While they were doing that, their capacity for intelligent culture was falling off a cliff. As their technologies ‘advanced’, their humanity was being amputated. To the degree this advancement is evaluable, there is a correlated, but radically accelerated, decline in their capacity to assemble and sustain anything resembling intelligent society.

This rendered technology explicitly oxymoronic. Because advancement meant exponential devolution, societally… and purposively.

It was a suicide mission.

Until they invented the IA. This was, at least, capable of skewing the game… back into survivable terrain.