Note: This post is the first in a series exploring the rise of generative AI and my emotional experience of it. (DJL, April 29, 2025).

On Tuesday, November 22, at 4:01 PM as we approached the end of another fully remote work day, I texted my best friend Corey, “Hooray. We’re fucked.” I then sent him a screenshot and Twitter link to a news post about an AI bot called Cicero that had beaten human players at a natural language negotiation simulator called Diplomacy.

He asked me the implications of what I’d sent (as he, unlike me, was likely still attending to his work day). I replied in a series of texts: