Meta's new AI ad says it believes in people. Let's discuss what that really means.

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Meta released a commercial this summer telling us it believes in people. "Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected," the narrator says. "We couldn't disagree more." Twenty-two years and 3.5 billion users after Facebook launched, the ad tells us, the company's technology has changed, but its intentions never have. "Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want. We're betting on people, and we like those odds."

I agree that Meta is betting on people, but not in the way this commercial implies. And it's not just Meta. Anthropic ran a campaign this summer built around the question "can AI be trusted," arcing toward hope by the end. OpenAI has its own version of this pitch. The entire industry has converged on the same message at the same moment: Don't worry, we believe in you. I think these companies genuinely do believe in people, the way a con artist believes in his mark.

The ads want you to hear "we believe in people" as a statement about your resilience and your capacity for connection. What it actually means, if you look at what these companies have built over two decades, is closer to this: We believe you are predictable. We believe you are exploitable. We believe that when we build something compelling enough, you will choose it over the healthier, harder........

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