It was never about AI (we are not our tools)

"A 26-year-old quantitative analyst at a hedge fund in midtown Manhattan - a person who has never managed an employee, never sat across from a customer, never had to explain to someone that their position has been eliminated - opens a spreadsheet, sees that your company's headcount is 14% higher than a competitor's, and writes a note to institutional investors that your stock is overweight. That note gets circulated and your stock drops."

"These two worlds - Wall Street and Silicon Valley - have formed a feedback loop of short-termism so tight, so self-reinforcing, that they've confused efficiency with purpose, growth with meaning, and the elimination of people with progress. They have built a religion out of optimization. And they are coming for your job with the enthusiasm of true believers."

"Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, a founder stands on a stage in a fleece vest and speaks with the cadence of a preacher about 'building the future' and 'empowering humanity' while unveiling a product whose entire purpose is to make human labor unnecessary. The audience applauds, and the VCs nod approvingly. Nobody in the room seems to notice the contradiction, or if they do, they've gotten very good at not caring."

A quantitative analyst's spreadsheet comparison triggers stock market reactions that force companies into mass layoffs, demonstrating how disconnected financial incentives drive employment decisions. Simultaneously, Silicon Valley founders promote automation technology as progress while obscuring its human cost. These two systems reinforce each other through a feedback loop that conflates efficiency with purpose and growth with meaning. The resulting ideology treats optimization as a moral imperative and job elimination as inevitable progress. This creates a contradiction where those promoting automation rarely acknowledge or confront the human consequences of their decisions, instead framing technological displacement as advancement.

Read at Big Think