the myth engine

In certain circles, it feels like AI has already taken over. Everyone is using it. Everyone is building with it. Everyone is replacing someone with it.

But zoom out.

According to the latest global data from DataReportal and Similarweb, while nearly 70% of the world is on social media, daily AI use barely reaches 4%. Less than 1% of users are actually paying for these tools. Most businesses haven’t integrated them meaningfully. Most people are not even touching them.

And yet, the panic feels real.

Why? Because humans don’t react to data. We react to narratives.

We’ve always done this. The Inquisition wasn’t powered by statistics. Financial crashes aren’t triggered by spreadsheets alone. Cultural revolutions don’t begin with adoption curves. They begin with stories.

And the story builds the myth.

The myth is a biological necessity. It is the tool we use to understand things we cannot yet comprehend. We need a shape for the formless. Zeus sends the thunder, and there is a rabbit in the moon because Quetzalcóatl honors the humble spirit of sacrifice. Myths help us name the unnameable.

AI is not just a piece of software. It is a myth forming in real time. For some, it is Prometheus stealing fire. For others, it is the end of work hidden behind a friendly chat box.

Myths help us organize chaos. They give shape to what feels uncontrollable. But myths can also distort scale. If a fraction of the world uses AI daily, how did we decide it already rules everything?

Echo chambers accelerate mythology faster than reality. That is not a technological phenomenon. It is a human one.

We are merely at the beginning of AI. The beginning of a new history of our civilization. A story that right now starts with a single, anxious question: Is AI replacing humanity?

We need to move past that to a much more profound question.

Who is writing the myth around it?