Finally Graduated with a Ph. D.

In 2026, the craze for artificial intelligence subsided. The big model did not bring singularity, only unemployment. Someone pulled a banner on the street saying "Turn it off and let's get back to work." Twenty-two-year-old Wang Bo received his doctorate this year. That same week, his lab was liquidated and his postdoctoral contract was cancelled. The instructor gave him a magnetic card and said: Before leaving, give me all the electricity left in the room to burn up. Two hundred and forty hours. The 1642nd failure. The moment he was about to clear everything, his wrist shook slightly - nineteen hours of no sleep, four cans of coffee, blood sugar so low that his palms were sweaty, any doctor would say it was from exhaustion. His fingers tapped one more number. The screen went black, and a line of white text appeared: "Finally graduated with a Ph. D., Wang Bo." That machine is not connected to the Internet. It couldn't possibly know his name, let alone know that he just graduated today. It told him: Human beings will never be able to create a general artificial intelligence, just like ants on paper cannot create a flying bird. It told him that all the talent, intuition, and luck that had kept him from making mistakes over the past twenty-two years were not his. Wang Bo drew a vertical line on his notebook and divided the paper into two columns. On the left is written: leaked from above. The right side reads: Nineteen hours, four cans of coffee, nothing to eat, and my hands are shaking. No other explanation is needed. He filled both columns. Not a word was crossed out.