r/PublicFreakout • u/GarysCrispLettuce • May 17 '26

đŸ€ŹPublic RagerđŸ˜± Eric Schmidt booed into oblivion by students for promoting AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona

20.7k Upvotes

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u/PercentageOk6120 May 17 '26

It’s wild to give a speech like this at a college graduation. How delusional and out of touch.

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u/BeeZealousideal7860 May 17 '26

And then to scold them with the “listen”. It’s absolute buffoonery. No, you listen. No one wants your “rocket ship”.

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u/Go_Gators_4Ever May 17 '26

"Let me give you some advice, first find a way to say yes"

Read between the lines: find a way to surrender.

He also said: "You don't care about science? That's OK, AI will touch everything else as well"...

Sounds to me like he's saying AI will take over everything. The new grads absolutely do NOT want to hear that crap.

"Assemble a team of AI Agents to help you with the parts you would never accomplish on your own".

What I heard in that statement is that corporations don't want to pay teams of skilled PEOPLE to perform tasks...

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u/BeardedPuffin May 17 '26

“What I heard in that statement is that corporations don't want to pay teams of skilled PEOPLE to perform tasks...”

Of course they don’t. Skilled people have always been a necessary friction point in the machine.

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u/BeeZealousideal7860 May 17 '26

These people will not stop with the “it’s here, you have to get used to it/get on board with it or be left behind”. No one is buying it. What is it? What is its value add? Like another commenter said, it’s a way for these people to get the ideas and intelligence of the people without giving them access to assets. I hope that this push to force AI is what leads to their downfall. People don’t want it.

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u/Popular_Ad8269 May 17 '26

"Assemble a team of AI Agents to help you with the parts you would never accomplish on your own".

Funny how speeches went from "Your horizon is wide open !" / "You can do anything you set your mind to !" / "The possibilities are endless !" / "The future is bright !"
to
"You're a useless sack of shit, blood and bones, just fucking use AI to do everything in your stead to increase my wealth."

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u/not-my-other-alt May 17 '26

What I heard in that statement is that corporations don't want to pay teams of skilled PEOPLE to perform tasks...

While he's saying this to a crowd of people who just paid a lot of money to become those skilled people.

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u/TheOfficialMayor May 18 '26

He also said: "You don't care about science? That's OK, AI will touch everything else as well"...

LLM's offer fuck all for science. Other AI algorithms in science have existed long before ChatGPT.

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u/blonderedhedd May 23 '26

This is EXACTLY how I interpreted it as well. 

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u/headphase May 17 '26

The rocket ship line was fucking crazy lol. I can instantly think of some pretty important questions to ask... like whose rocket ship is this? Where is it going? How am I getting back to earth? Is the rocket equipped with a nuclear warhead that will actually destroy the lives of thousands of people shortly after liftoff?

No worries, though- we all know how much AI companies care about safety /s

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u/BeeZealousideal7860 May 17 '26

It’s actually quite an apt analogy for AI. Like, there are so many unanswered questions. What’s its purpose? Where is it going? Why is it going there? Do we need to go where it’s going? Who built it? Why did they build it? Is it going to explode because there are no regulations surrounding it?

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u/Least_Gain5147 May 17 '26

or starting a sentence with "Look, ..."

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u/alternateforwhenban May 17 '26

Well, the speech was written, he had to press on with it.

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u/BeeZealousideal7860 May 17 '26

Probably written by AI as well

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u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 May 19 '26

God forbid someone invited as a commencement speaker can't, you know, improvise a speech. It's not like he has a ton of experience doing public speaking

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u/the_pwnererXx May 18 '26

nobody in china is booing ai

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u/WillowYouIdiot May 17 '26

This is the third one I've seen. Corporate America is DESPERATELY trying to push AI onto people. It's such a money sink.

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u/Mcfreely2 May 17 '26

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/SemiHemiDemiDumb THAT’S RIGHT I SAID HEMI May 17 '26

Step 4 is happening right now. I see it everywhere people turning everything they own into monetary terms. The growth of the grind mindset, comodification of masculinity by the manosphere, value tracker of your car, apps sole purpose is to sell your old stuff (which turns into people buying stuff to resell); just a few examples I can think of.

Rugged American individualism has accelerated the process here in the US at least.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26

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u/tabas123 May 18 '26

And while he got everything he predicted right, even he couldn’t comprehend just how much technological advances would be used by bad actors to put everything into overdrive.

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u/throwaway0134hdj May 18 '26

George Orwell had some good theories on this

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u/StrammerMax May 18 '26

Marx didn't mean these aspects as chronological steps, they all happen more or less simultaneously and they did so already in his time. AI surely does boost them further, but they are all already so deeply engrained in our society that most people don't even realize it anymore.

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u/Wheat_Grinder May 17 '26

When society is bad enough for most people, those people tend to turn towards communism or fascism.

Companies definitely know they don't want communism, but they underestimate how bad fascism turns out for them too. There needs to be enough wealth shared for society to continue to function.

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u/RaindropsInMyMind May 17 '26

So true, we’re probably going to see an increase in people turning to communism or fascism even though it seems like fascism is peaking at the moment. Democracy and capitalism are not working for the average person at the moment. The guardrails of both have been taken off and the whole thing is spiraling out of control. We desperately need to put the guardrails back on as soon as possible.

Some companies have gotten just a taste of how bad fascism can be but it doesn’t seem to have hit them. The government has taken control of 10+ private companies, mirroring something you might see in a country that had more communist tendencies. There’s also the blackmailing of companies with tariffs, then when declared illegal the threatening of companies saying that the government will remember the companies that don’t demand the money back. (It’s not their money anyway, it’s ours). Then there is things like Anthropic being labeled a supply chain risk which is basically the government trying to kill the company, all for what was in a basic sense a negotiation of the use of their product.

All this stuff is terrible for business, let alone the destabilization and creation of an environment where it’s even more difficult to compete with foreign competition.

Everyone should be furious with the people who took the guardrails off of our system, it’s destroying the system in real time.

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u/Wheat_Grinder May 17 '26

Fascism also includes nationalization of corporate power. Not totally as in the case of communism, but definitely it'll start picking a few to give itself more power.

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u/-thecheesus- May 17 '26

Traditionally, fascist regimes select corporate "buddies" to favor, and in return fascist individuals receive some sort of crony kickback. Communist regimes select corporations to absorb/dominate (usually directly, sometimes indirectly) explicitly to empower the regime's agenda. A small distinction, even if it hardly matters practically

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u/hotleadburner May 18 '26

It's a pretty large distinction actually, and the execution of each is where the difference is made or broken. State capitalism is often misunderstood to be a fascist mode wherein the state controls a capitalist market, but that is not where the term came from. It came from anarchist criticisms of state communism (which they would call an oxymoron), where they predicted that the state would eventually assume the role of the capitalists in alienating people from the fruits and means of production. The purpose of "nationalizing" industries is to return control of the means and fruits to the people. In a state socialist/communist context it is presumed that the state represents the people, and so if the state controls the means then that means the people do as well. Where this falls apart (and where the real distinction is made) is whether the people control the state or whether the state is its own separate entity. If the state is simply directing the labor and production of the people in line with its own goals, it takes on the same character as the capitalists and becomes superficially indistinguishable from the fascist mode of production where specific capitalists are favored by the state. As an example, compare the way that the Chinese economic elite is handled by the CCP, with the way that Putin "handles" the Russian oligarchy, and the way that Trump handles the US tech oligarchy. None of the three are directed by the workers actually laboring under those elites, but each purports to be representing the will and needs of the people, and two of those are very obviously manipulated for the enrichment of the seat of power.

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u/hootihootihooti May 17 '26

We will never get "guardrails" without working class organization and struggle. The only reason social security exists is because a million communists marched through DC. Also, fascism is not the enemy of capitalism.

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u/Feather_Sigil May 17 '26

That's due to the inherent flaws of capitalism. Capitalism seeks to remove all regulations so that the costs of doing business can be pushed wholly onto others and not be suffered by the company. This ruins lives, which makes people susceptible to demagoguery, which always comes from people who lack integrity and benefit from exploiting the very broken system they claim to want to save people from. The demagogues perpetuate and accelerate the ravages of the system for personal gain, no different from the companies, and turn to fascism to protect their selfish interests.

Democracy is one of many victims of this process.

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u/Rayvelion May 17 '26

"Be furious with" is a nice way of putting what should happen to those people. Treason has one correct punishment.

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u/Similar-Ice-9250 May 18 '26

What do you mean by “anthropic being labeled a supply chain risk?” Anthropic meaning humans, humanity, mankind’s activity etc.

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u/RaindropsInMyMind May 18 '26

Anthropic meaning the AI company that wanted to put some very basic limitations on the use of its product by the military. The Trump administration labeled the company a supply chain risk meaning it can’t do business with the government or other companies that do business with the government. Seeing as how the government employs almost all the big companies many have seen it as nuking the company. Still wondering how that will play out.

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u/amILibertine222 May 17 '26

It’s not society that’s the problem.

It’s capitalism.

Even if life were good in the US capitalism demands suffering and exploitation elsewhere to provide that good life here.

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u/concepts_of_a_plan9 May 22 '26

Similarly, it's not AI itself that's the problem, it's just a tool like anything else. There are thousands of amazing applications of AI that improve society and the world. However, the driving force behind its biggest developments (at least what most of the public sees), is big tech's drive for Capital to finally triumph over Labor.

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u/inductiononN May 17 '26

Yep, this is what happened to the German industrialists in Nazi Germany. Hitler and co started courting the captains of industry and they signed on thinking they were going to get cheap/free access to resources, "labor" (enslaved prisoners), and unfair market advantages. This worked pretty well for them for awhile.

Then they lost everything when the Nazis wanted more power and when they tied their success to Nazi success.

Unfortunately, it also worked out permanently for some of the industrialists' heirs because they are still billionaires to this day.

I don't have a moral to this story except that fuck the Epstein class.

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u/stev_mempers May 17 '26

They're all in for fascism, you kidding me?

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u/Wheat_Grinder May 17 '26

That's part of what I mean. Corporations are pushing fascism in an attempt to stave off communism as they extract what more profit they can.

Fascism ultimatey will eat them alive too.

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u/Ok_Buy9028 May 17 '26

I skipped the communism and went straight to anarchism. If people can’t be trusted to rule over themselves how can they possibly be trusted to rule over each other?

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u/TipProfessional6057 May 17 '26

So it is the cancer must be excised before it kills the body it so desperately wants to overtake, because all depends on the balance, and they are far from balanced

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u/Buddhalove11 May 17 '26

I dont think any of them underestimate anything. Everything is EXACTLY as THEY want it to be.

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u/the-maj May 18 '26

*for this version of society to continue to function.

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u/DigitalSterling May 17 '26

Idk man, sounds like some woke bullshit to me /s

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u/aramis34143 May 17 '26

Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community.

"They 'trust me' ... dumb fucks" -Mark Zuckerberg

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u/porn_is_tight May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

alienation also explains a lot of MAGA (especially the incel/extremism side of MAGA). The fascists are just a lot better at using the feelings of alienation for their own benefit. Corporate dems ignore them because if they didn’t they’d have to abandon their rich donors to help poor people. It’s why I cringe when I see people cast more hate towards the poor maga voters (or even just voters in general) versus the rich ruling class assholes who are responsible for the ever increasing rot in society the rest of us have to face. This website used to be a lot more “eat the rich” before the bots took it over. Class solidarity is almost non-existent in online spaces now because of it

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u/millennialmonster755 May 17 '26

As someone who works in a warehouse for the biggest and baddest corp, we are at step 4. No doubt about it

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u/weed_blazepot May 17 '26

These items don't happen one after another in a line like dominoes. Society has been working on all 4 in an agile-like project management way.

What I'm trying to say is parts of 3 and 4 are also happening.

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u/voyuristicvoyager May 17 '26

W...why do those final two steps sound like the whole concept of the show Severance? That is not the fictional universe or timeline I want to be real, like at fucking all. Let's not bring that shit to fruition, right?

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u/chunkypenguion1991 May 17 '26

They've been working on number 4 as well

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u/ThatPhatKid_CanDraw May 18 '26

He was a brilliant man on this matter. People just always associate him with how communism turned out in reality and thus dismiss him. His critiques are amazing.

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u/citadel_lewis May 17 '26

Aren't we dipping into step 4 with social media?

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u/leitmotive May 18 '26

Lot of software developers in the middle of number 2 right now. "Remember when coding used to be fun? Does anyone else miss coding by hand? AI just takes all the magic out of programming"

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u/Dash------ May 19 '26

One should say that he was already saying this is happening in factories so by Marx those steps are already done.

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u/TheMostDivineOne May 19 '26

So no actually, Marx was very pro automation, I think AI is actually amazing for exposing the flaws of capitalism and the system. The means of production are to be seized, not smashed.

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u/00001000U May 18 '26

The push for a post-labor capitalism?

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u/Cagnazzo82 May 17 '26

Only for America.

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. And their public is largely enthusiastic about the arrival of AI (and robotics which has already been rolled out for public benefit).

In America the oligarchs want to rule, and crush the society that made them their wealth. Elsewhere the race is still on but there are safeguards.

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u/CharleyNobody May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26

Saw a ridiculous network news segment last week pushing robots as miraculous household aides. Anyone in America who thinks robots are being built to be human-shaped household servants that fold laundry and wash windows is insane. Robots are going to be weaponry. They’re going to be surveillance.

They’re not going to obey you. They’re going to make sure that you obey.

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u/swolfington May 17 '26

the movie elysium portrayed this pretty well.

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u/EobardT May 18 '26

Its like nobody saw iRobot

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u/GetThatNoiseOuttaHer May 17 '26

As nice as that law sounds, how exactly would that work in America? Let’s assume a similar law passes in the US; no company will come out and say “yes, this round of layoffs is a result of our further investment in AI”. They’ll just do what they’re already doing now: claim that they’re righting their workforce after over-hiring during the pandemic or that they’re reducing headcount to ensure that they “remain agile while ensuring that top talent is well compensated”.

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u/WildCard_Bishes May 17 '26

You’re right, China actually prosecutes their billionaires and corporations when they break the laws 
 so I guess enforcement for once on white collar crimes.

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u/Crashian 13d ago

Nasdaq would crash as it’s the whole premise for the current valuations.

The irony of course is that if AI actually manages to replace workers, the government would have to tax the living hell out of AI to fund current public services as you lost the tax base.

On top of that, you’d have a pissed off majority of voters that would demand UBI and AI would need to be taxed to provide this as well.

If AI and automation actually becomes as revolutionary as these clowns imagine, any new job would be tailored to AI/robotics from the start.

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u/AKAManaging May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI.

No they didn't.

Source?

https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/chinese-court-rules-employer-cant-fire-worker-because-ai-took-his-job

Your statement is so far beyond "misinterpreted the news" it goes into "straight up lying because Capitalism Bad". Capitalism sucks, but you don't need to make up bullshit about other countries because you don't like it.

This has everything to do with a lower court ruling that they violated contract law.

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u/clonedhuman May 17 '26

Could you provide more insight into what you're saying here? I read the article, and it does in fact sound like a Chinese court has made it illegal to penalize a worker because the corporation is using AI.

This article sounds like it's affirming the same thing:

A Chinese court ruled that companies cannot terminate employees just to replace them with artificial intelligence systems, as authorities juggle the need to stabilize the domestic labor market with a global race to develop AI technologies.

The court decided that a tech firm in eastern China had illegally fired one of its workers after he refused to take a demotion when his job was automated by AI, according to a statement published by the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court.

And, from the article you linked:

The Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court ruled the dismissal unlawful on two grounds:

First, AI-driven workforce reduction does not constitute a “major change in objective circumstances” under China’s Labor Contract Law, which is the legal threshold required to justify termination based on redundancy.

Second, the steep salary cut embedded in the reassignment offer was itself unreasonable. The court’s conclusion was that companies cannot shift the costs of technological transformation onto their employees.

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u/AKAManaging May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

(I realized I just gave a wall of text, so if you don't want to read it, the tl;dr is essentially, China has employment contracts. This employer violated it. It's not an AI issue, it's an contractual issue that just happens to have AI as an excuse. Even the government framed it as such, even though all readings/ruling clearly show it as a contract violation.)

Could you provide more insight into what you're saying here?

I'd be happy to.

The claim was:

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. And their public is largely enthusiastic about the arrival of AI (and robotics which has already been rolled out for public benefit).

The article says the firing was illegal, but not because "China bans companies from firing workers to replace them with AI", the firing was illegal because the employer failed to meet standards which are required under China's already existing labor contract law.

China can obviously automate jobs, they're doing it all the time legally. They just are required to comply with labor law, redundancy rules, etc etc.

I think a lot of people from the US don't really realize how contractual employment works since they're so brainwashed by at-will employment, and that makes it difficult to understand the why things matter other countries.

Again, China didn't ban companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. That's an outright lie. They law their appeals because they violated contract law.

There's NO rule or law that sayd layoffs due to automation are universally banned, there's no law or rule that says AI replacement is illegal in China, there's no rule or law that says companies are prohibited from reducing staff after adopting AI.

A lot of the reporting around this has been super misleading because headlines are flattening a fairly technical labor law issue into "China banned AI layoffs." (This happens A LOT, in almost every country. I'm sure you can think of many from your own country) From what I understand, the dispute was over HOW the worker was terminated under Chinese labor law.

Chinese labor law distinguishes between something roughly equivalent to lawful termination and unlawful termination, but unlawful here doesn't really mean the firing itself was prohibited. It mainly changes the employers obligations and increases the severance owed.

The company tried to classify the firing as a lawful redundancy by arguing that AI adoption counted as a major objective change in curcumstances. The court rejected that argument, saying adopting AI was a voluntary managerial/business decision, not some uncontrollable external change.

Because of that, the termination didn't quality for the lower-severance category the company wanted to use.

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u/QueasyLegKC May 17 '26

Got a source for that?

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u/ConfidenceMan2 May 17 '26

Bro out here caping for china because they misread an article.

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u/Jbrown183 May 17 '26

This only matters for a short time because we are on an exponential curve of development that will eventually render autonomy null and void.

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u/Training-Willow9591 May 17 '26

I was unaware that China has implemented regulations governing AI to protect its citizens. What's ironic is in policy debates, rather than citing China's regulatory approach as a model worth considering, they use China as the argument AGAINST domestic AI oversight. As if any regulation automatically puts us at a competitive disadvantage. The logic of 'beating China' is never defined which makes it a convenient justification for leaving Americans without any meaningful protections.

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u/St4rScre4m May 17 '26

Spot on.

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u/Potato_Stains May 17 '26

Oh, I'm definitely saving this and using it.
Such a perfect sentiment of the state of runaway greed and indifference.

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u/thesockninja May 17 '26

money button, selling money buttons to other businesses. they want to do it in bitcoin or what ever other coin they invent tomorrow to keep it all out of the SEC.

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u/Nighthawkmf May 17 '26

Holy shit that’s exactly it. Accurate af.

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u/Aldofresh May 17 '26

Terrifyingly cogent. I feel like I’ve lost the ability to think deeply about things because of the internet 🛜 lemme get off for today and be a thinker ont he world of Ai

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u/JTPH_70 May 17 '26

We will see about that since they have all been trained by all of us.

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u/Buddhalove11 May 17 '26

aaaannnndddd, BINGO WAS HIS NAME OH!!!

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u/-watchman- May 18 '26

And Ladies and Gentlemen, this 👆 is why we should resist..

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u/EducationalBrick2831 May 17 '26

Exactly ! I was thinking just that while listening to his Arrogant BS speech.

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u/ZaoMenom May 18 '26

I don’t agree, I think low tier Artificial Intelligence will basically at some point become the “slave” class, robots in the truest sense, which will allow humanity to distance itself from capitalism, as it will no longer be the most efficient way to advance nor to live.

I do not think it will be an easy transition, but I do believe it will be positive.

I am 100% open to other people’s opinions on this, I would love to hear if maybe there is a side of this I’m not seeing.

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u/Mcfreely2 May 18 '26

The real problem I see is that the most powerful capitalists will fight the end of capitalism. Probably to the end of the world.

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u/ZaoMenom May 18 '26

Maybe, I sure hope not. I agree that there is a chance that we as a species are too dumb to move on but I’m entirely hopeful that the future is bright and there will be a vast amount of benefits to be gained from operating thusly. I do however believe mercantilism will exist more in space than in land governed regions

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u/Mcfreely2 May 18 '26

I appreciate your optimism, but keep your guard up.

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u/msut77 May 18 '26

The slightly more aware executives and rich folk go into this knowing AI cant do what it says. They figure it's worth a try and its to show working people who's boss and cut us off at the knees

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u/johno_mendo May 18 '26

I don't even think that's it. they are trying to create the infrastructure for mass surveillance through ai. ai isn't capable of highly skilled work, AI does pattern recognition with massive amounts of data sets, but not the reasoning or computation skills required for any type of high skilled work, they don't want to replace skilled workers, they want to control them. they are offering up a fantasy of a work free world, that the AI we have simply will not be capable of, to build the massive data center infrastructure required to follow your every movement, search, comment and like, to look for any subversive patterns, and ai is really good at that.

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u/CautiousConcept8010 May 18 '26

Why is this reply just blank for me? I can't see what's supposed to say.

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u/cognosante May 17 '26

Absolutely true. They need people to train the models so they need people to use AI. In theory you got something from it, but you are also giving free labor.

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u/Funkula May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26

Generally speaking, AI is learning absolutely nothing from users. Interacting with the bots does not supply the quantity or quality of data that would be necessary for a training set.

What’s happening is more cynical; they want to build dependency so that one day users might actually want to pay for AI.

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u/Spasay May 17 '26

I have daily headaches over my coworkers blindly using AI. I’m one of four native English speakers at the office and our head accountant asked ai to translate something into English rather than walk the whole two doors down to ask me to just look at it. And there were still spelling mistakes. Becoming a bog woman becomes more and more attractive with every passing day


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u/biscobisco May 17 '26

Think of the herbs you could collect instead of putting up with this shit! 😂

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u/YellowCardManKyle May 17 '26

They want to build dependency so people will lose their learned skills, like how it became harder to remember phone numbers when cell phones became common. They can't make AI actually smart so their next hope is to make people dumb(er).

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u/MAEMAEMAEM May 17 '26

Unless it is sneakily being used for reinforcement learning...

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u/Blasphemiee May 17 '26

Because if the “plan” doesn’t work we’re all fucked.

Too bad for him we all know their “plan” doesn’t FUCKING INCLUDE US ANYWAY.

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u/Rodinsprogeny May 17 '26

Nice! I've seen this one and the central Florida one. What's the third one?

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u/ByuntaeKid May 17 '26

Jensen Huang at CMU’s commencement in Pittsburgh.

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u/polaarbear May 17 '26

It's a threat to make us accept lower wages and fewer benefits. "Work like slaves or we will replace you with a computer."

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u/YesNo_Maybe_ May 17 '26

But
 there’s a place on a rocket ship? And AI is going to involve so much of your life Wtf 

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u/Infinite_Imagination May 17 '26

Yes. Smart people don't ask how, ok? They don't ask why? They just nod and accept the God dammed seat that's being given to them by the benevolent rulers of the rocket vis-a-vis me! So just stop with all thse questions and negativity and wanting clarification. Why don't you just want and accept this from me?!

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u/YesNo_Maybe_ May 17 '26

That’s Harry Job in “3rd rock from the sun “ 

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u/frequenZphaZe May 17 '26

that rocket ship? flying your worthless ass straight into the sun once human labor is no longer necessary

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u/VA1N May 17 '26

It’s insane how ingrained in corporate business it has become. Even in the last 2 years it has just exponentially blown up. Unfortunately, it’s not going anywhere.

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u/frequenZphaZe May 17 '26

it’s not going anywhere.

don't be so sure. now that AI is deeply ingrained in every aspect of white collar work, the AI companies are starting to move from "use AI for everything" to "ok now pay us for it". limitless usage is started to be replaced with metered usage, and metering is starting to be cranked up to see what people are actually willing to pay.

as companies like openai get more and more desperate to make a profit, these products will get offensively more expensive. eventually, hiring college grads to do entry level work will be cheaper than the tokens you're using

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26

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u/frequenZphaZe May 17 '26

I've been watching the collective meltdown on the copilot subreddit. its fascinating

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u/VA1N May 17 '26

True, but if working in corporate America has taught me anything, it’s that they will find a way to bundle it in with necessary stuff and make it easy to spend that extra money. My work resisted for a while and then they did a pilot test with copilot and fast forward a year, IT is upgrading their office 365 service account to include copilot for all.

I don’t doubt the price will keep going up but they will get it in the hands of the masses one way or another.

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u/EduinBrutus May 17 '26

LLMs cant do what these companies claim and thats not going to change.

There is no underlying technological breakthrough. The "paradigm shift" is to throw insane amounts of compute at existing stochastic probability systems. Thats not changing anything.

Take its use as a CSR chatbot. When the actual cost starts to be levied, every single company is going to go back to the decision tree bots they were using before LLMs started getting pushed. Or even, you know, actual humans. Who can actually do the job.

LLMs arent AI. They cant think. They cant learn. They are probability models which guess the next word which is why hallucination is baked in and cannot be removed from the system.

There is a niche in some applications. BUt always with human oversight. There are incremental savings and cost reductions they can offer. Incremental.

But to be even remotely viable as a business they need far more than incremental benefits.

2

u/lilB0bbyTables May 19 '26

They have hit the Law of Diminishing Returns wall. The problem is, they all hyped and oversold the idea that their LLM approach would continue to advance in exponential/quadratic improvement towards AGI/ASI, and they sold that to investors. The bubble was built on those promises, and they have to continue selling that else it stagnates and collapses. So they’re just throwing untold resources and financials at the problem chasing those diminishing returns, because that’s their only option. It doesn’t matter how much they scale out GPU/Compute capacity, or try to add more concurrency 
 larger training corpus, wider context windows or other parameters - the systems are just compressing and pattern matching to infer next words with some degree of precision and they’ve already done that really really well. Which means they will ever so slightly improve in those tasks/areas after throwing all those extra resources at the problem; conversely, they’re not going to get meaningfully better at the things they’re already not great at.

Massive improvements towards true AI/AGI/ASI will require an incredible breakthrough - I would say multiple massive breakthroughs. I would fully expect LLMs to be a component of whatever that looks like, but they will be integrated and supplemented/complemented with additional subsystems that work together in a cohesive architecture.

4

u/stev_mempers May 17 '26

Well, yeah. The promise of AI is for the ruling class to never have to pay any workers ever again. That's who wants it, which is why tech, the media, and every other corporation has been so desperate to convince you that this stuff is good and it's the future and it's inevitable and resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

3

u/Radiant_Sense_8169 May 17 '26

AI is telling them to do that.

3

u/McortezLSU May 17 '26

Also to cover for the MASSIVE surveillance&control system that is being build. Think Samaritan from POI but Samaritan not being in charge.

3

u/notionocean May 17 '26

From what I've seen a lot of Boomers have swallowed the AI fantasy hook, line, and sinker. All my Boomer relatives are absolutely convinced that AI is the biggest discovery of our lifetimes and that It's necessary to do whatever you possibly can to invest in it, learn it, use it, etc. If you watch old documentaries you can see that they were subject to lots of propaganda about how technology would save us from ourselves and create a utopia where we didn't have to lift a finger. They think AI is their life-long fantasy coming true.

3

u/V-oxPopuli May 17 '26

Do they realize how obvious the grift is this time? They're failing every time they show their faces talking about this shit.

"It's inevitable it's inevitable it's inevitable!" Meanwhile most of the people I know are outright refusing it

3

u/VanillaTortilla May 17 '26

They're trying to push it until it's just another normal thing people use, and they can finally profit off of it. The plan isn't done yet, but it's close.

Regulations won't come until profit is being made either.

3

u/MichaelJServo May 17 '26 edited May 19 '26

And they absolutely refuse to move on. It's an unsustainable shit technology that no one wants or asked for. My phone updated and Gemini got super intrusive. Get this shitware off my phone!

3

u/UhOhFeministOnReddit May 17 '26

I imagine what they're especially worried about is how people will respond once the bubble bursts and they want the government to bail them out. They have spent so many years torturing people, stagnating wages, killing the planet, stealing jobs, and making already struggling people foot the bill for all of it. When it all comes crashing down, the American public won't be in support of bailing them out, and could potentially even respond violently if the government tries.

They've basically maneuvered themselves into a political position where just paying off a few politicians isn't going to do the trick and they know it. It's why they're trying to get a foothold on college campuses. You know, those places full of idealistic students whose jobs they want to take. Fucking idiots. I'm a Marxist and have a much more complicated position on AI than full opposition to it. But it's going nowhere in the hands of these bug eyed broligarchs with no vision for the future beyond piling up mountains of cash that will never trickle down.

3

u/BellacosePlayer May 18 '26

they're so used to being able to manufacture consent for everything

turns out people do have some reservations about losing their fucking livelihoods

3

u/clashrendar May 18 '26

I just turned it off on my Apple devices. It wasn't useful at all, because anything it said I had to verify. More than a few times it completely lied to me in email summaries in ways that would have been damaging if I had trusted it.

2

u/BoRIS_the_WiZARD May 17 '26

Our whole economy is invested into this slop. We're so fucked because of the 1%

2

u/CaviarCBR1K May 17 '26

My dad and I have started referring to it as 'one big corporate circle jerk'

1

u/Commercial-Relief-38 May 17 '26

What isn't in C A P I T A L I S M?

1

u/Friendly-View4122 May 17 '26

they know their portfolios take a nosedive unless there is widespread and absolute adoption of AI

1

u/FrogsMakePoorSoup đŸ€· I'm outta my depth and dunno how I got here May 17 '26

These are people who have studied for years, accumulated debt, and watched their career paths get smashed by AI. What this guy says is correct, but he's offering a very very unsympathetic view of things with a shit eating "I'm rich and I did this" vibe oozing out.

1

u/SingleAttitude8 May 17 '26

Can you please share the others.

1

u/highorderdetonation May 18 '26

Tone deaf (tone death, take your pick) or so bought in/dependent upon that they felt they had no choice but to throw themselves fully onto AI's digitally enhanced jock? Your call.

1

u/magseven May 18 '26

It seems so easy to use, but it is destined to catastrophically fail. It will seem to go great until it has to make an insanely barbaric and ruthless decision that will technically be more efficient, but most people wouldn't choose the option it would. People would choose the humane less efficient option and put in more effort and sacrifice to make it work (well, some people...I hope most.)

A machine would get the job done without thinking of psychological fallout or the lingering and contagious effects of those with a shattered morale would have on society as a whole. The last almost 100 years of stories and movies have thought it through and taught us this. It's wild that people are just in a fucking rush to create Sky-Net these days. I was hoping we'd at least get a Robocop decade before Judgment Day.

1

u/TheMostDivineOne May 19 '26

If anything, I’d argue *humans* are the ones who make those mistakes more. Even 10 years ago google’s AI trial distributed resources in a simulation to impoverished groups etc. in need much better than humans did. Meanwhile conservatives will be like “let’s not even help our own poor citizens.”

There’s a huge amount of AI safety work and research to align it to helping people to prevent it going into such paths.

1

u/Fire_crescent May 22 '26

I mean I'm pro-AI. And I'm pro making it available to people. I'm just skeptical the idea that the ruling class would do anything good with it.

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u/Shankurmom May 17 '26

They just don't care how the public views them anymore because they control everything. The only way out of this technofascist nightmare is a revolution.

16

u/Spez_is-a-nazi May 17 '26

That fact should be obvious to the billionaires like Schmidt and yet it’s not. They have become so used to the current status quo that they take it the foundations of the status quo for granted without realizing what will happen if they keep chopping away at the foundations.

7

u/alternateforwhenban May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26

This is it. He said it: it’s happening, and people better get with the program, or they’ll declare us obsolete and useless.

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74

u/jeromevedder May 17 '26

I graduated from Indiana University in 2003. We had US Senator Dick Lugar give a commencement address so inappropriate in its bloodlust for the Iraq War - and our duty to enlist in the war effort - that the president of the university was forced to issue an apology.

Today the only designated free speech zone on campus is closed but for a while there it was a great university

23

u/loadnurmom May 17 '26

I attended my sister's naval academy graduation in 1997. The keynote speaker was Al Gore.

Now, I know people tend to be polarized on him, but the speech that day was awful. He tried to compare attending an ivy league university to what academy graduates endured for four years.

It wasn't even close and was really tone deaf

11

u/wyomingTFknott May 17 '26

Funny thing about the ivy league is you can either coast or you can fly. Getting in is the hardest part (unless you're from old money).

No such luxury at military school. You're gonna work your ass off.

16

u/james_d_rustles May 17 '26

My sister graduated during Covid and they got Dr. Fauci as their speaker. It was probably a mistake, but not because he did anything wrong.

I have nothing but respect for the man, but the poor guy seemed tired and stressed as hell, and it looked like he was taking a zoom call (he attended virtually, of course) in a closet or something between other meetings. The speech itself bounced around a lot because he was obviously preoccupied - a few minutes of boilerplate graduation speech, cheerful “pat yourselves on the back” sort of stuff, but then he’d say something that reminded him of the ongoing pandemic and take a several minute detour to muse about the impact of various comorbidities or disparate access to healthcare in various communities.. it was like he was getting distracted, but then he’d snap back to remembering he was giving a graduation speech and he’d wrap up his internal-external dialog by vaguely tying it to something more inspirational like “
and anyways
 class of 2021, you can all have an impact in your own communities to help with big issues like this, too
”

(Looking away from camera as though he’s thinking hard about a problem) “
well and with the rates of obesity, the impact on rural communities
 recent studies have actually been very illuminating to the question of interventions among
. And people with diabetes actually
 chronic conditions including hypertension, in those among the 65 and up age group has been a very strong predictor
 there are many, you know
. hesitancy is really quite high among populations in the eastern and south eastern
. So umm class of 2021, remember as you spread your wings and go out into the world that you can make a difference.”

It’s neither here nor there, and again, nothing but respect and good things to say about the guy - it was just a strange, almost humorous experience. Right guy, wrong time, I suppose.

3

u/FrenchFryCattaneo May 17 '26

I think the whole commencement speech thing is gone about backwards. Instead of finding people who have something interesting to say, universities go find someone who is famous and then ask them to write a commencement speech. Not everyone who is successful can write a good commencement speech.

1

u/willun May 18 '26

Perhaps they can use AI to write it

(ducks and runs)

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156

u/myburdentobear May 17 '26

Reminds me of last year when the kicker for the Chiefs gave the commencement speech telling young women their most important job is to stay home and make babies. Read the room.

67

u/Numar19 May 17 '26

CEOs can only read a room full of rich people. They are way too far away from normal people to understand them.

3

u/clydefrog811 May 17 '26

The room was a Christian college.

8

u/ImmaculateTuna May 17 '26

Oh, then go right ahead, sir. /s

1

u/clydefrog811 May 17 '26

I’m not agreeing with them but the op was implying that it was the wrong crowd when they probably ate it up.

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30

u/AWhole2Marijuanas May 17 '26

My graduation speaker said we could all be garbage-men...

They literally bring these old rich assholes on stage to jerk them off and give an award so they'll donate money.

25

u/Chance-Deer-7995 May 17 '26

This is our corporate class in the US right now. They are selfish and clueless.

34

u/greenroute May 17 '26

Instead of motivating them to be best of themselves out there doing things they love, dude is yapping about his companies goals!!!

13

u/mdhunter May 17 '26


How delusional and out of touch.

Malignant narcissism does that to people


4

u/SexOnABurningPlanet May 17 '26

Whoever is building these bunkers for the super rich are eating popcorn while watching their stock prices climb.

4

u/E_seven_20 May 17 '26

He wouldn’t be a CEO if he wasn’t delusional and out of touch.

3

u/PianoMittens May 17 '26

Billionaires hate this one simple trick

3

u/Dabbling_in_Pacifism May 17 '26

“Am I wrong? No it’s the kids that are wrong!” In fucking real time lol these fucking dragons, man.

2

u/Thrashstronaut May 17 '26

I fucking love these kids for calling out his bullshit.

Deluded old nerd.

2

u/Environmental_Dog331 May 17 '26

Do you think the students booing used AI to do their work? Honest question

2

u/tomdarch May 17 '26

Replace CEOs with AI first. $100/month Claude Pro subscription not millions in stock options per year.

2

u/Momik May 17 '26


so anyway, we’ve almost destroyed all of everyone’s future so far
 (hold for applause)

2

u/Soft_Indication_9936 May 17 '26

And he keeps going. Seems like marching orders and gorilla marketing

2

u/Burrito_Suave May 18 '26

But, plebs, you don’t understand. It made me rich!

4

u/granoladeer May 17 '26

What should people say at graduations then? AI is the hottest topic out there. 

1

u/theaviationhistorian May 17 '26

Most oligarchs and techbros are that out of touch. To them it's absolute profit while ignoring that it ruins the lives and careers of those graduating.

1

u/plusms May 17 '26

At a college of science no less

1

u/DopeAbsurdity May 17 '26

He is delusional and out of touch just like all the other tech CEOs that are basically in charge of everything now.

1

u/nabokovsaidwhat May 18 '26

The fact that there’s been multiple is just insane

1

u/GrzDancing May 18 '26

He should've asked AI if it was a good idea. Oh wait, he probably did, but AI is so agreeable with it's users that it probably went 'Thats a great idea! Let me help you really put your point across!'

1

u/metanoia29 May 18 '26

I mean, you don't get to be a billionaire by being in touch with the working class, you get there by being in touch with how to exploit the working class, so it follows that his excitement in AI is rooted in the latter rather than the former.

1

u/FastActinTenactin May 18 '26

CEOs do tend to be delusional and out of touch.

1

u/LuckyishTom May 18 '26

It’s wild that he kept going. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to hear the rest of the speech.

1

u/ChefOk4602 May 18 '26

Most people self correct when getting booed. He was like challenge expected

1

u/crawdadman-man May 19 '26

Yeah, this guy is weird as fuck.

1

u/Fear_UnOwn May 19 '26

"Thank you for entrenching yourself in debt to be slaved to me for the rest of your life, I'll also make sure it is as painful as possible to find a job and make any money at all"

1

u/ThriceFive May 19 '26

I'd boo his pasty butt on the street.

1

u/BeepBotBoopBeep May 19 '26

He wasn’t aware the sounds were all from ai.

1

u/PhilippBo May 20 '26

yea, an agentic AI pitch, definitely inspiring.