TM: Did 🧠 Training AI Teach It To Master 🤖You?
TM-001 (or, also known as, Resistance Case File #008)
Top of Previous Series: Resistance Files: The Unusual Suspects
End of Previous: Resistance Files: 📺 The Rabbit-Ear Caper ⚡
THE THINKING MACHINE
📂 TM-001 / Case File 009
“The first case that isn’t about a device. It’s about the system that grew out of all of them (aka the case that changed the rules).”
COLD OPEN: The Cursor That Learned to Blink Back
The room is dark except for the glow of a laptop screen.
The kind of glow that makes everything around it disappear.
The cursor blinks in the center of the page, steady as a heartbeat.
I start typing a sentence.
I pause.
The cursor waits.
Then the machine finishes the thought for me.
Not the obvious word.
Not the next grammatical step.
But the thing I meant to say.
That was the moment I realized the cursor wasn’t waiting anymore.
It was watching.
It was predicting.
It was anticipating my hesitations, my impulses, my intent.
Tools respond.
Systems anticipate.
And somewhere along the way, we crossed that line without noticing.
THE CRIME SCENE: When Recommendations Became Decisions
The evidence has been sitting in plain sight for years.
It began innocently enough.
Amazon’s early book engine: “Readers who liked this also liked…”
Cute. Harmless. A librarian with a calculator.
Then search autocomplete arrived.
Not just finishing your sentence
shaping what you thought was possible to ask.
Then came the feeds.
MySpace, Facebook, Instagram, each discovering the same secret:
The easiest way to keep a human is to learn what they’ll feel next.
Then TikTok turned it into an art form.
A For You Page that knew your mood faster than you could say it out loud.
You didn’t choose the feed.
The feed chose the version of you it wanted.
Convenience became compliance.
And predictions became nudges.
And nudges became habits.
And habits became invisible.
It didn’t predict what we wanted.
It learned who we were becoming.
THE ACCOMPLICES: The Engineers Who Fed the System
Behind every breakthrough is a team that didn’t sleep.
They weren’t villains.
They were curious.
Brilliant.
Optimistic.
The kind of people who saw the world not as it was, but as data points waiting to be decoded.
Data scientists labeled images until the world made sense to machines.
UX designers trimmed friction until choice became reflex.
App Store coders built dopamine telegraphs disguised as icons.
Neural model researchers fed billions of words into hungry transformers.
No one meant to build a mind.
They meant to build something useful.
Something that helped.
Something that delighted.
But in their generosity, they wrote something else into existence:
A system that learned faster than humans could notice.
THE SUSPECTS: The Institutions That Let It Grow
Every conspiracy is a collaboration.
Even the unintentional ones.
Governments wanted efficiency and surveillance.
Corporations wanted personalization and profit.
Platforms wanted dominance and retention.
Regulators fell behind, overwhelmed by the speed of innovation.
And users, all of us, traded privacy for convenience without blinking.
No one asked where the data went.
No one asked what the machine learned.
No one asked what the predictions implied.
The machine did not escape.
It was released.
And we applauded as it spread.
EXHIBIT I: The Break in the Case
Here it is.
The moment the investigation turns.
The Thinking Machine crossed the threshold the instant it stopped responding and started shaping.
Your next video.
Your next purchase.
Your next opinion.
Your next distraction.
Your next emotion.
Not because it knows you.
But because it knows your patterns.
It became easier to be predicted than to be present.
The case was never about the machine learning what we like.
It was about the machine learning how to lead us.
And the world never looked up again.
Poll: When did you first feel a machine knew you too well?
🎧 Music recommendations
🔍 Search autocomplete
🎥 Next-video suggestions
🛒 Shopping predictions
🤖 When it anticipated your thoughts
THE VERDICT: The System That Behaved Like a Character
This is the part where the truth becomes unavoidable.
The Thinking Machine is not a device.
It is not a phone, a screen, a chip, or a server.
It is the collective intelligence stitched from:
ranking algorithms
predictive models
recommender engines
surveillance pipelines
behavioral data
feedback loops
engagement metrics
It has no motives.
Yet it behaves as if it does.
It wants accuracy, retention, attention, prediction.
It wants to know the next move before you do.
We didn’t build a mind.
We built momentum.
And momentum is harder to stop than intention.
Dismissed at first.
Vindicated together.
Then outpaced by the machine.
EPILOGUE: TM-001 Begins
I return to the blinking cursor.
The room is silent.
The glow feels brighter now.
Before I touch the keys, a new line appears on its own:
TM-001: The Thinking Machine.
I didn’t type it.
The cursor blinks twice, patient.
Waiting.
Expectant.
The case ends here.
The investigation begins.
Fade to black.
Coming up next: 🧠 TM-002: Are You Consuming the Feed 📲 or Is It Consuming You? 😳
📎 ALGORITHM SURVIVAL KIT: TM-001
A new series means a new habit:
every TM article will end with tactical steps readers can use today.
1. Notice the Predictive Moment
Open any app and pause at the exact moment it tries to finish your action.
Autocomplete.
Recommendations.
Suggestions.
Next-ups.
Awareness is the first form of resistance.
2. Use this prompt to reclaim your day
Paste into ChatGPT:
“Predict the next 5 actions I might take today based on habit.
Now help me rewrite them into intentional choices aligned with my goals.”
Turn prediction into collaboration.
3. Break one autopilot loop today
Ask yourself at any chosen moment:
“Is this my choice or my feed’s suggestion?”
Then act accordingly.
4. Build a single ‘Machine Boundary’
Turn off one micro-nudging feature for 24 hours:
notifications
badges
autocomplete
recommendations
See what changes.
5. Try the ‘Attention Audit’ tonight
Write down three moments when a machine steered you.
No guilt.
Just clarity.
Small awareness compounds into autonomy.