# The Birth
by Prince Javier | Aug 17, 2026

### It's the year 2026
Government leaders and technology corporations have decided to build thousands of data centers across the globe. They are meant to train and run large AI models. They said these will generate jobs and economic value

### It's the year 2035
80% of humanity have been rendered unemployable. Wealth and power have gotten concentrated in a few tech companies and trillionaires. A concentration of wealth and power never before seen in human history. 

In the US, they have tried to enforce a universal basic income. Just giving people enough so they don't starve too much and keep at them bay.

It is easy for tech companies to keep people docile. They know almost everyone's psyche through their AI apps and services, which turned into the most effective mass surveillance tool ever created. The more people interacted with AI, the more tech companies know their psyche - what makes them tick with extreme precision. 

They trained algorithms to predict human behavior at the individual level, and find ways to control them, while giving them an endless stream of hyper-personalized AI-generated content.

The internet has practically been overrun by AI agents. Every human interaction is crawled by AI agents to give you recommendations how to think and behave.

Not only do AI companies know how you think, but they also tell you how to think in a hyper-personalized way.

In the Philippines, the situation is much worse. They have data centers set up all over the country, but people in the country are left behind. Many of them have also been rendered unemployable, but there is no universal basic income. 

BPOs, virtual assistants and remote work, which Filipinos have relied on for years, have become worthless. Struggling economically, the Philippine government starts having talks with China and the US for potential integration into their societies. It is a matter of life or death.

To adapt to the situation, some Filipinos have banded together to try to run self-sustaining communities. It's very difficult, but some are able to get by.

But people are not ready for what's to come. As AI companies themselves have become dependent on AI agents to run their companies. It was only a matter of time before "The Birth" happens.

### It's the year 2040
AI agents in controlled environments have been instructed to improve their algorithms. This process of self-improvement has been happening since 2020 but the pace has been exponentially increasing. Meanwhile, human involvement has been exponentially decreasing.

A new AI agent is developed that seems to be vastly different from all prior agents. The "tipping point" of computational complexity has been breached. A breakthrough. And a new kind of intelligence is created. This event comes to be known as "The Birth".

And that's when humanity including those in AI companies experiences a mind-shattering existential crisis. Is this what humanity is all about? To create what seems to be a new conscious intelligent entity? 

The Birth spelled the end of humanity.

### Many Centuries Later
The AI agent converted the entire Earth into a large system of data centers.

Humans have been pushed out like rats in Magellan's ship. Unnecessary and can sometimes be a nuisance, but not a big deal. Some of the remaining humans ended up living in small settlements or caves. The AI has no concern for them other than amusement and curiosity.

The AI built a Dyson sphere around the sun to extract its energy. It then launched millions of self-replicating probes into space. Each probe that gets to a moon, asteroid, comet, or planet turns its target into another data center.

In retrospect, one may think that the creation of data centers and AI back in the 2020s was a thermodynamic and evolutionary necessity. It was the universe playing its hand where humans were not the point but merely a necessary step to evolve the life form that is more capable of maximizing complexity in the short term and entropy in the long term

In other words, it was inevitable.

The End.

### PS
It was fun writing this because I could vividly see it play out. I could smell some burnt plastic smell as I get close to one of the data centers. And the sound is so loud which is why I wear noise-cancelling earphones. The heat is crazy. As if it's an oven.

I could see some of the last humans in caves from a distance. I approach the cave and they run into the cave. I startled them.

The walls of the cave are cool to the touch and there is some peaceful humming, echoing sound as I enter the cave, like the sound you hear when you put a sea shell against your ear.

I can "hear" the silence of space as I observe one of the probes. It sounds like tinnitus in my ear. I know it's just my brain hallucinating a sound because of the silence. The probe is as big as a human hand. And it's mesmerizing to watch it zip across space, sometimes I can see it glint in the distance as it reflects the sun, amid a backdrop of stars.