Ed Zitron is enjoyably mouthy and rude about AI and AI people, but it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that someone most people have never heard of helped create the AI backlash. He is just putting it into words.

You know what created the AI backlash as well as anyone, and it is: AI and AI people.

If e/acc voices were not so abrasively, obtrusively YOLO about their technology, if their entire take on what they earn millions to do was not so easily reduced to “yeah it sucks that your job will go away, learn AI I guess LOLz” then there would be far less to have a backlash against.

Being lectured about the future by people who do not have a fucking business plan for how they will repay a trillion dollars and who might actually crash the economy does tend to grate on the nerves of the reality-based. Being told again and again that we will be ruled over by two firms that ultimately amount to the corporate equivalent of trust fund kids, that is annoying.

If you want to convince people otherwise, find an analyst who is not churning out AI slop.

As to the “predicting it for years” thing, the first correct-with-specifics predictions of the subprime crisis were published in 2004, by a pretty fringe outlet (karmabanque) and its author, Max Keiser. I remember not being shocked at all when it finally happened, or being shocked at LIBOR rigging. Because Max Keiser presented his reasoning on his crazy radio show, and told his listeners what signs to look out for.

If someone is right for the right, well-informed reasons and presents that reasoning, it doesn’t always matter all that much if their background is unconventional. They tend to be dismissed, and they were back then. “People will always need houses” is what we were told, as if that was enough to ward off massive structural problems.