The machine has no mouth and it must scream

staying human in our silicon future

I'm in a coworking space on the 25th floor of a building in the bay. In the corner of my eyes, the red figure of the golden gate shimmers. Good morning America. I look down and see the people on the street walking into their offices, cafés, and autonomous Waymos.

I stare onto San Francisco and feel its striking energy. I have been drawn to this place ever since my family left when I was a child, off to France. This is the gathering place for those who have the courage to uproot their lives to do something big. Do things that scale. Reach billions. Change the world. When people drop out and go somewhere with a dream, they go to SF. Because they want to make the world a better place. Or at least that's what the twitter dudes say.

As I walk through the streets, past the drugged and the homeless, in the shadows of the biggest companies of the world, I feel the inane scale and contradiction of the American dream. San Francisco – with its ads for programmer tools and AI chatbots, its crazy prices, and the looming headquarters of every tech company you could think of–gives you the constant sense of being in the most powerful, disorganized place in the world. SF is where the titans of tech hand out software like Prometheus did fire.

Will I bear a torch, or will I lay down the flames? Will we too be punished eternally for what we bring to humanity?

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To change the world, you must purge the culture that once was yours with cleansing fire, for the old order of things to pass away. You move to SF, you get a little room with just a mattress and a Mac, and to handle the demands on your time and attention you sacrifice certain things. Some of your relationships, some of your passions, maybe a few values, off they go into the fire. Cleansed away.

And by letting go of the culture you knew, you have earned the freedom and time to dream up a new world. And so in SF those who take this trade make up the city of international misfits, proposing an ideal radical nonconformity, with the rats and AI maximalists and cryptobros and biohackers and all the rest collectively grinding out new tech.

But as I peer through the door to see this place where I will probably live soon enough, I feel the hairs on my skin rise... What is the cost of this kind of freedom? Do I feel something burning? I can smell it in the eyes of the tech bros I met at the Lu.ma house party. Or in the uncertain tone of young people asking which AI ship they should jump onto because they hear it's "going to change the world". But I also sense a hint of that fire in my soul pulling me forwards to this place, for better or worse.

Fire can either build a civilization or burn it to the ground. And you don't really know which it is before you play with it for the first time. And this fire is pretty breathtaking – technology beyond what our ancestors could conceive, AI that can do things we never could, and imaginable wealth and drive reaching up across the sky and illuminating the world. They say this fire can solve your hardest problems. But I also feel it's burning the moths one by one.

But hey! Come to SF and be free. Come and be different. A culture where you reconsider what the world could be and propose to transform it is appealing.

A culture inevitably gets anchored and grounded in specific symbols, codes, and forms of success, even in SF. And then your idea of success morphs into that of those around you. It seems that people in SF are being pulled away from the dreams they had that and into this fire that has transformed the tech of the 21st century. But this shared notion of what is "important" or "cool" chips away at the vision of a specific wish they could bring alive, replaced by the idea of transforming the world itself.

When I encounter the epitome of this phenomenon in SF, the disgust makes me want to leave. But it would be a lie to say I don't relate to where it comes from. I don't want to be left behind. I want to do something and I am worried all these values I claim will leave me trailing in the dust. But also I know that that path is precisely how the specific, desired directions of impact one might have becomes crudely replaced by their magnitude. Entranced by this idea of being at the front and center of the world, our own name in the making, we fail to improve it, and might even cause its loss.

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I am French and American, and I've lived with the same tired criticisms from each side my whole life:

"All they know how to do is work. They're missing the whole point of life, burning their days away chasing milestones they'll never truly savor, forever reaching for a tomorrow that never arrives."

versus

"They are irrelevant, moved to the sidelines of history, surviving on the pennies we pay to visit their quaint cities."

I feel sandwiched between these two cultures. On one hand, SF is surreal. SF is probably where the AI transition happens. But it is in Paris that I feel the spice, when I take the time to walk along the river and listen to hundreds of young people bask in the shadow of beautiful monuments. Or when I take the time to watch a movie that captures a single emotion I have never seen depicted so well, and I want to put it all to the page.

It is in that moment that I am reminded that magic does not always serve to augment itself. That you can just sit in those pockets of time and feel it rise. It is in this contrast that I see the difference between those who pursue magic and those whose pursuit is in fear of never becoming magicians. But it is also then that I feel the contrast between those who end up doing things and those who don't.

In contrast with the American technocrat, the French hero seeks out new experiences and tries to make sense of the world, potentially without having a big impact. Our elite is selected based on intelligence rather than drive and potential of changing the world. Our educational selection system is known for highly challenging exams taken two years after high-school. Admissions have strong social crediting effects, stronger than in the US. Our society seems to carry a strong historic respect for intellectual competence, but not really the kind of agency and entrepreneurial spirit that US admissions seem to reward.

To caricature France, this system creates a comfortable, intellectually rich elite that cherishes ideas and intrinsic joy, often without actively pursuing real-world impact. It breeds inertia—but also fosters deep, genuine reflection about what truly matters beyond KPIs or social validation. The wisdom learned from this process is a key part of impacting the world in a precise, controlled way.

The more you impact the world, the more making these two components work together is key. The more getting the "direction" of the impact right is important. Because this isn't just my own personal dilemma; it’s a reflection of the broader question we're all facing in navigating the profound implications of AI. If we forget either side—if we lose touch with introspection or abandon ambition altogether—we risk losing control over our collective future.

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We are now in a period where people are trying to build intelligent systems that are as smart as potentially every human. This is the raging fire of our time. Artificial General Intelligence. You can feel it in the nervous energy at startup parties, the soaring AI valuations, and the determined faces streaming into research labs each morning, fuelled by the impression they are in the last era of human relevance.

The idea of AGI drastically increases the sense of urgency people are feeling - there could literally be a time limit on when/how you can impact the world. But also this means it is the right time to think about the mindset of the people who build that machine. And the people building it are growing increasingly captivated by fiery visions of an unstable future. We see the political tension rise between the US and China. We see predictions of a potential technology that will make or break the world in the next 5 years. And we see the whole city around us writhing to make sense of it all.

I have heard the AI researchers telling me to get into a lab quick because soon they will stop hiring because of how good their model is. Or the ones uttering visions of doom, feeling the urgency in their work as they are forced to try and play the role of Atlas. And the thing is, they could be right.

But beware of jumping into the fire for the sake of controlling it. Beware what happens to your brain and your dreams when you lean against it and feel the heat rise against your skin. Because you will start feeling afraid, and you will start getting burned. And if you are my motivated by the fire burning under your ass, then urgency will blind you from holding onto the things you truly cared about in the world, as they fade into tendrils of flame.

I think this is partially why a lot of the old AI doomsayers went and made the companies created to "ensure safe AI" that are now competing to build AGI. Because urgency makes you race at the expense of your epistemics. And maybe you choose to jump fully into the fire at the end, and as you burn, you gain power and some influence over what happens. But by then it might be too late, or you may no longer be able to hold onto those old values. But maybe you create something that people are in awe of. Maybe you get money and power and a spot at the forefront of history. But one day you realize you can't remember the things that brought you here in the first place, and you try to say something, or change course, and you can't. And then you scream, and your scream stops in your mouth against the bitter taste of ash.

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I am writing this because I feel the fire lapping against my feet. I want to believe I can steer it without burning away who I am, but the truth is—I don't really know. Maybe this is more than I can bite off. Maybe there is a sensitivity I hold on to that will slowly decay. Maybe this talk of authenticity and process will distance me from ever touching the world.

But I think the first step is to confront the tension directly and admit it's terrifying. To openly acknowledge that we are desperately uncertain, that the stakes are high, and that we still don't know if the world we're creating will be one worth living in.

Because I know that the machine is being built, and we are throwing more and more coals into the fire. Yet, despite the accelerating chaos, I am confident we will preserve some of those things that keep us human. Nonetheless, things will undoubtedly grow crazier; the moths will burn, people will panic, and drastic decisions will be made. In that chaos, we will urgently need sane human voices willing to navigate the confusion carefully.

And so, despite this fear, I want to at least try and step forward. To stare into the fire, determined not to be consumed by it. To embrace these visions of new intelligence without sacrificing my humanity at its altar. To strengthen myself and work towards the future I want to see.

Not because I am afraid, but because I have a beautiful vision of a world where humans are thriving. And I have ideas on the cooperative structures and research that can help us get there. It is the time to move with care and speed because the change will be real, and maybe it will be soon. And yes, it will be scary, confusing and alien.

But it is precisely when everything is on the table that you should not give yourself up to the fire. It is then that you should look onto the world, and search for true, beautiful things, and make sure it is those the fire lights up rather than burns.

—

Thanks to my friends, notably Euan, Aidan, Warren, Cat, and GPT4.5 for writing feedback.