The Drip
Eric Schmidt got booed at a commencement speech this month — he told graduates that embracing AI is the key to their future, and the room turned on him. Around the same time, DuckDuckGo started picking up real momentum because people are tired of Google's AI-heavy search results.
The dominant public narrative on AI right now is being shaped by billionaires and fear-fluencers telling everyone their job is about to disappear, with vague promises of "universal high income" or "tokens" to soften the landing. It's not landing — and that's not because the audience is unreasonable. It's because the math doesn't work, and any critical thinker can see it.
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Inside The Bottle
"Gen Z resents AI" has become a convenient headline, but the resentment isn't really about Gen Z — and it isn't unreasonable. It's the predictable result of a narrative gap nobody's filling.
Three things are happening at once.
1. AI isn't a mature practice in the business community yet. There are no established patterns for using it well. So academia has nothing concrete to teach, and graduates are walking into a job market where junior roles — historically the on-ramp — are being framed as the easiest first target for replacement.
2. The "nouns and verbs" problem. When AI is described as a monolithic replacement without specifics, people fill the gap with fear. There's a huge difference between "AI is going to do your job" and "AI can handle the research stage of your work, so you spend more time on synthesis." The second is real. The first is a billionaire's talking point.
3. The critical-thinker's economic conclusion. If a company replaces roles with AI, where does the cost savings go? Shareholders. Upper management. Not the people who didn't get hired. There's no signal from any global government to intervene, no tax structure being proposed, no redistribution mechanism. So the logical conclusion for a younger worker is: this benefits the people above me, not me. Asking them to trust a different outcome — without any evidence — isn't a fair ask.
The honest version of the story would say: AI is incredibly capable, the business community is still figuring out how to use it, the savings story is real and the redistribution story isn't, and the best move for an individual is to learn the tools yourself, build a little equity, and don't wait for the narrative to clarify. That version doesn't fit a headline, but it's the one people would actually engage with.
Lab Notes
| ■ | Justin's note: You don't need huge numbers to do really well. A handful of clients goes a long way. Nobody cares about your business as much as you do — which means nobody's keeping score either. Just go. |
| ■ | Kellan's note: Describe what AI is replacing, not that it's replacing. "AI is going to do everything" gets you pushback and fear. "AI can handle this specific stage of this specific workflow" is a conversation. |
What Stopped Our Scroll
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