Hasan Piker, Self-Described ‘Ayatollah of Woke,’ Wants AI to Die

Hasan Piker spends seven to eight hours a day, seven days a week, streaming on Twitch. The far-left political commentator got his start in 2013 interning for (and sometimes hosting) the Young Turks. More than a decade later, he’s a powerhouse newsfluencer with the number-one channel in Twitch’s Politics and Commentary category. More than 3 million people follow him for his takes and humor on the crumbling American empire, foreign policy, and why Bernie would have won. He is also considered, by some, very hot. Piker works out every available morning and eats 1 pound of chicken with some rice at 6 pm. The rest of his free time is spent researching, planning his streams, and getting in fights with people who have AI avatars.

Phone model: iPhone 16 Pro Max

For years and years, I would do the classic iPhone-on-its-last-leg on principle, because I hate the planned obsolescence and I just am a very stubborn person. I’d have the oldest possible iPhone I could for as long as I could until I’d have it basically stuck to an electrical outlet for it to work. Now I have to have one of the latest ones for cybersecurity reasons. That's what the civil rights lawyers I talk to tell me. We're kind of all just trying to do our very best for privacy and for security against warrantless surveillance by the government.

Computer model: Intel PC, gifted by Starforge

It's a PC, a prebuilt sent to me by friends. The previous one I had was made by Linus [Sebastian, creator of Linus Tech Tips]. We called it “Big Red.” I still have it in my house and use it as my secondary. It’s a behemoth that has the USSR crest and Jeff Bezos’ head on a dinner plate on it. I have an iPad as well. I'm a “screenager” now officially.

Daily average screen time across Apple devices (not including PC): 7 hours and 8 minutes

Last week I spent 22 hours and 14 minutes on Twitter. It's funny because I used to delete Twitter off my phone. It made me an angrier person, especially post–Elon Musk takeover. I realized I would just be getting into arguments or just straight-up having a bad time. Now I'm back on because I feel like woke is coming back, and as the Ayatollah of Woke, I have to make sure that I'm on the front line.

Last thing you asked AI: N/A

I don't use AI. I think there's a real problem with cognitive offloading. There's a real problem with hallucinations within AI. I think that AI is making humanity dumber in general. While AI should be used as a tool to lift the burden of the workforce, I feel like it's being used by capital owners as a way to displace, as a way to replace the workforce for higher profit margins. And I hate it. In an effort to get mass usage and sell to the general public, they've created this generative AI nonsense... art is supposed to be left to the humans. And no, instead the art is what the AI is doing.

Favorite tech product: Apple Watch

I'm not a very techie guy, but the one thing I use...