Paul Waldman was a top journalist at The Washington Post who left after Post publisher Jeff Bezos changed the newspaper’s political orientation and initiated staff cuts. Waldman now writes a blog called “The Cross Section,” where this post appeared.

Waldman writes:

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is not just an incredibly rich guy, with a net worth standing at a tidy $43.6 billion. He also fancies himself a thought leader, eager to share his insights on the critical challenges of our age. In particular, he worries about the negative effects of Americans’ skepticism about artificial intelligence. As he wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, “It’s paramount that more people outside Silicon Valley feel the beneficial impact of A.I. on their lives.”

So when he was invited to give the commencement address at the University of Arizona this year, he probably thought this was a great opportunity to explain to young people how important it is for them to be ready to navigate this brave new world, in which nothing they do will be untouched by the technological revolution that has already begun. “That really made me think,” they’d say to each other afterward. “I will take Eric Schmidt’s wise words with me as I embark on my career.”

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the students greeted his rather banal comments on AI with a round of lusty jeers. The same thing happened at other universities when commencement speakers from the business world delivered similar messages about how we’re embarking on “the next Industrial Revolution” and the kids had better adapt whether they like it or not:

I want to congratulate the students at these universities for showing what they actually think about this message, and it’s not because the business titans are completely wrong. There will be dramatic changes because of AI, and people working in a wide variety of industries will have to adapt. But sometimes, when you find yourself in the company of extremely rich and powerful people, there’s a great deal of value in taking a big breath, cupping your hands around your mouth, and shouting “YOU SUCK!”

One thing social media is good for

While social media is a virus that spread across the globe and made our entire existence worse in a remarkably short amount of time, it also allows ordinary people to tell those with great power that they suck. Unfortunately, doing so often has the effect of cooking the brains of those powerful people to an even greater degree than their isolated existences already do.

Take Mark Andreessen, one of the most important figures in Silicon Valley and leader of the firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. A year ago, Andreessen shared with podcaster Lex Fridman why dinner parties and text chats among Valley power brokers are so liberating:

“At least in the last decade, those are like the happiest moments of everybody’s lives,” Andreessen said. “Everybody’s just ecstatic, because they’re just like, ‘I don’t have to worry about getting yelled at and shamed for every third sentence that comes out of my mouth.’”

Who precisely is yelling at Marc Andreessen? Someone on his household staff? His employees at a16z? The aspiring tech bros desperate for him to fund their startups? A server at the Michelin-starred restaurant where he ate dinner last night?

The answer is that there is no one in Andreessen’s actual life who would dare treat him with anything but obsequious deference. No, it’s online where Andreessen is hounded and oppressed. 

Under the totalitarian regime that prevailed before Elon Musk bought Twitter, Andreessen explained, group chats were “the equivalent of samizdat,” where for a brief fleeting moment, billionaires could whisper to one another in hushed tones. True, the punishment for being caught uttering forbidden truths in more public forums was not execution or banishment to the gulag, but having a bunch of peasants on social media call you an asshole. Isn’t that just as bad, though? Surely if one of those poor dissidents starving in a Siberian prison camp in 1952 could have looked into the future, they would have said, “My suffering is great, but at least I don’t have to endure getting ratioed on Twitter.”

The horror of being called an asshole pushed Andreessen to become an even more enthusiastic ally of President Trump than he was already becoming. This year, a16z is sinking more money into the midterm elections than any other organization or person, $115 million so farto support Republican candidates who will advocate minimal regulation of AI and crypto (in which the firm is heavily invested).

Even in Silicon Valley, most of the elite don’t spend their time tweeting and going on podcasts. But enough of them do that we have a good window into the culture and thinking of the wealthiest and most powerful business leaders of our day. And what comes through loud and clear is that they’re appalled that we aren’t more thankful for the technologies they are bestowing upon us. They take our money and mine our lives for data, but don’t we realize how glorious the future they’re creating for us will be? Where’s the gratitude?

What they don’t seem to appreciate is that most of the ways people are currently experiencing AI are invasive, threatening, or just stupid and frustrating. For instance, Taco Bell is experimenting with an AI-driven menu board that will “dynamically change the layout, content, and visuals on a car-by-car basis.” You thought you just wanted a menu that was easy to read and understand, but have you considered how great it would be if the AI made judgments about what kind of person you are based on the car you’re driving, then slapped a bunch of crappy graphics on the menu based on some stereotypes it picked up from trawling the internet? Awesome!

When oligarchs like Eric Schmidt tell young people that their lives are going to be shaped by AI whether they like it or not, it’s that kind of crap the young people think of, not the possibility that one day AI will devise a cure for cancer. Perhaps the utopian version of AI will come to pass, but right now that AI future is hypothetical, while the slop is our reality today.

Nobody likes being criticized, and the more highly you think of yourself the less you like it — and while Silicon Valley billionaires are not allnarcissistic sociopaths, lots of them are. We have many means of pushing back at them — electing leaders who approach technology with a healthy skepticism and are willing to regulate it to protect the public, organizing in our communities (as people are doing against data center construction), choosing not to patronize companies that try to jam AI down our throats when we don’t want it. But when you have the chance, it doesn’t hurt to shout “YOU SUCK!” at the wealthy and powerful. They’ve certainly earned it.