These days, life feels a lot like a treadmill. Just when it seems like you might be getting closer to your goals, the treadmill speeds up. Now you’re once again struggling to keep up with bills, rate increases, and costly disasters. It feels like no matter how hard you work, you never actually get anywhere.

Eventually many of us will fall off the treadmill. That can look like burnout. It can look like spiraling into addiction to cope with the futility of working as hard as you can but never getting anywhere. It can look like bankruptcy and homelessness.

Meanwhile, the same billionaires that are actively working to ensure that you can’t make ends meet are now generously offering you the solution: a machine that steals the work of your fellow working poor and regurgitates a shittier free version at the push of a button. And of course, there are multiple tiers of slightly less shitty paid versions available.

This is the increasingly broken system we live under—a system designed to extract as much as possible from us and give as little as possible back. A system designed to keep us too busy trying to survive to do anything to improve our situation.

We’re deluding ourselves if we think that AI will put this treadmill on easy mode for long. In order to survive, we’re going to have to fight back. We’re going to have to refuse to accept that the only way to survive exploitation is to exploit others. We’re going to have to break the treadmill.

If you find this situation as infuriating as I do, here are some things you can do to fight back. Alone, our individual impact is small. Together, we can force the system to change.