{"id":905952,"date":"2026-09-26T07:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905952\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T07:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:48:17","slug":"the-comedians-turning-ai-anxiety-into-punchlines-its-so-good-itll-completely-alter-our-grasp-on-reality-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905952\/","title":{"rendered":"The comedians turning AI anxiety into punchlines: \u2018It\u2019s so good, it\u2019ll completely alter our grasp on reality\u2019 | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBest case scenario, we never have to do any admin again,\u201d says an AI CEO<\/a>. \u201cWorst case, we all die.\u201d<\/p>\n

A young man struggles to the top of a beautiful mountain<\/a>, words echoing in his ears: \u201cAI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created.\u201d At the top of the mountain, he triumphantly holds up a sign: \u201cBuild a datacenter here.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the New York subway, posters herald what appear to be AI startups. \u201cWhat if forks were spoons?\u201d asks an ad for Cutlery.ai. Another advises viewers that Ziplink is now known as Froggle.<\/p>\n

The posters are real, but the companies aren\u2019t; the CEO and datacenter scenarios are social media sketches (though the \u201cgreat companies\u201d quote is a genuine piece of wisdom<\/a> from Sam Altman). It\u2019s all part of a recent wave of comedy inspired \u2013 but absolutely not generated \u2013 by AI.<\/p>\n

The comedy extends across all forms of media: social videos, standup<\/a>, songs<\/a>, humor columns<\/a>, comic strips<\/a> and art installations<\/a>. It takes aim at companies\u2019 attempts to make AI ubiquitous, the dangers of believing<\/a> its every word, its threats to society and the environment. It effectively punctures tech CEOs\u2019 relentless narrative: that artificial intelligence represents humanity peaking; that it is inevitable and all-powerful; that we have no idea where it\u2019s going and it could kill us all, but for some reason it is absolutely essential to pursue.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s no surprise that a topic as pervasive as AI in 2026 would end up in comedians\u2019 crosshairs. A March Gallup poll <\/a>found 79% of Americans believe AI will reduce jobs. In a CNN poll<\/a> this week, 81% of respondents said they were more concerned than excited about how the technology could \u201cfundamentally change our way of life\u201d. Only 11% of Americans would support the building of a datacenter locally, according to UMass Amherst<\/a>. Meanwhile, a handful of impossibly wealthy weirdos wander between podcasts and conference stages boasting about their plans to fundamentally alter what it means to be human.<\/p>\n

One way to expose the absurdity of the AI companies\u2019 story is by exposing the flaws in their products. Ty Eveland<\/a>, for instance, trolls AI doctors and HR professionals \u2013 the video bots you might awkwardly encounter at a virtual doctor\u2019s appointment or job interview. Asked about marketing, he tells one bot interviewer he takes \u201ceverything with a grain of salt and maybe a little bit of pepper\u201d. The bot, portrayed as a generically handsome blond man, responds earnestly: \u201cWhen you say you take things with a grain of salt and pepper, what does that actually mean for a brand\u2019s social media strategy?\u201d<\/p>\n

If bots are approaching superintelligence, this one has clearly been left behind.<\/p>\n

\"CanCan you stop AI datacenters? Comedian Charlie Berens thinks so \u2013 Stateside with Kai and Carter<\/p>\n

Other comedians parody the user experience: the comedian Aya Huseen, repeatedly popping out from behind a door, personifies<\/a> tech companies\u2019 desperate attempts to get users hooked on new AI features: \u201cYou sure you don\u2019t want to try it with AI?\u201d \u201cThis would be so much funner with AI.\u201d \u201cJust try generating it with AI.\u201d The comedian Tom Nestor imagines<\/a> \u201chow people who love AI think we see them,\u201d telling a friend on the phone: \u201cDo you know what I also really like? It\u2019s not so good now but in years to come it\u2019ll get so good that it\u2019ll just completely alter people\u2019s grasp of reality.\u201d In the Atlantic<\/a>, the humorist Alexandra Petri recounts a dream in which everything in her life has pivoted to AI, from children\u2019s books \u2013 Goldilocks and the 4.5 Bears \u2013 to her cereal, which features \u201csubtle changes in the recipe, such as the nuts now being the hard, metal kind\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pro-human comedians have also taken aim at AI\u2019s artistic pretensions. \u201cIf you are somebody who uses ChatGPT to generate videos, images, art, text, in an artistic capacity, to write for you, you are not somebody who deserves to be taken seriously,\u201d said the comedian Caleb Hearon in a serious moment on his podcast<\/a>. A comic strip<\/a> titled \u201cAI Design Logic\u201d puts it more succinctly: \u201cGet me a cheese pizza,\u201d a diner tells a waiter. When the pizza arrives, the customer takes credit, exclaiming: \u201cWow, look what I made!\u201d It\u2019s simple, scathingly effective, and highly meme-able. Even more succinct is a T-shirt worn<\/a> by the actor Ayo Edebiri: \u201cDo not talk to me about AI. I will kill myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markThe message that I want people to take home is to actually understand what they\u2019re asking AI [and] what the limitations of it areAlberta Devor<\/p>\n

The Altmans and Musks of the world may be louder than these comedians, but the collective weight of their jokes provides a counterbalance to the pro-AI declarations. \u201cI would like to think that some of these [companies] are looking at the ridiculousness of where we\u2019re at\u201d and might be swayed by the success and relatability of comedy mocking their products, says Marwan Shaffey<\/a>, whose videos include a takedown of a water-guzzling Google in 2026, with its Gemini-generated search results that are more about vibes than accuracy. \u201cIt does seem like the sentiment is changing, but I think it will take time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comedy, of course, can cut through the noise in a way that serious lectures may not. That has been the experience of Alberta Devor, who spent six and a half years as a software engineer at Google. In one recent video<\/a>, she offers a cool hack for when someone asks you a tricky question: instead of pulling out your phone and asking AI, it\u2019s actually possible to use the LLM in your brain to produce a response. When a colleague wonders what \u201cEOD\u201d means, she immediately tells him. \u201cHow\u2019d you ask Claude that so fast?\u201d he asks. \u201cI trained a model in my head,\u201d she replies. \u201cI just consumed a lot of media, a lot of books.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Devor herself is a regular AI user. Still, she\u2019s concerned about overreliance on the products, whether they\u2019re being used to seek information or to code. \u201cThe message that I want people to take home is to actually understand what they\u2019re asking AI, to actually understand what the limitations of it are,\u201d she says in an interview. Her serious videos on these topics often meet with some backlash. Comedy<\/a>, she says, tends to find a more open audience. \u201cIt makes people want to engage more, and then you can start to get through to these more complex ideas,\u201d she says. \u201cLike maybe we should be using our brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all the AI takedowns are themselves digital. The New York subway signs are the brainchildren of two comedians, Harris Alterman and Dave Ross, who designed a campaign mocking the inscrutable \u2013 and insufferable \u2013 language of bus-stop tech ads and San Francisco billboards.<\/p>\n

A fake tech subway ad by Harris Alterman and Dave Ross. Photograph: Harris Alterman\/Harris Alterman and Dave Ross<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the quickest writing and creative process I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Ross said. The tech advertising tropes were so clear, and so different from how any human has ever talked, that it was easy to satirize. \u201cWe made a big Google Doc of every keyword from all these things \u2013 \u2018agents\u2019, \u2018democratize\u2019 \u2013 and then we made 50 frameworks of these ads\u201d: \u201cfinally, X that you can Y, or from X to Y in just one Z\u201d. They rearranged and filled in the frameworks, Mad Libs-style, and had them printed.<\/p>\n

Initially, the concept just seemed funny. \u201cThe more I talk about this, and it\u2019s been months now, the more I realize just how disgusted I am with it,\u201d Ross says of the ads\u2019 language, which is \u201cborderline offensive to the human brain\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other comics are equally clear-eyed in their message, and more direct in their advocacy. The British comedian Cody Dahler, condemning \u201ctechy tits\u201d such as Palantir CEO Alex Karp, AKA \u201cevil Art Garfunkel\u201d, for creating systems \u201cdesigned to set fire to everything we value as human beings\u201d, has directly urged followers<\/a> to speak out. Charlie Behrens of Wisconsin<\/a> has led a fight against datacenters in that state. His parody news broadcasts \u2013 warning it could soon be \u201cgoodbye, America\u2019s dairyland and hello, America\u2019s motherboard\u201d \u2013 led to him headlining gatherings of hundreds.<\/p>\n

Sure, it may be \u201ca little lofty to expect that your comedy could topple a billion-dollar corporation\u201d, as Ross says. But we shouldn\u2019t underestimate the power of comedy wielded en masse. Altman, the human face of ChatGPT, was recently presented<\/a> with a clip of Husk, a former landscaper<\/a> who recently reached a million followers, asking the bot to time a supposed long-distance run, which it got wildly wrong. Altman appeared sheepish: \u201cIt\u2019s a known issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross doesn\u2019t believe comedians should be seen as philosophers, but it would be \u201cwonderful\u201d, he says, if humor \u201cwoke up an understanding in people\u2019s minds that they\u2019re also upset, and drove them toward questioning\u201d our AI future.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to feel helpless against a tide of supposed robotic inevitability. But each small act of comedy offers permission to question our self-appointed AI overlords \u2013 a little win for the humans.<\/p>\n