Dear Tech CEOs,
I know I am but a mere writer, who has a day job writing about science, which you have a crazy love-hate relationship with because while you hate it when it yells at you on TwitterX about your anti-vaccine bullshit, you also kind of need the scientists of the computer kind to make your AI stuff. But I thought I’d offer you some advice that you are sure to ignore, because the only time you listen to us cretins of the underclass is when one of us is telling you there’s a real chance you will live forever (spoiler alert: yeah, this is going to end as well as Elon’s Mars predictions).
Anyways, I know you are heavily counting on AI to do anything from making you even richer to controlling the world. But there are four things you might want to think about.
First, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but your AI companies are the stilts holding up the economy from falling over like those beach houses in North Carolina falling into the ocean recently. The problem is, there is a hurricane coming called the AI bubble.
With your new pal Donald Trump and old buddy JD Vance pretty much wrecking all of the economic fundamentals, now is not a great time for such a thing to happen, to put it lightly. If you throw us into a deep recession, people will like you even less than they already do (see below).
And yeah, I know, you don’t believe it will happen, it’s just silly talk from silly economics who don’t have the big brain you have (and besides, have THEY ever packed a big room at SXSW?). The thing is, kids, I used to work at an Internet startup in the late 90s/early 00s, and I had a front-row seat to the deep denial then. Funny, that didn’t work out very well as a magic talisman to prevent that bubble from bursting.
Second, those of us who use your other, non-AI products like Microsoft Office really are not happy with your stuff. It often doesn’t work properly, it can be frustrating, and the usability of it seems to be getting worse, not better. I mean, I know how much you folks love your memes, but there are lots of memes about how bad your product is.
If you think that AI will solve any of this, color us skeptical. Also, given what we are seeing now, we don’t have a lot of confidence in AI working properly, much less doing things like self-driving cars.
Third, those of us who are not crazed Trumpers are starting to have some worries about what you are doing to the environment with AI. The data centers required to run AI suck up a ton of power, and are noisy eyesores that people don’t want in their area. People are starting to speak up.
AI uses a lot of energy and water, both of which are net negatives for a healthy environment. In fact, the demand for energy has brought back coal to a degree, which has even made Elon Musk something of a 21st-century coal baron.
And finally, all of this has helped to make you the real-life version of supervillains. People just don’t like you. I know everyone hates Elon, but people increasingly don’t like Mark Zuckerberg, and as people learn about a tech CEO, they instantly don’t like them.
If you are surprised, it’s because you are the new barons of a new Gilded Age. You often show outright contempt for anyone who doesn’t agree with you (i.e. regular people). Your vanity is obvious and sometimes makes you look weird. You often SOUND like supervillains, talking about building artificial islands to escape government oversight, and seeming dismissive about things like personal privacy.
Now, none of this will likely stop you or even give you pause. But please know, if we manage to rebuild our democracy, a lot of us are not going to give you what you demand, nor embrace your AI world with open arms.
The last word goes to Rush, who you might have heard, are coming back for a tour next year with a new drummer that has some pretty big shoes to fill.
