It’s the constant drumbeat of “AI will take your job.”
It’s the constant news of “layoffs because AI makes us more productive.”
It’s the constant background discussion of UBI because no one will have jobs anymore.
It’s knowing that, in the US, UBI will never come.
It’s the feeling that the billionaires of Silicon Valley are getting rich and there isn’t even a “learn to code” path to wealth anymore.
It’s knowing that data centers will create problems in your neighborhood: the price of power and water will go up, the amount of undeveloped land down, and you don’t even get jobs out of it.
For fuck’s sake, it’s not about the thousands of Mag7 tech workers losing their jobs. That’s just a symptom, like all the other symptoms, of this weirdly dystopian future that the AI companies keep telling us is inevitable.
SWE layoffs are politically irrelevant. The kids booing commencement speakers, however, are not aspiring SWEs. AI CEOs’ rhetoric, in particular, Altman’s, has been aimed and successfully landed more broadly.
And I don’t think the underlying cause of the anxiety is unemployment, which remains relatively low. Finding a block of hard-working workers who used to be able to make ends meet, but now can’t, is a political goldmine for good reason.