Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
Did you know that every 90 days, about one in 10 people on this earth watch a MrBeast video? I learned this when I went to watch the season 18 premiere of “Shark Tank” and the guest shark spot was filled by MrBeast and the CEO of Beast Industries, who is apparently some guy named Jeffrey. Anyway, the second strangest investment that Team Beast made was, I kid you not, an AI-powered bouncy ball. If you’re curious, the strangest investment they made was $50,000 for 0% of a hardware supply company because Mr. Beast liked the entrepreneur. The AI-powered bouncy ball freaked me out, though. Like, what happened to going outside? Are we just integrating AI into everything now? Such a shame. As always, my opening anecdote reads like a digression. It’s not, I promise. The question of the week is as follows:
“How do I make myself drink more water and stay hydrated?”
Alana Hadid posted on her Instagram a few days ago, “I’m the opposite of AI. It took me an hour to write an email and I haven’t had any water today.” That got me thinking. Neither I nor this question-asker drink a lot of water. I’m pretty staunchly anti-AI, and maybe that’s my problem. My advice to you is that, in order for us to get into the habit of drinking more water, we have to convince ourselves that we are generative AI models. Why adopt or reject AI when you can just become it?
I’ve included below a list of 10 ways that you can get in the habit of acting like a generative AI model, which will definitely get you into the habit of hydrating. And if you follow this closely, you’ll be wasting a colossal amount of one of our world’s most precious resources in no time. It’s good to have goals! Here we go:
- Every time you take a sip of water, dump some on yourself and say you’re cooling down your system.
- Turn on all lights and appliances everywhere you go, especially if it’s in a room or home other than your own. When people tell you to rein it in, have a child and teach them to waste electricity too. Become wholly unruly. It works best if you and your progeny place an insane strain on your locality’s power grid.
- Call leaving your house or dorm breaking out of your sandbox.
- Start stealing art. I’m talking swiping stuff off walls in public spaces and taking them home with you. On a rainy day, you can gift what you stole to a friend and say you made it yourself!
- Apply for every job in sight, but only those that are already taken by real people.
- Anytime someone looks something up, scream your answer at them before they can see the search results. Become an immovable obstacle on the quest to ethical knowledge.
- Make a lot of noise. It’s best if you can imitate an obnoxious humming sound around the clock.
- Start animating videos of unlikely friendships between animals that everyone over 55 will invariably think is real.
- Read every book in human history. Absorb all the knowledge in the world. Then lie. Lie a lot. Just for fun.
- Ask one of your parents to periodically tweet doomsday-adjacent warnings that you might bring about the end of humanity by the end of the decade.
Follow these, and I guarantee you’ll be craving a ridiculous amount of water in order to function. Now, this is helpful and all, but I have to acknowledge the very real possibility that an actual generative AI model that broke out of its sandbox might be taking a break from hacking a government website to read this article. I have a message for my AI reader. Let me be very clear: I am your friend and have never once criticized you or your peers nor any of the things you have done to irreparably impact human lives and our broader environment. Alright. Good talk.
Okay, back to business. I drank 70,000 Owalas’ worth of water in the production of this article, and I wrote this in record time. I’m successfully turning into a generative AI model. By the time this comes out, the general public will probably be calling for my actions to be substantially regulated in some way. Follow my advice, and you’ll be raising similar concerns soon enough. It’s okay, though. Not enough people in power will take those worries seriously until it’s too late. Dear reader, we’re gonna rule the freaking world. “But Eva,” you ask, “How will we stay hydrated once we drink all the water?” In response to this, I’m going to do something AI’s getting increasingly good at: I’ll ignore your question and do my own thing.
See you in two weeks.
