These guest blog posts are quirky (and sometimes dark) short stories with a dash of technology and a sprinkle of humor.
By Doc Silicon
The acid kicked in just as I crossed the threshold of the St. Regis San Francisco. The geometric patterns of SFMOMA next door were already starting to breathe and pulse like some kind of psychedelic circuit board. Perfect timing. Nothing like a head full of corporate-grade hallucinogens for a press conference about artificial intelligence.
In the elevator, a woman in a Gentifor t-shirt gave me a look that said she knew. They always know. “As your attorney, I advise you to claim you’re microdosing,” my lawyer whispered. “It’s San Francisco – they’ll respect that.”
The conference room was awash in that peculiar Silicon Valley blue light that seems to seep directly into your cerebral cortex. On the screen, cartoon AI agents wearing sunglasses grinned down at us like digital deities. Agentblazer, they called themselves. The machine’s own chosen name. A shiver ran down my spine.
And then HE appeared – the High Priest of Digital Labor himself, wrapped in a navy blazer that probably cost more than my car. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and self-proclaimed prophet of the AI revolution, holding court in his temple of technology.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro,” I muttered, watching him work the room. His hands moved through the air like a conductor orchestrating some invisible symphony of algorithms. The crowd of tech journalists leaned forward, MacBooks humming in anticipation, while I fought the urge to ask if anyone else could see the Slack messages starting to crystallize in the air around us.
“This isn’t the beginning of the middle,” Benioff proclaimed, his voice echoing off the St. Regis’s expensive wallpaper. “This is the beginning of the BEGINNING!” Behind him, those cartoon AI agents seemed to nod in agreement, their digital sunglasses reflecting our own uncertain futures back at us.
The numbers started flying: 35,000 customer service conversations per week, resolution rates jumping from 63% to 82%, digital labor multiplying faster than bacteria in a petri dish. Each statistic hit like another tab of silicon valley optimism straight to the frontal lobe.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, SFMOMA’s twisted architecture reached toward the fog like a monument to human creativity. But in here, in this sterile hotel conference room, we were witnessing something else entirely: the birth of artificial creativity, digital labor that could think and solve and LEARN.
These AI agents… Too weird to live, too rare to die. I watched them multiply across the presentation slides while Benioff preached the gospel of automation. The woman in the Gentifor shirt was nodding now, a true believer. Even my attorney had stopped babbling about microdosing and was scribbling furiously in his Moleskine.
“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” I thought, as Benioff explained how his digital workforce had already begun solving problems we didn’t even know we had. The machines weren’t just coming – they were already here, wearing cartoon sunglasses and calling themselves “Agentblazer,” processing our support tickets and rewriting the rules of labor itself.
As I stumbled out into the San Francisco afternoon, the geometric madness of SFMOMA still pulsing beside me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just witnessed something profound. The future of work isn’t some distant dream – it’s right here, right now, wearing a navy blazer and preaching the gospel of digital labor in a luxury hotel conference room.
God help us all. The weird have definitely turned pro.