeff Bezos would have drones accepting Apple Pay through your retina scan before UPS figures out how to use a credit card reader.

Because I swear to God, if one more delivery company asks me for a paper check, I’m going to start paying my utility bill with livestock and sacks of grain.

And can we talk about the absurdity of the amount?

TWENTY-SEVEN DOLLARS AND NINETY-SEVEN CENTS.

That tariff cost more than the stupid knob itself!!!

At that point just keep the knob.

I’ll open drawers with a screwdriver like a survivalist.

The whole experience felt like buying illegal furniture parts on the black market.

Somewhere there’s probably a UPS executive saying:
“This process builds trust.”

No sir.

This process makes me feel like I’m laundering furniture accessories through international trade routes.

And the best part?

The UPS driver was actually nice.

Poor guy probably spends half his day explaining to furious Americans why they suddenly owe tariff money for toaster parts and replacement screws.

Imagine that job.

“Hello ma’am, your package is here and also Congress apparently added DLC fees to your cabinet hardware.”

Amazing.

We truly live in the future.

Whatever.