Would we all completely change our lives and restructure society due to AI? We already did it with the car!

 

Connections: The Intelligence Engine

In 1908, Henry Ford released the Model T.
It was black. It was boxy. And it was cheap.

And with it, we didn’t just build a new way to move—we built a new world.

Roads. Highways. Suburbs. Drive-thrus. Parking lots. Oil wars. Climate collapse.

All from a box on wheels.

Now. Imagine you’re in the 19th century.

You live near where you work. You walk. Or take a horse. Your neighborhood is dense, social, noisy, and hard to map.

Then along comes the car.

And suddenly—
Cities must sprawl.
Homes need garages.
Communities split across interstate veins.
The corner shop becomes a strip mall.
Walking becomes suspicious behavior.

And we accept it.
Not just because the car is fast, but because it’s wrapped in freedom, masculinity, productivity.

But here’s the trick: you don’t change the car to fit the world.
You change the world to fit the car.

Now jump to today.

People say AI won’t “change everything.”
That we’ll “figure it out.”
That it’s “just another tool.”

The same way the car was “just a faster horse.”

But look closely.
Because we’re already laying down the invisible infrastructure of an AI world.

We train these models in giant server farms powered by fossil fuels, while driving gas-powered SUVs to Whole Foods to buy oat milk and post complaints about AI’s carbon footprint on a phone made in a surveillance factory.
We prop up petro-states to keep our tanks full, just like we’re now subsidizing chip fabrication in geopolitically unstable regions so we can keep our models fed.
We clear-cut wilderness to make way for housing developments with home office upgrades—not for people, but for AI-powered workspaces.

And soon?

We’ll reshape education—not to teach students to think, but to prompt better.
We’ll reshape law—not to interpret nuance, but to integrate with legal LLMs.
We’ll reshape health—not to treat you, but to align your data with predictive analytics.

We’re not adapting AI to our lives.
We’re adapting our lives to AI.

Just like we did for the car:

  • The car needed roads → so we built highways

  • The car needed gas → so we militarized the Middle East

  • The car needed parking → so we paved over cities

  • The car needed status → so we sold it as freedom

  • The car needed to go faster → so we gave up walkable lives

And now:

  • AI needs data → so we gave it our memories

  • AI needs compute → so we built server cities

  • AI needs labor → so we rebranded it as "collaboration"

  • AI needs adoption → so we convinced people they’d be “left behind” without it

  • AI needs us → not as humans, but as inputs

And here’s the twist.
The car didn’t just change the city.
It changed the human nervous system.

It rewired time.
Made space elastic.
Turned distance into delay.
Turned the body into an extension of the engine.

And AI?

It’s about to reprogram the mind.

What cars did to space, AI will do to meaning.

  • Car accidents = AI hallucinations

  • Traffic jams = content overload

  • Road rage = algorithmic bias

  • Insurance risk scores = emotion analysis

  • “Check engine” lights = neural feedback dashboards

We’re not adding intelligence to life.
We’re building life around the needs of intelligence.

And it will feel... normal.
Natural.
Inevitable.
Just like the car.

Until we look around and realize:

We don’t live in cities anymore. We live in traffic patterns.
We don’t live with AI. We live for it.

But here’s the kicker—the Burke moment:

All of this may have started not with an algorithm, not with electricity, not even with a car...

…but with a 17th-century Dutch lens grinder named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who just wanted to look at microbes, and ended up helping create optics → which led to photography → which enabled film → which accelerated image recognition → which is now being devoured by generative AI to create the very illusions we scroll past daily...

…while sitting in traffic.

So if we’ve already reshaped the planet for a machine that moves bodies,
why wouldn’t we reshape it for a machine that moves minds?

The road’s already being paved.
And the steering wheel is... well, let’s just say it’s not in our hands anymore.

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