The victim story about AI is a business model, fear sells software

They want you to feel like a victim.

It's the most dangerous story in tech right now. A carefully crafted narrative of helplessness that research confirms is fueling "AI-induced anxiety" and societal polarization°.

The narrative, pushed by the OpenAIs, Oracles, Perplexities, Googles of the world and their cheerleaders, feels like chapters from Orwell:

• Our collective wisdom is funneled into proprietary databases.
• Our critical thinking skills atrophy as we outsource cognition.
• Our jobs are rendered obsolete.
• We're told to trust the algorithm over our own intuition.
• Our originality dissolves into a culture of remixes.
• What little privacy we have left is sold to the highest bidder.

But this is a strategic illusion. The real threat is the business model behind the narrative. Fear sells software. Uncertainty sells consulting engagements. The story of your powerlessness is immensely profitable.

The real threats are the entirely human decisions being made today.

We are not passive characters in a dystopian script. The principles of human-centric AI are no longer theoretical. They provide clear models for when to augment human capability and when to fully automate a task - ensuring the choice is always a conscious one, driven by our purpose.

The path exists.

We have the agency to demand transparency, to reject technological determinism, and to design systems that serve human purpose.

This brings us to the core decision.

Do we optimize the world for the accumulation of capital for a few?

Or do we optimize it for a high quality of life for the many?

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°Stanford University HAI. (2024). 2024 AI Index Report.