Meta’s $27 billion AI investment came with a 16,000-person price tag, while political deepfakes graduated from internet memes to actual campaign weapons. The AI gold rush is revealing the brutal calculus of modern progress: spend billions on machines, subtract thousands of humans.
The AI industry exploded into civil war as 2.5 million users fled ChatGPT over Pentagon deals, Anthropic got blacklisted for refusing military contracts, and Oracle fired 30,000 people to build data centers. The honeymoon phase is definitively over.
Major AI companies are simultaneously implementing emergency safeguards after discovering their systems could help create biological weapons. As AI jumps to the second-biggest global business risk, we’re facing an uncomfortable reality about the pace of technological development versus safety measures.