The US techlash is real

I was watching a video about Gen Z versus Millennial views on this subject and they talked about how when Millennials were in high school and college, tech innovation was moving fast and delivering really useful, fun technology. It was also a lot less pervasive and all-encompassing in scope. It wasn’t a massive machine of surveillance capitalism, or at least, not in the same way. Figuring out which banner ads resonate with each user was a lot more innocent than private surveillance cameras on our streets doing Minority Report-style policing.

There was a time when Facebook was just a chronological feed of the things your friends were doing. Heck, there was a time when the feed didn’t exist at all.

Gen Z and younger came up in a very different era.

The wealth growth of some of these tech CEOs is eye-watering. The idea that Musk was worth less than $30 billion 2020 is astounding. To go from $30 billion to a trillionaire in 6 years is something that shouldn’t even be possible.

The other thing about the AI revolution is that it’s one of the big tech advancements that seems indifferent to end consumers. It’s very B2B in nature: use our AI to make your workers more productive or reduce headcount. Previous innovations seemed to benefit everyone.

For the average consumer, AI is making a lot of things in life worse in terms of the touch points we all interact with on a daily basis. We contact support and now it’s an annoying AI bot. We open our apps and they’ve messed up their UX with new AI features that don’t work very well. Certain industries are already seeing layoffs for the low hanging fruit that AI works for with no real replacement careers coming up.

Sure, AI (not LLMs) are literally going to cure cancer, but that’s a much more difficult and intangible thing for the average person to grasp. And it’s not here yet. And US health insurance costs are up by over 20% compared to last year.