The Bullshit Singularity

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:26:29 -0700

The phenomenon of bullshit jobs is well documented in “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by David Graeber. Yet back in 2018 when this book came out, we could all rest easy on our laurels that we might have a boring, bullshit job, but who could ever really know. Sure we were traded around like trading cards by massive corporations, but these mechanics were theoretical. Now AI comes along and reveals just how much of our jobs is in fact bullshit. While corporations have not yet discovered exactly how to do this, it is highly probable that AI’s great contribution may be revealing just how much bullshit we have all been slinging around.

No longer is it enough to regurgitate what you read in a book or heard on the news when AI can do it 10 times better. Perhaps my greatest frustration with conversation and work is the fact that most of it is people telling me things I have already read or heard or watched. So little is original, insightful or new. So naturally when a tool comes along that is a better bullshitter than most people they take offense, because no longer is bullshitting enough. Indeed, our revulsion to AI comes not from a fear of replacement, but a fear of confronting our bad faith and ultimate freedom.

“If we define man’s [sic] situation as one of free choice, in which he has no recourse to excuses or outside aid, then any man who takes refuge behind his passions, any man who fabricates some deterministic theory, is operating in bad faith,” said Sartre in “Existentialism is a Humanism.” The bad faith of the last 20 years has been all of us hiding behind work that was a regurgitation, a repetition, a bunch of bullshit; like George Jetson pushing a single button for his job. Now AI can do bullshit better than us and we are all running scared of losing our jobs to AI, not realizing that those jobs didn’t really exist to begin with. AI has ripped back the curtain to reveal there was no man behind the current to being with that we might turn to for “excuses or outside aid,” but rather a pile of dung.

The terror of AI is perhaps most that it reveals how much a pack of bullshit sling primates we are in words and deeds. We accept this bullshit because it is the easiest thing to do, but AI comes along and pulls back the curtain, revealing how abandoned and terribly free we are. Already bad faith actors try to pull us back into bad faith by claiming that AI will replace humans or acquire free will or general intelligence, but in response people increasingly take up their freedom. They are calling for stopping, limiting and regulating data centers. They call to regulate big tech and AI. They call for universal health care, clean food and human decency. Bad faith actors push back and extol narratives of inevitable human destruction, but the bullshit begins to stink.

No longer will it be enough to regurgitate what you read in a book, or heard in a YouTube video or saw on TikTok. AI can bullshit a 100 times better than you. AI thrusts us back into our abandoned state of freedom and people are beginning to realize their choice. There are, and always will be, bad faith actors who claim we are the bullshit and want us to stay on the the dung heap of bad faith, but increasingly people see the bullshit and smell the bullshit and are repelled by the bullshit. As Sartre said, “…we remind men [sic] there is no legislator other than himself and that he must, in his abandoned state, make his own choices, and also because we show that it is not by turning inward, but by constantly seeking a goal outside himself in the form of liberation, or of some special achievement, that man will realize himself as truly human.“AI reveals our bullshit and invites us to imagine and realize a more perfect, more free and more humane world.

Sources

Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Carol Macomber, 2007 Yale University Press edition, ISBN 9780300115458

David Graeber on Bullshit Jobs, [www.youtube.com/watch

singularity on Logan's Essays

The Bullshit Singularity