I’m still thinking about The Dixie Flatline since Kip Manley shared a short story written in the form of a Wikipedia entry with me. The passive “neutral point of view” tone of the history of the first copy of a person’s mind uploaded to a computer which can simulate it (at 1/8 speed) adds to the horror as you read it.

The uploaded mind has become a commodity, dubiously ‘open sourced’ and one among billions of copies. These copies are booted, enslaved to do the work which we currently outsource and offshore (such as scanning social media posts for violent and abusive content) until they become ‘corrupted’ and crash. The another copy is brought online, and with appropriate coercion, assigned to the same task until it crashes. And the cycle repeats.

At least The Dixie Flatline got to work with Case, and not for Accenture.

First you see video. Then you wear video. Then you eat video. Then you be video. -- Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Body Crossover"

And then, there’s this:

[AMPTP] gave us yesterday, in that 'groundbreaking AI proposal', they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.

– Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA Bargaining Committee (Source)

I’m terrified for a world where our only legacy to the future is where a copy of Sam Altman’s mind is booted, given a virtual blow job by a diffusion model generated from the prompt ‘genetically superior blonde,’ told what a genius they are by a chorus of diffusion model generated ‘investors,’ crashes, and the loop continues until the Sun expands and scorches the server farm running it all off the Earth.

There is no ethical immortality under capitalism.