Recently, I lost a Facebook account I’d had for 17 years. It wasn’t just a social media profile — it was a living archive of my life. It held family photos, holiday memories, fleeting thoughts, meaningful conversations and personal writings. In short, it was a record of my identity.
I lost it not for breaking any law or engaging in hate speech, but because I dared to do something apparently unthinkable: I spoke up as a Jewish person who cares about children in Gaza.
To many, that combination was too implausible to be real. So I was reported as a fake. I don’t believe there was any vast conspiracy, no cabal orchestrating my erasure. What happened was simpler and more chilling: a critical mass of users reported me as inauthentic and then an artificial intelligence — an impersonal, unfeeling algorithm — was the judge, jury, and executioner.
I was a bit drunk when I tried to verify my ID; it was late, the lighting was poor and I didn’t jump through the exact digital hoops the AI demanded. I failed its test and, just like that, my digital self was erased.
This is not an isolated story. It’s a harbinger. The war between human beings and machines that science fiction long warned us about has already begun. Not with laser guns or killer robots, but in the slow, silent, bureaucratic violence of algorithms and we are losing.
When people think of artificial intelligence, they imagine something designed to help or enhance human life. But increasingly, it does the opposite.
What is AI really being used for?
Fundamentally, it is a mechanism to concentrate power — social, economic and communicative — in the hands of the very few.
People like Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Sam Altman are not just software developers; they are shaping the cognitive infrastructure of the human experience. The tools they’ve unleashed are not enriching our lives so much as enclosing them.
Our ability to speak, to connect, to belong — all now hinge on the decision-making processes of machines that have no sense of justice, compassion or understanding of nuance. These are faceless, non-sentient algorithms that determine whether we exist online.
If we fail their tests, we are rendered ghosts, cut off from friends, family and public life.
Zuckerberg has already begun to talk about a future without physical objects — a world where everything is holographic, projected and ephemeral. But if the infrastructure of that world is owned by a single private corporation, what does that mean for our freedom?
Who will own the roads of tomorrow if they’re made not of stone but of code?
This is not just a technological shift. It is an existential one. We are in a war for our humanity — for the right to be seen, heard, and remembered by each other. And, unlike the Industrial Revolution, which displaced workers but still left human beings in control of the factories and unions and parliaments, this revolution hands over authority to entities that are not alive and not accountable.
Everything you love — memories, relationships, chance encounters, silly thoughts at 3am — can now be deleted by a non-sentient program designed with one goal: to serve the narrow interests of its creators. And, most terrifyingly, it will be done quietly. No bang, no riot, no smoke. Just a flicker and you’re gone.
If you think this isn’t war, think again.
It is not a war of bombs or bullets, but of systems, permissions and invisibility. A war where the casualties are your ability to participate in the shared rhythm of human life.
We were told AI would liberate us. Instead, it is building a future in which even a walk in the park — the most basic, unmediated act of presence — may eventually depend on whether you’ve been given permission to exist.
And that permission can be revoked. By a bot. Welcome to the future, where we are being asked to prove we exist by something that doesn’t.