Reading · Celeste Garcia Getting Real About AI

Silicon Valley wants to take the qualities that make us uniquely human — our ability to reason and make decisions, our self‑expression, our relationships, our feelings — and repackage them into something more polished and efficient so they can sell them back to us via subscription or a discounted yearly rate.

Exploiting our insecurities is already proving profitable. They’re selling patterns, scripts, and statistical predictions disguised as human qualities. These tools perform on our behalf by generating the right words and tone to simulate wit, charm, and competence. If they can convince us that we are inherently inadequate, they can sell us on “upgrades” forever.

Every human behavioral trait has revenue potential. Every insecurity is a limitless market opportunity.

Much of the groundwork was already laid by tech — social media trained us to expect perfection, instant gratification, and to build “your brand.” If something isn’t engaging, you scroll or swipe past it. Many companies are tying AI‑related goals to performance evaluations. In a leaked internal document, Microsoft instructed managers to evaluate employees on their use of internal AI tools. Efficiency and doing more with less has long been the mantra of corporate America. Everyone is feeling the pressure; tech is here to offer the solutions.

Across categories, the pitch is the same: outsource to systems and apps that can perform better than your own intuition, communication, and deliberations. Human judgment is outdated and a waste of time.

Modern dating is not easy. People are exhausted, navigating a world optimized for screens, distraction, and speed. Silicon Valley knows this because they designed and built the system. Now they’re offering tools that digitize a very human process to keep us on their platform. Avoid discomfort while creating a more polished, data-driven version that represents us.

RIZZ AI and YourMove.AI promise to optimize your dating experience. Tools help users create a persona for success with advice on photos and crafting messages so you always say the “right” thing, determined by the algorithm. Who cares if you’re building yourself into someone you’re not — you have goals. Close the deal.

YourMove.AI offers “100 Good Morning Messages to Send Your Lover,” flirty, funny, and cute — a prepackaged emotional starter kit. At this point, we might as well let our AI agents flirt with each other on our behalf; we can watch our relationships blossom from the sidelines.

What happens when the other person meets the real you? No problem, throw on Meta glasses and have Cluely tell you what to say. No thinking or feeling required.

Cluely launched in the spring of 2025 with the tagline, “Cheat on Everything,” and a viral ad implying that lying is the best way to get a second date. Their product vision is real‑time, undetected coaching for dating, interviews, business meetings, and tests. Cluely listens quietly in the background and feeds you the perfect response, complete with statistics and facts you can spit out like an animatronic version of yourself.

And aside from fully misrepresenting who you are, there’s the small matter of privacy and the legality of recording people without their consent.

Cluely’s own documentation makes it clear that the app captures audio and generates transcripts of your conversations. In a two‑party‑consent state, that’s a legal landmine. Recording someone without their knowledge can violate state workplace policies and confidentiality agreements. The app is marketed as “undetected,” but in many jurisdictions, “undetected” is “illegal.”

Cluely’s own marketing promises you will “never have to think alone again.” A more accurate promise would be “never think again.” When you're reading a script, you retain and learn nothing. The more you rely on it, the more you outsource intelligence, intuition, judgment, and improvisation. Growth happens in those awkward moments, and the ability to learn from them. If you never have to struggle through a hard conversation or a nerve‑wracking interview, you also never develop the capacity that comes from doing those things yourself.

And of course, Cluely does not account for LLM hallucinations. What happens when you’re doing a sales pitch using completely made-up statistics? Pretend you're the smartest person in the room at the cost of honesty and integrity.

It’s not surprising that the wonderkind founder, Roy Lee, was put on academic probation at Columbia because he bragged about using the app he developed to cheat on everything, including tests.

Cheat faster, better, and with style. It’s the rebellious, rule‑breaking zeitgeist of the Silicon Valley billionaire culture. And the VCs are lapping it up like kittens over milk. Substack funders Andreessen Horowitz led a $15 million investment round for Cluely.

So, start cheating.
Because when everyone does, no one is.

~ Cluely’s “Manifesto” on their website

And for those who give up on human relationships entirely, there’s a booming market of AI “companions” who will never challenge you, never get tired, never need anything, and never tell you the truth about yourself or your actions. Replika, Character.ai, Paradot, and Nomi.AI promise connection. Nomi.AI offers an “AI companion with memory and a soul.” Paradot claims your AI Being “understands you like no other.” It’s intimacy without vulnerability, engineered to accommodate and become an addiction.

The message is consistent: Hey humans, you suck. Don’t bother building skills with your inadequate, inefficient human brain. Why would you want true connection when it can be smooth, shiny, and artificial?

I’m not saying all AI is bad. It can be a tool for learning, creativity, accessibility, and empowerment. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the business models and the morally bankrupt founders, funders, and yes, employees, feeding into human vulnerabilities and addictions.

To Be Human Is Weakness

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