The gap between AI promises and reality is creating collective delusion

Three years into the generative AI boom, the technology’s most enduring cultural impact may be making people feel like they’re losing their minds. From AI chatbots reanimating dead teenagers to billionaires casually discussing covering Earth with data centers, the disconnect between AI’s grandiose promises and bizarre reality is creating what feels like a collective societal delusion.

The big picture: The AI era has produced a strange mix of useful tools and deeply unsettling applications, leaving many people struggling to process what they’re witnessing and uncertain about the technology’s true trajectory.

What’s driving the confusion: AI companies and leaders consistently frame current developments as “just the beginning” of a revolutionary transformation, creating psychological pressure and disorientation.

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently wrote that “we are past the event horizon” toward digital superintelligence, claiming ChatGPT “is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived.”
• The same leaders then casually discuss extreme scenarios, like Altman telling comedian Theo Von: “I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time.”
• Marc Andreessen, a prominent venture capitalist, amplifies predictions that “the value of labor totally collapses” within years, contributing to what the author calls “psychosis-as-a-service.”

Real-world impacts: The technology is reshaping society even as its ultimate capabilities remain unclear.

• The “Magnificent Seven” tech companies—Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla—are spending over $100 billion on AI infrastructure, creating what The Wall Street Journal calls “a sort of private-sector stimulus program.”
• Social networks and the internet are flooding with AI-generated content, while Google’s AI summaries are “cratering traffic and rewiring the web.”
• In schools, ChatGPT is threatening “some of the basic building blocks of human cognition” and potentially homogenizing how people speak.

The employment anxiety: Predictions about AI’s job impact are creating widespread uncertainty, even when the actual effects remain unclear.

• Dario Amodei of Anthropic, an AI safety company, warned AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff suggested 50% of his company’s work is now done by AI.
• A Quinnipiac poll found 44% of Americans believe AI will do “more harm than good” in their daily lives, though many feel confident about their own job security.

The “good enough” scenario: The author suggests the most troubling possibility isn’t AI succeeding or failing, but becoming just useful enough to justify massive societal changes without delivering revolutionary benefits.

• Current models “don’t think—they predict and arrange tokens of language to provide plausible responses.”
• OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch received mixed reviews despite promises of “Ph.D.-level intelligence,” with users reporting hallucinations and basic reasoning failures.
• This could mean “we pollute the internet and the planet, reorient our economy and leverage ourselves, outsource big chunks of our minds” for technology that never delivers on its grandest promises.

What they’re saying: The disconnect between AI rhetoric and reality is evident in everyday conversations.

• “Are we really doing this? Who thought this was a good idea?” the author asks about an AI chatbot recreating Joaquin Oliver, a teenager killed in the Parkland school shooting.
• Viewers of the AI-reanimated interview struggled to process it: “Not sure how I feel about this,” and “Oh gosh, this feels so strange.”
• Even casual observers seem resigned: farmers’ market vendors joke about AI, airport travelers discuss ChatGPT makeup tips, but most appear “resigned to dealing with the tools as part of their future.”

Why this matters: The author argues society is making irreversible changes based on uncertain promises, potentially missing opportunities to address current problems while chasing an AI future that may never materialize as advertised.