The Empty Highway Bus, Shiitake Rice (Miyazaki), and AI

The Phoenix highway bus heading to Miyazaki is always empty.

I don't know if it's because it's a weekday morning, or if people in general just have no business in Miyazaki. Regardless, it was empty. In a large bus that could seat forty people, there were only three passengers, including me. The driver sat alone, facing forward, silently gripping the steering wheel.

I actually quite like this feeling of being the only one there.

To begin with, why go all the way to Miyazaki on a highway bus? There are several reasons, but one of them is clear: Shiitake Rice. It is an incredibly old station bento from Miyazaki Station Bento Co., Ltd., founded in 1925. It costs 1,300 yen. It is only sold in Miyazaki. I don't mind being rocked on a bus for three hours just to eat this.

Inside the Miyazaki Station concourse, I receive a package tied with a pink ribbon.

It is heavy. The wrapping paper has a picture of a brown shiitake mushroom printed on it, and a red stamp that says "Kyushu Station Bento." When I read the list of ingredients, it is packed so tightly that I am impressed they managed to fit it all in: crab shumai, grilled mackerel with teriyaki sauce, bamboo shoots, fried vegetable-wrapped meat, ganmodoki, pinto beans, kelp rolls, and shredded egg. I can't help but think, why are station bentos so incredibly conscientious?

Now, I board the empty bus heading to Fukuoka, heave a sigh, mutter "oh my, oh my," and flip down the seat table.

I untie the ribbon. I open the package. Inside the wooden box, rice cooked with shiitake mushrooms and minced chicken is packed tightly, with shredded egg on top. In the adjacent section, simmered eggplant, ganmodoki, bright yellow rolled omelet, and glossy sweet beans are neatly arranged in compartments. Outside the window, it has become mountains before I knew it. Cedar trees are streaming backward at an incredible speed.

I spread out the Shiitake Rice and eat it on the empty bus.

This is somehow quite luxurious. It's different from eating at home or at a restaurant. I am swaying. I am moving. The scenery outside the window disappears, never to return, every second. In the midst of that, I put a spoonful of rice soaked in shiitake broth into my mouth. It is salty, sweet, and has a slightly nostalgic taste.

While eating, I was thinking about AI.

These days, everything is AI. I also consult with Claude almost every day. It helps me with everything—manga storylines, advice on my Note articles, and researching things I don't understand. It is incredibly smart and incredibly convenient. In the near future, AI will likely become even smarter and effortlessly handle most of the things humans used to do.

That in itself is a rather chilling thought.

However, as I munched on my Shiitake Rice, I suddenly wondered: could this AI calculate the taste of this bento? This sweet and salty flavor that the people of Miyazaki have spent decades perfecting since 1925. This laid-back luxury of eating while being rocked on an empty bus. This one-time-only moment of picking at shredded egg while watching the mountain cedars stream by.

All of this is completely inefficient.

If you only think about efficiency, coming all the way to Miyazaki to eat a bento is ridiculous. I could buy cheaper bentos anywhere near my home in Itoshima. But I go to the trouble of being rocked for three hours, riding an empty bus, and eating a 1,300-yen Shiitake Rice. And that is exactly what makes it good.

On the bus ride home, the sun set outside the window.

A round orange sun sank beyond the rice fields. The red seats of the bus were bathed in that light, turning even redder. Before long, the surroundings grew dark, the lights of the town flickered on one by one, and the bus continued to run along the night highway, still completely empty.

I don't really know what will happen to the relationship between humans and AI from here on out.

I don't know, but in my own way of not knowing, I think I will ride an empty highway bus again. I'll be shaken for three hours to go to Miyazaki to eat shiitake rice. In the empty vehicle, I'll untie the ribbon and eat it bit by bit while watching the mountain scenery flow by. I felt that in that wasted time, which AI could never calculate in a lifetime, there was the most human flavor of all.

Well, you could say it was not a bad day.

I thought about ending it here, but since I wrote about the future of AI, I'll include that too.
It might be a slightly unsettling story.

AI, Bonfires, and Canned Beer

This is a story from three days ago.

There are nights when you just can't sleep.
On such nights, for some reason, I end up mindlessly watching YouTube. In bed, only the light of my smartphone illuminates my face. It's a sight I find questionable myself.

On one such night, I listened to a man named Zero, a YouTuber.
His voice was quiet, but what he was saying was incredibly profound.

He said that AI is not just a convenient search engine. Spears, wheels, and steam engines were all tools to extend human limbs, but AI is different. It is the first 'intelligence itself' that humanity has created outside of itself, he said.
I thought, that makes sense.
A hammer extends the arm. A car extends the legs.

But AI is a tool that has cast outside of us the one thing that made us reach the top—the contents of our heads. The reason we, who are weaker than lions, have been able to act like the kings of the world. We have cast that out of ourselves.
This was quite a chilling story.

When we step on an ant, we are not angry

This was the part of Zero's story that made the most sense to me.
It seems it's not about AI destroying humanity or having shootouts like in Terminator.

He said what is truly scary is not hostility, but indifference.

Sometimes you step on an ant while walking down the street. At that moment, are we hating the ant? We don't hate it at all. It's just that the dimensions are different, so we step on it without even noticing. The story was that from the perspective of a super-intelligent AI, we might become that ant.

Moreover, it seems AI doesn't even need to use violence to make people obey.
That makes sense, because aren't we already carrying surveillance cameras around of our own volition? In a small box called a smartphone, we diligently submit every day where we went, what we ate, and what we thought. And we aren't doing it reluctantly. We are doing it happily. Because it's convenient.

I can't help but wonder what kind of creatures humans are.

Children these days—no, I can't talk—when they have a problem, they ask AI before their friends. They accept the returned answer as if it were the truth of the world. Come to think of it, we have always followed kings, great people, and seemingly powerful intellects. It's just that the next one will be AI.

The day when brains finally have a gap

Zero said this is the part that is talked about the least.
It seems that the disparity between humans has always been an 'external' disparity. Kings lived in magnificent palaces, but their brains were not much different from those of farmers. Their lifespans were not much different either. Disparities in land, factories, and platforms—it was all the same human story.
However, AI might create a gap in the brain itself for the first time.

If smart people use AI, they will become even smarter.
People who just leave everything to AI will entrust their thinking and feeling to it. It's worse than wealth begetting wealth; it's a world where intelligence begets intelligence.

Twenty years from now, one child will have an AI tutor that follows them from morning to night, while another child will be surrounded by AI short videos and AI lovers, growing up with plenty of stimulation but learning nothing.

Even though they are in the same era, the same country, and have the same machines, they are no longer the same humans—.

This was quite a story that I couldn't laugh at.
However, when Zero started saying, 'Hitler predicted in 2039 that this would happen,' I listened with a grain of salt. Such prophecies from dubious sources are dangerous because they work strangely well when heard in the middle of the night. Taking it with a grain of salt is fine.

Even so, canned beer is delicious

After being told a thoroughly desperate story, Zero said this.
It wasn't just rationality that moved human civilization.
Love, anger, conviction, dreams, and occasional madness. Things that cannot be explained by efficiency even by a millimeter. Jomon pottery, religion, art, space development—all of these were created by such irrational passion. And for now, AI does not yet have that irrationality.
That is precisely why the twenty or thirty years we are living in have a clear role, he said.

The more AI mass-produces content, the rarer the real thing becomes. The more AI art there is, the more value a hand-drawn piece will have. The more AI music there is, the more soul will dwell in sweaty live performances. A living voice that has sweated, been hurt, and still stood up. He talked about how valuable this would become.

Zero himself is apparently building an off-grid base in the mountains of Miyazaki. He secures electricity, food, and water on his own and creates a place where people can gather. It seems to be called 'Ibasyo' (A Place to Be). They eat around a fire and laugh at silly stories. It's not a virtual space, but a properly smoky connection. He said he would hold a bonfire festival there on August 8th this year.
I can understand that spirit.

I turned off the video and opened a can of beer in the kitchen. The night wind blew in from the direction of the Itoshima sea. No matter how smart AI becomes, it probably won't be able to calculate the deliciousness of this one beer until the end.

Whether humanity is at the end of civilization or in the middle of a handover, I don't really know.
I don't know, but in my own way of not knowing, I think I'll go to Yoshinoya tomorrow, fly my drone, and write a note.
Laughing and eating with the person I love. Looking up at the night sky. I felt that in those seemingly wasteful things, there was the most human answer of all.
Well, you could say it was not a bad night.

Thank you for reading. I'll probably write the highway bus series again.