AI Bubble
At a major AI research conference, extravagant parties and soaring salaries coexist with anxious talk of extinction, even as most working researchers quietly ignore the idea of artificial general intelligence. The spectacle reflects a familiar pattern in technological history, where abstract future dangers eclipse present and measurable harms. Addiction, erosion of truth, labor disruption, and cultural extraction already shape daily life, yet discussion drifts toward imagined superintelligence and moral drama borrowed from science fiction. Prestige and funding flow toward those who frame themselves as guardians against distant catastrophe. History suggests that real damage arrives earlier and more unevenly, not through annihilation but through institutions slowly reshaped without consent. The bubble signals not ignorance, but a preference for myth over responsibility.
Further Reading
The View From Inside the AI Bubble -->
Juan Gris, Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1912. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain.