A few weeks ago, a story sped by in the sluice, something about a company with a substantial valuation that had a workforce of two — the founding partners. Everything else the company did was carried out by AI.

I don’t recall much more about it, AI being a topic that’s simultaneously rage-inducing and terrifying, so I probably read the first three paragraphs and noped out. But it came to mind in recent weeks, in connection with a gas-station credit card of Alan’s.

It’s a negligible card in our credit constellation, kept mainly for emergencies or those back-in-the-day days when you’re driving on fumes but payday is 24 hours away. I always paid it off, never carried a balance. It would give me an updated credit score every so often, which I appreciated: 820. Still excellent.

But earlier this year, we started receiving mail, both e- and snail, informing us that the oil company was closing its proprietary credit-card operation, and migrating it to a branded MasterCard, overseen by an entirely different company, Imprint. Quick! Migrate your account now! Your old card won’t work after May 18! As the payer of the household bills and a person who has most of her shit together, I obeyed these orders. First attempt: No account recognized under this name. Second attempt, a few days later: Same. Third, fourth and fifth attempts, days after that: Same.

Time to call Customer Support then, a call immediately answered by a clanker, er, virtual assistant. The clanker opened by encouraging me to do everything online, where it’s “easier.” Otherwise, tell me in a few words what the problem is. You all know how this goes, because we’ve all been there. The questions aren’t understood, and you end up bellowing REPRESENTATIVE!!! before being shunted to an alleged human being, where “wait times may be longer than normal due to high call volumes.” Reader, I hung on the line for 20 minutes, my personal limit for cycling through hold music.

This happened twice, before I found the company website and started rooting around in the About section, until I found the page for media inquiries. I filled it out with my information, left a terse but not obscenity-filled note about the problem, and went for a bike ride.

An hour later, a call from the company, which went to voicemail, as I was still out touching grass. I tried logging in again when I returned. Mirabile dictu, my account was recognized. Moments later, I was assured that my new MasterCard was on its way. Shipped!

That was May 19. The card has not yet arrived. It hasn’t been activated, whew, but it’s somewhere between there and here, and true to the warnings, the old card no longer works. I tried calling Imprint again. Clanker, clanker, clanker. REPRESENTATIVE!!!! Sorry, no one is here to take your call, try again later.

Sorry for the long windup here, but would someone please tell me how this miracle technology is going to improve our lives? Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lost 99 percent of my personal support last week, when she happily participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking for a gigantic data center in Saline, south of Ann Arbor. It’s safe to say that virtually no one in the area, save the construction tycoon who got the contract, wants this thing. OpenAI had to threaten to sue the pants off the city to get it done. And the governor shrugged and picked up the shiny shovel.

The editorial-page editor at the Freep had a succinct column about this today. Probably paywalled, so here’s the heart of it:

And there was Sam Altman on Monday, smiling alongside Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at the site of a hyperscale data center in Saline Township ― a massive project that will suck down enough electricity to power 1 million households ― bitterly opposed by a lot of residents and forced into the community via lawsuit:

“We know what the current attitude towards data centers in the world is … but I think we can make this a great example … This could turn into the site where hundreds of millions of students around the world learn and get private tutoring. This could turn into the site where millions of small businesses can run their business with AI in the cloud. … Hopefully someday we’ll all read about some incredible thing AI has done for society … and there’ll be a good chance that it happened as this site came online.”

This is a new, rosier Altman, who lately has seemed to discover that telling people you’re working to usher in a “Terminator”/”The Matrix”-esque version of the future where humans are meat batteries for our robot overlords evokes a little pushback. (But hasn’t seemed to hurt the prospects of OpenAI, which is steaming toward a $1 trillion IPO.)

So this is my question, one that it’s absolutely insane I even have to ask: If Altman believes that his work could result in the end of humanity as the planet’s dominant species, why on earth is Michigan doing business with him?

Good question. The governor’s spokesman had no comment.

Meanwhile, back in my little beef with Imprint, I thought it might be fun to punch their name into the Google and ask for reviews. Hoo-boy:

My REMOVED card, which I have had for 32 years in excellent standing has been moved to this company named Imprint Payments. This company is now sending me texts saying I have to agree to having their REMOVED. I already have a Mastercard, so I am not interested.I have been trying to do two things for the past nine days:- Pay any balance on the account – Close the account I have spent 67 hours on hold (literally 8 hours a day) trying to get a representative to assist. I have tried doing it online but the automated system does not recognize my name or birthday or anything else to identify REMOVED now receiving texts saying my account payment is due. I have used the website asking for assistance and am on hold again today as I REMOVED does not matter what option you choose, the system either says I’m not recognized and puts me on hold to speak to an agent. The past three days after being on hold for three hours it just hangs up on you, so I start the process all over. This is definitely feeling like a scam now as I have no way of paying any balance and/or closing the account. PLEASE HELP!!!

If I had this person’s contact information, I’d suggest they leave a note on the media-inquiries page. Not that it’s done me that much good. Poking around that page, I notice most of the content is press releases and one story from Forbes. Which is now a content farm.

Probably a clanker edits it now.