Fun, fizzy dispatches from the city and beyondAlterman, thirty-four, and Ross, forty-three, were friends from the comedy circuit before they collaborated. They look a bit alike, both with beards and thoughtful demeanors, but Alterman is marginally more hirsute and possesses an unexpectedly high-pitched laugh, whereas Ross wears glasses and is more voluble. Both have worked techy jobs—Alterman as a social-media manager, and Ross as a website designer. The fake ad campaign germinated about a year ago, when Alterman began noticing subway ads for A.I. companies that annoyed him with their promises to make existence easier, even frictionless. The idea seemed to be that “eventually you do nothing,” he said. “Your life lives itself.” Another quirk he noticed: the ads were often impenetrable to non-techies. “They all use the same words,” he said. “It’s the same voice, which I’ve called slop voice.” He and Ross compiled a long list of terms they’d spotted in the wild—“prompt,” “next gen,” “merging,” “deck,” “one click”—and from there “we basically just do Mad Libs, where we put different words in different orders until it makes us laugh.”“Blank plus blank equals blank—that’s one of our favorites,” Ross said.“From blank to blank in just one blank,” Alterman added. He claimed that they’d come up with their first batch of ads in an hour.Ross, who’d executed the designs, called that an exaggeration, but maybe not by much. “It was fast, for sure,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”They didn’t have a goal for the project, aside from being funny, but among the millions amused by the initial video were several actual tech companies that approached the comedians about working for them. “One of them floated a very high number, a five-figure number,” Ross said. “And it was a moral quandary even thinking about it, because I very much want a job. My financial situation is scarier than it’s ever been. And this A.I. company wasn’t the worst of them. I don’t think their app itself is bad for humanity necessarily, but that entire world disgusts me.” He and Alterman talked the deal over and consulted friends. “Literally everyone was, like, ‘Dude, take the money,’ ” Ross continued. “But then it ended up not being an offer, so we didn’t have to worry.” Exhale. Faustian bargain averted. “But I would have taken the money,” Ross added.“I’m glad we didn’t have to decide,” Alterman said. ?