AI Anxiety

I have a group chat with my closest guy friends from college. As you can expect, it’s a chat where we basically just make fun of each other, talk crap about sports, and just riff on the happenings of the world.

Despite multiple kids being born and life events, it’s pretty rare that anything serious ever gets discussed in that group chat. Yesterday was the first time in a long time that we actually got serious for a second as we discussed what would happen with AI and if there’s a real chance it would destroy humanity.

We were all in an interesting state as we discussed the anxiety that AI has caused everyone. Most of us work at tech with one friend at a frontier lab. None of us truly believe that AI is going to destroy humanity, but we all mentioned that we were struggling with a bit of anxiety given how much AI is talked about in our day to day.

My work life naturally has to be focused on AI. But everything I’m being fed on social media is also AI. Whether it’s simply just political news, or another viral topic, or simply just someone trying to sell me their newsletter on “How to get ahead in AI”, it is really overwhelming.

At the end of the day, I believe AI is a tool and that it likely will be a net positive for society. It’s been a net positive for me as I now have a fitness and health coach, mini-pediatrician, etc. in my pocket. But at some point when it’s the only thing talked about in life right now, I’m pretty sick of it and admittedly it has all gotten to my head.

I was surprised that my group of friends also felt similarly and it wasn’t just me given my line of work. It seems to be a common thing and anxiety is high everywhere. For me personally, I probably could use a good solid break from the news a bit. I’ll leave the dooming to others who choose to be miserable.