AI, You Can’t Outsmart Me! - Algorithm, Capitalism and the Politics of expression

We're living in a time where machines write poems, predict your moods, track your desires before you even articulate them and then nudge you with cleverly placed advertisements hovering on all your apps - into buying, believing and behaving. Artificial Intelligence is no longer the "future" - it's now. It's in your feed, your browser history, your assignments, your job and even your mind. GPT writes resumes, letters, assignments, and even blog posts. So, believe me when I say this with a lot of apprehension that has been eating at me for days - will it replace us? Outthink us? Outsmart us?

This is not an anti-AI rant. I use AI - I even like AI! But somewhere between convenience and dependency, this is a conversation that has been long pending between families and peers alike. This is not just a tech revolution - it's political. Everything is. A capitalist idea and innovation. A story about power, labor, language, control and everything in between.

📍AI: The Brainchild of Capitalism?

Let’s not pretend AI emerged in a vacuum. Behind its polite interfaces and Silicon Valley branding lies a deeply capitalist machine: one that seeks to automate, optimise, and monetise everything.

AI isn’t simply “helping” you think faster. It’s being trained to replace thinking, especially when that thinking isn’t fast enough, productive enough, or profitable enough. I remember all the times I was too lazy to write an application to the school authorities and just gave ChatGPT the context, prompting it to write a full-fledged, even better application letter than I ever possibly could. Convenient, no?

If the industrial revolution replaced manual labor, this revolution is targeting intellectual labor—writing, designing, coding, even teaching. It’s not coincidental that companies are racing to deploy AI in journalism, customer service, and education—fields once driven by human interaction and critical judgment. This is capitalism doing what it always does: cutting costs, scaling output, and squeezing value. You think it's revolutionary? Sure. But like every so-called revolution in the hands of money-makers, it's a revolution of efficiency, not empathy. Replace teachers, writers, therapists - anyone whose work is built on connection.

But when thinking itself becomes a product, what happens to introspection, creativity, resistance? What happens to you? To me? Orwell wasn't wrong, after all

Back in 1949, George Orwell gave us a terrifying vision of the future - where language was weaponised to suppress rebellion before it even sparked, where history was rewritten, and surveillance omnipresent. In 1984, "Newspeak" wasn't just a quirky dialect - it was a political project. Strip language down enough, and you limit thought, and ultimately dissent. Fast forward to today, and we're not far off. AI tools are shaping our writing, filtering our ideas, helping us make decisions (I literally bought a pair of heels based on its recommendations and analysis), flagging 'offensive' words - all in real time. As if it knows better. Who decides what's offensive when offense is how the oppressed have always made themselves heard?

On the surface, yes it is helpful, awfully convenient. Underneath, it's subtle influence which we fail to read. Quiet, creeping influence over how we think, frame and express. And here's where it gets political : when algorithms trained on exisiting power structures by those in power start shaping present discourse, who controls the narrative? The masses or the market?

🧠 What it means to resist through creation as a student?

Here’s the thing no machine can mimic: lived experience. I can ask ChatGPT to draft me an essay on caste politics or feminism in India—but it won’t know what it feels like to grow up as a woman in a patriarchal home. To have your arguments discredited just because you're a girl and "know nothing" of the outside world. To translate rage into poetry. To cry while proofreading a piece that hits too close to the bone.

AI doesn’t know grief, desire, heartbreak, hunger, hesitation. It simulates them based on our data. But simulation is not embodiment.

And that’s our edge.

Our messy, contradictory, chaotic humanness is not a bug - it’s the feature. When I write, I don’t just string sentences - I bleed on paper. I remember. I observe, rebel, reflect. It takes me literal days to write and then publish an article like this - something ChatGPT can surely do in 5 minutes. No algorithm can replicate the weight of silence in a dysfunctional family, the ache of feeling sidelined in a room full of men, to rage about the mundane or romanticize the silence. It cannot feel. It just mimics.

Writing slowly is an act of silent resistance. Choosing my words - not generating them - is political for me. Learning to think on my own, to sharpen my arguments, pausing to reframe a sentence, journaling with pen on paper - this is how I rebel as a student. And yes, it is hard. AI can do it, but would it carry the same weight behind its words? Would it reflect the complexity of someone like me? Navigating ambition, academia, womanhood and truth - all at once? I don't think so. After all, what’s the point of reading Ambedkar, Marx, or Millet if I don’t feel the discomfort they provoke? We're losing the disomfort that comes with learning. The kind that shakes your worldview, not just your GPA. I didn't study political science to just parrot theories, after all. I remember how exhilarated I felt when in a classroom full of AI-generated and copied assignments, I presented mine - a comparative analysis on the judicial systems of Chanakya, Brihaspati and Manu in Ancient Indian political thought - and my Professor gave me a 'good' in remark. So, I write because it slows me down. Reminds me that I am a rational human. About who I am, what I have lived through, and what I care about. Because in a world of constant noise and AI-generated content, my words - however flawed, are mine. I write for those who still think, who still question, who still feel. It is easier to stay silent and numb, but I choose not to.

Final Thoughts : A truce, not a war AI is not the enemy, but it's not neutral either. It reflects the world it's built upon - and that world is deeply unequal, exploitative, power-hungry. So yes, I'll use AI - but I refuse to worship it, to depend on it. I won't let it take away my right to struggle with grammar and sentence or let it draft something in a minute which I take days to. That struggle is mine, and it is sacred to me.