In the vintage Life commercial, two kids are hesitant to try a cereal that’s supposed to be good for you. So they decide to push it off to a younger kid. “Let’s get Mikey. He won’t eat it. He hates everything.” Well, as you probably recall, he likes it. Hey Mikey! This classic tale of the younger generation leading the older ones into a new world of products seems to be playing out in reverse when it comes to AI. The younger folks, who use the technology the most, are the ones who tend to have the most negative feelings about it. As Nilay Patel explains in The Verge: “The polling on this is so strong, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people hate AI, and that Gen Z in particular seems to hate AI more and more as they encounter it. There’s that NBC News poll showing AI with worse favorability than ICE and only a little bit above the war in Iran.” The People Do Not Yearn for Automation. “Poll after poll shows that Gen Z uses AI the most and has the most negative feelings about it. A recent Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of Gen Z was hopeful about AI, down from an already-bad 27 percent last year. At the same time, anger is growing: 31 percent of those Gen Z respondents said they feel angry about AI, up from 22 percent last year ... This is a fundamental disconnect between how tech people with software brains see the world and how regular people are living their lives.” Young people could be the most angry at AI because they’re worried about its potential impact on their job market. It could also be because the future of AI depends in large part on the people who run AI companies (and the always online younger generation is quite aware of what, in technical terms, you could call the evil douche factor) and government regulation (and the only thing this generation believes in less than good tech leadership is good government leadership). In places where there is more trust in the government to regulate the tech, the vibes are different. Rest of World: AI optimism surges in Asia, unlike in the US. Whatever the reason, it’s notable that the Americans who use and know AI the most also hate it the most. As a side note, even though he is alive and well, John Gilchrist, the kid who played little Mikey in the Life commercial, was rumored to have died from a stomach rupture caused by consuming Pop Rocks and Coke. Sounds like the kind of thing AI might hallucinate. 2Back to Life, Back to Reality“The spell is broken not by some moral awakening, but by these concrete disasters. Once a sufficient portion of the loyal supporters realize they have been duped, the leader will eventually fall. The energy required to deceive is unsustainable. Reality is relentless. The tyrant who chooses to fight it is doomed.” Danny Hillis in Noema Mag with a good (and timely) explanation of why bad leaders fail. The Rise And Fall Of Petty Tyrants. “Every leader is confronted with difficulties and must face that same fork in the road. The honest leaders chose truth. The dishonest chose denial and, as a consequence, they failed. Petty tyrants cause real suffering and harm, but they leave few enduring legacies. The lasting institutions of effective leaders are not undermined by reality. They are sustained by it.” 3Elixer of LifeProsper and live long is the new live long and prosper. “Perhaps you saw this video last September, when it went viral: The two most powerful autocrats in the world — Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, both of whom have been heads of state for well over a decade, and neither of whom shows any signs of intending to relinquish that power — caught by an interpreter’s hot mic discussing their own apparent shared desire for immortality.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What if They Could? “Over the past decade or so, democracy has been retreating against a rising tide of illiberalism and plutocracy. Power, in much of the world, is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of a few authoritarian leaders and a small number of expansively ambitious tech billionaires. As average life expectancy has increased, inequality — in income and in access to health care — has widened. And amid all of this, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful have developed a persistent hope, and perhaps even generated some small possibility, that death might be eradicated entirely, or pushed back so far that its existential force is diminished.” (The idea of some of these guys living forever makes the rest of us feel like dying. At least irony is eternal.) 4Weekend WhatsWhat to Binge: The new season of Beef on Netflix has hints of White Lotus, stars Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan, and includes couples fighting, country club scandals, and a lot of blackmail. Enjoy! 5Extra, ExtraNew Lease on Life: The Justice Department has dropped its ridiculous case involving Jerome H. Powell’s handling of the Federal Reserve’s renovation. The case wasn’t dropped because it was a bunch of nonsense manufactured in a desperate attempt to target one of Trump’s enemies. It was dropped to clear the way for Kevin Warsh, the president’s pick for Fed chair, to be confirmed. The lesser corruption was removed to make way for the greater one. Welcome to 2026. |