When we're little, it's easy. The Three Wise Men, the tooth under the pillow, the adult signing their name with a fake handwriting... But we grow up, we trade the letter to the throne for a search on our phones, and the promise is the same. The maximum for the minimum. Give me results without breaking a sweat. Give me shortcuts without curves. Give me snake oil with a pretty logo.

Now the spell has a technical name. We call it AI instead of Aladdin's lamp. We summon it like it's a genie. We open ChatOGT, type with faith, and hope it grants us a perfect answer, a brilliant report, a winning apology, a miracle diet. Doesn't that sound a bit too comfortable?

The problem isn't that the machine thinks. The problem is that you think it thinks. That's when the magic wand flickers on in the dark and the street seems safe. Most of these systems do one very specific and brutal thing: they predict the next word with dizzying accuracy. It's math, a lot of statistics, and a mirror. And of course, since the mirror reflects a face with eyes, we see a soul. That's just how we are; we name storms, we assign intentions to traffic lights, we assign morality to algorithms.

It's a trap. The danger isn't that AI will awaken consciousness and become Shakespeare.

The danger is that you and I act as if it already is. As if a text with a measured tone implies prudence. As if "seems reasonable" were the same as "it's true." As if a fabricated quote sounds so clean that, well, it'll pass muster. First click, then scroll, then faith. And when you realize it, you don't check, you don't doubt, you don't ask questions, you just follow the thread like someone using a flashlight in a tunnel, confident and calm.

I'm sure it happens to you too. A message arrives with synthetic authority and it relaxes your body. It takes the weight off your shoulders. It's an addictive relief, as if the world finally had clear instructions. The brain enjoys plausibility. A well-organized paragraph is like a waiter in a bow tie; it convinces you just by walking in with a smile. And if they also reply quickly, that's it, you happily let a stranger park your car, without even looking at the ticket.

The solution isn't to turn anything off.

It's not about going back to the Stone Age or burning phones. The solution is to turn on other lights. Logic to distinguish form from content. Epistemology to separate knowledge from belief. Critical thinking to know when a premise is missing, when a conclusion has been slipped in through the back door, and when our own need to be right is distorting the truth.

That's why good education systems don't just train you to solve equations; they train you to be skeptical. To be skeptical without falling into cynicism. To be skeptical without becoming that fool who denies everything for the sake of it. To be skeptical with curiosity, with a desire to know, with a "show me" attitude.

In this, technology isn't the enemy. The enemy is our laziness. We want to present a thesis in a single afternoon. We want to be strong without breaking a sweat. We want to sell twenty copies and write five. We want to skip the stairs and touch the ground. And of course, a machine appears that composes pretty sentences, and we hand it the wheel.

I'm not here to tell you that AI is bad, just to remind you that every tool is good or bad depending on how it's used.

Wake up 👀 and may Bitcoin ⚡💥 continue to guide us.