With many technological developments, from algorithm-driven social media to AI, many people assume there’s a degree of inevitability to their widespread adoption in society.

The argument goes something like this: once the ideas and means to produce the tech are known, then it is inevitable that its usage will spread and we’ll essentially be stuck with it. So therefore we need to accept this and adjust our lives to live with the tech and use it (or at least tolerate it).

This argument seems pretty straightforward, since we’ve seen many tech-driven disruptions play out in the last 20 years or so. Uber displacing the taxi industry and the rise of “gig workers”. Algorithmic social media displacing, well, everything. Privacy-invading, hyper-targeted advertising reshaping the internet.

And it seems like generative AI is destined to be another huge, disruptive force in our lives. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote of AI in 2024 that “with these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now”. He is also on record elsewhere saying AI would wipe out entire job categories.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, wrote that he believes “AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of........

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