The most joyless tech revolution ever: AI is making us rich and unhappy

Artificial intelligence might be the most transformative technology in generations. It is also the most joyless.

- Greg Ip

Discomfort around AI helps explain the disconnect between a solid economy and an anxious public.

(REUTERS)

While Wall Street greets AI with open arms, ordinary Americans respond with ambivalence, anxiety, even dread.

This isn’t like the dot com era. A survey in 1995 found 72% of responfortable with new technology such as computers and the internet. Just 24% were not.

Fast forward to Al now, and those proportions have flipped: just 31% are comfortable with AI while 68% are uncomfortable, a summer survey for CNBC found.

Why the difference? The dot com bubble, like the AI boom, had its excesses and absurdity. But it also shimmered with optimism and adventure. From Fortune 500 CEOs to college dropouts, everyone had a web-based business idea. Demand for digitally savvy workers was off the charts.

Today, the optimism is largely confined to AI architects and gimlet eyed executives calculating how much AI can reduce head count while workers wonder whether they will be replaced by AI, or someone who knows Al. Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Ama zon, three of the leading pur veyors of AI, have all announced layoffs this year.

Since November 2022, when ChatGPT was released, the market value of the “Magnificent Seven”—megacapitalization tech stocks closely tied to Al such as Nvidia and Micro soft—is up 169%. The spending spurred by that wealth, and the massive sums those companies are plowing into data centers, are why the hard data on economic growth and household finances looks pretty healthy.

And yet consumer sentiment is near a record low, according to the University of Michigan.

There are a lot of reasons for this disconnect, most prominently the cost of living.