In the grand, rotting theater of late-stage capitalism, we have finally reached the climax of the absurd: machines are now writing the lies that other machines are programmed to ignore. The news that AI is 'breaking' cover letters and subsequently driving down wages is about as surprising as finding out a casino is rigged, yet here we are, watching the collective intelligence of the workforce evaporate into a cloud of predictive text. It is a fitting end for a species that spent centuries developing language only to hand it over to a glorified autocorrect because they were too bored to describe their own supposed 'passion' for middle-management logistics.

For decades, the cover letter was a sacred ritual of mutual deception. The applicant would pretend that their lifelong dream was to optimize supply chains for a cardboard box manufacturer, and the hiring manager would pretend to read the resulting three paragraphs of sycophantic drivel. It was a human dance of desperation and apathy. Now, however, the job seeker simply prompts a large language model to 'sound professional and enthusiastic,' and the result is a sterile, syntactically perfect suicide note for their career. Because when everyone is using the same algorithm to generate the same 'unique' value proposition, the value of that proposition drops to exactly zero. You aren't a candidate anymore; you are a data packet in a DDoS attack on an HR department that didn't want to talk to you in the first place.

The irony—if one still has the capacity to feel such a sophisticated emotion—is that this digital efficiency is being used as a blunt instrument to lobotomize wages. Employers, ever the vultures of opportunity, have realized that if an AI can generate a perfect application in four seconds, then the 'skill' of professional communication has been commodified into oblivion. Why pay a premium for a human who can articulate a vision when a bot can hallucinate a better one for the price of a server subscription? The result is a race to the bottom where 'high-quality' applications are so ubiquitous they have become worthless. We have automated the prestige out of the white-collar world, leaving behind a hollowed-out marketplace where the only thing lower than the barrier to entry is the starting salary.

The Left will undoubtedly wring its hands and call for 'digital rights' or some other performative nonsense, acting as though a labor union could stop a math equation from replacing a redundant office worker. They want to protect 'human dignity' in a process that was designed to strip it away long before the first transistor was flicked on. Meanwhile, the Right will crow about 'productivity gains' and 'market efficiency,' ignoring the fact that their beloved meritocracy has been replaced by a prompt-engineering contest where the prize is a cubicle and a paycheck that barely covers the cost of the electricity used to run the AI. Both sides are equally blind to the reality that we are building a world where humans are merely the inconvenient carbon-based shells required to transport the software from one office to another.

Consider the sheer nihilism of the current recruitment cycle. A candidate uses an LLM to write a letter. A recruiter uses an AI tool to summarize that letter because they have 5,000 other AI-generated letters to get through. The two machines communicate in a closed loop of buzzwords and corporate jargon, while the actual human beings involved sit in separate rooms, staring at screens, wondering why they feel so profoundly empty. It is a ghost ship of an economy, steered by algorithms and fueled by the evaporated dreams of a workforce that thought a college degree bought them an exemption from obsolescence.

We are witnessing the death of the 'individual' as a corporate concept. When your professional persona can be replicated by a child with a smartphone, you lose the leverage to demand a living wage. The 'breaking' of the cover letter is just the first tremor. Next, the interview will be automated, then the performance review, until finally, the entire charade of 'employment' is just a series of API calls between various black boxes. If you find yourself wondering why your paycheck is shrinking while your 'optimized' resume looks better than ever, remember: you asked for this. You wanted it to be easy. You wanted the machine to do the heavy lifting of being a person. Well, the machine is doing it now, and it doesn't think you're worth the overhead.