All These Insufferable AI Bros Were CryptoBros Last Year
We’re gonna do this all over again, aren’t we?
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Y’all, I can’t even open LinkedIn anymore. (Not that anyone should. Stay wild, rebels.) Every third post is ChatGPT carousels or prompt eBooks or how-to guides on generative AI as the new creative department.
I say this with all the well-earned wisdom gleaned from my decade-plus working in every possible flavor of tech, including AI, on the branding and messaging side: easy there, Connor. Let’s pump the breaks and pull over for a beat.
Look, I’m not saying AI doesn’t have boundless potential, or that the opportunity isn’t there to force a paradigm shift in how we work and live. It does. I’ve written about that. I even wrote my first replacement-level essay using ChatGPT here, and Jesus wept. It felt awkward and awesome and took no time at all, just like every man’s other first time.
But where I gotta throw a red challenge flag into a goddamned Tinder profile’s worth of red flags is the velocity and feverishness with which a certain subsegment of our human species is heralding the dawn of a great utopian age where money scales as fast as neural networks, and everyone who can’t effortlessly channel the raw power of autonomous machines gets the proverbial trebuchet into the tar pits.
You’ve noticed it, right? Suddenly every armchair blogger and industry panelist is a certified expert on generative AI, commanding extortionate sums on the Thought Leadership circuit and a salivating harem’s worth of true believers. As a gentle reminder, none of us could spell ChatGPT six months ago. If this feels like shit’s about to get all the way weird and maybe just a skosh Ponzi up in here, well …
Separating Carnival Bark from Bite
Derek Thompson, a well-respected writer on tech and progress for The Atlantic, sums up the trajectory of, and discourse about, AI thusly:
In the utopia-dystopia dichotomy, advanced AI saves the world with scientific breakthroughs and fabulous wealth until the moment it…
