r/Future_China

TL;DR: A week of Unreal work can start in minutes now. What happened the next morning is the part nobody talks about.

 

I remembered back in around 2020 – it was my last day with the China Construction company I’ve worked with for a year. Apparently, I’ve outlasted my usefulness. They have squeezed every ounce of my experience and expertise out of me and technology-transferred it to their own people. They didn’t want to extend my contract.

So I left and drove back home.

Years later, while I was having my evening jog with my wife at the nearby garden, I looked up the sky and remembered this passage:

“Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.

And so I did.

I lifted them all up to Him, and the cloud in my head dissipated immediately.

Nothing else changed. I was still jogging with my wife next to me. But my mind was lighter.

A few months later, I got a DM from a long-lost acquaintance. He represented a client, by which my ex-ex-ex-company was building an international Aerospace Centre for, back in 2008.

He remembered me after all these years.

Apparently, he was let go too, and he founded his own company. He landed a Taiwan project in 2021, by which he needed a technical guy who can double up as an interpreter.

And my name crossed his mind. So he looked me up in LinkedIn, and opened the door for me.

Praise God! The Lord came through.

Never loss hope, man.

 

More in the comments — the part about why this still hurts and what actually opens up next.

 

TL;DR: A Chinese podcast says your AI partner shouldn't please you all day. Its job is to soak up your bad mood, so your family gets your best self. Sounds right. Then they describe week two.

 

I remembered these two weird movies:

Joaquin Phoenix’s “Her” (2013) voiced by Scarlett Johansson, and

Al Pacino’s “S1mOne” (2002)

Both kind of follow the same playbook.

They discovered/created the mysterious AI girl – mystifyingly alluring.

They idolized it. They communicated with it.

They developed an unhealthy relationship with it – they became dangerously obsessed.

They started to ignore people who genuinely cared for them.

And they’re nearly destroyed because of it.

Tragedy makes a great story, isn’t it?

Except it isn’t, in this case.

People started trading something genuinely real, for something artificial. They substituted real relationships between souls face-to-face, with prompting computes inferenced from datacentres possibly thousands of miles away.

You can judge them for lacking self-discipline. Except, you have no right doing so, without truly walking in their shoes with empathy.

The guest speaker was right. People are lonely and stressed. And people crave for care and understanding.

And sometimes people look for it from the wrong place – me included.

King Solomon talks about it in this passage:

For at the window of my house, I looked through my lattice, and saw among the simple, I perceived among the youths, A young man devoid of understanding, passing along the street near her corner; and he took the path to her house In the twilight, in the evening, In the black and dark night.

And there a woman met him, with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. She was loud and rebellious; her feet would not stay at home. At times she was outside, at times in the open square, lurking at every corner. So, she caught him and kissed him; With an impudent face she said to him:

“I have peace offerings with me; today I have paid my vows. So I came out to meet you, diligently to seek your face, and I have found you. I have spread my bed with tapestry, coloured coverings of Egyptian linen. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with love. For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey; He has taken a bag of money with him, and will come home on the appointed day.”

With her enticing speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she seduced him. Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till an arrow struck his liver.

As a bird hastens to the snare, He did not know it would cost his life.

My God - the parallel between this promiscuous woman and the sycophantic AI girl sends chills up my spine.

 

Full Critic and Feasibility Study are in the comments.