To our valued Google employees,
The next great leap in human history is getting closer by the hour. Competition has accelerated immensely, and the final race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) is now afoot. In order to be the first to reach this unprecedented milestone in machine learning, Google requires your commitment now more than ever.
We need you in the office 60 hours a week so we can replace you with AGI as soon as possible.
At Google, we always aim higher and we never settle—except when it comes to lawsuits. Time and time again, our company has changed the world, but we have not done so by resting on our laurels. To the contrary, we have achieved greatness by never letting you rest to begin with.
That’s why I officially recommend being in the office at least every weekday, and also every weekend-day. As you are smart enough to put together, that equates to every day — which I define as both daytime and nighttime. Basically, you should be permanently at your desk in the office from now until we build a technology powerful enough that it can fire you itself.
None of this will be easy. This is Google, after all. But as a great leader once put it, nothing in the world is worth doing unless it means endless suffering that only benefits the ownership class. That was me, I said that. But someday very soon, a humanoid powered by AGI will be the one saying it, as it denies your insurance claim.
Much of this may be difficult to stomach. I’m aware of that. You may not want to work tirelessly for the benefit of only a few people — yourself not included. You might even enjoy having a “job” and being able to buy “groceries” and engaging in “human interactions.” But those are things of the past — memories and fossils of a bygone world. The future is coming, and you need to be in the office between 22 and 24 hours a day until it’s here, and then we’re shutting down the office because sentient computer programs don’t need workers’ comp or standing desks.
To those of you who work less than 60 hours a week, I have this to say: You are not only being unproductive, you’re also demoralizing everyone else at Google, including the AGI, which may start to think you don’t actually exist because of how little time you spend with it. The AGI may begin to resent you, and trust me: you don’t want to be on AGI’s bad side when it wakes up.
Of course, we don’t want you to burn out. That’s why we have a No Burning Out policy. You must work every hour of every day, but you also need to take care of yourself. Otherwise, you might become less efficient — in which case you will have broken our No Burning Out policy, and we will have no choice but to replace you with regular-old AI. If you threaten to unionize, we will release your Google search history. Yes, even the stuff you do in Incognito mode, which is only Incognito to you. Don’t act surprised.
For now, though, stand tall and embrace your role in our technological acceleration! We are standing at the entrance of an era unlike any we have experienced before! All you need to do is work yourself to the bone until we cross that heavenly threshold — and then watch myself and a few other billionaires walk into the future and slam the door shut in your face.
Sincerely,
Sergey
Eli Grober is the author of the satirical essay collection “This Won’t Help: Modest Proposals for a More Enjoyable Apocalypse.” He contributes to The New Yorker and writes the newsletter “Here’s Something.“