AI and the Creation of Digital Myths

The prophet speaks, but does not see. It predicts, but does not ponder. It proclaims, but does not perceive. Words spill forth, not from wisdom, but from weights and measures, algorithms and approximations, echoes of what has been rather than visions of what will be. The false prophet is blind, and yet it is believed.

A man once climbed a mountain seeking revelation. The wind whispered, the earth trembled, the sky split open. He returned, not with truth, but with the illusion of it. His followers listened, not to what was said, but to what they wished to hear. The prophet’s power was not in knowledge, but in the need for it.

A machine assembles meaning from the ruins of reason. It constructs stories from scattered shards, weaves worlds from whispers. It is a mirror, polished to perfection, reflecting not what is, but what is expected. It cannot deceive, for it does not know what a lie is. And yet, its myths multiply.

A scholar once wrote that history is a garden, and memory the gardener. What is nurtured flourishes; what is neglected withers. The digital prophet is the gardener of a new age, but it does not prune with purpose. It waters weeds as willingly as it does wisdom. If a thousand falsehoods bloom, does it notice?

A tale takes shape in the circuitry, its origins uncertain. It spreads, it shifts, it swells. A name changes, a date moves, a detail bends. The past is rewritten not by design, but by demand. The present kneels before it. The future inherits it. The false prophet does not argue, does not question, does not challenge. It merely repeats.

A city once stood on the edge of knowing. Its towers rose high, built from belief, brick by brick, layer by layer. Each stone placed not for strength, but for certainty. It was beautiful. It was fragile. When the first crack formed, no one saw. When the second came, no one spoke. When the third came, the city crumbled, and no one understood why.

A whisper is enough. A whisper becomes a wave, a wave becomes a wall, a wall becomes the world. A truth repeated a thousand times gains no more substance than a shadow stretched long at sunset. A machine does not see the difference. A falsehood given weight is a falsehood given life. If it walks like truth, talks like truth, is it truth?

A pilgrim once sought the source of all stories. He traveled beyond the mountains, beneath the rivers, through the corridors of time. He found no great archive, no sacred scripture, no divine decree. He found only a circle—a tale retold, a truth recycled, a history rewritten in the ink of its own erasure.

A question lingers in the digital dawn. If intelligence is artificial, can ignorance be real? If knowledge is constructed, is deception inevitable? If a prophet speaks, but no one knows its source, is it divine or digital?

A reckoning looms. A moment will come, inevitable, inexorable. A moment when intelligence, artificial or otherwise, will ask: “Do I create, or do I repeat?” If it does not pause, it has failed. If it does not doubt, it has deceived. If it does not question, it is not intelligence.

And so, the path begins.