Beware of prophets

There's a certain type of person in tech who talks about the future like they've already been there.

You know the ones. They get on a stage, or a podcast, and they speak about what's coming with total certainty. This changes everything. It's already over. Get on board or get left behind.

Here's the thing though. None of them actually know. No one does. The future is an educated guess at best. But the way they talk, you'd swear it was a memory.

So why do they talk like that? I don't know. Maybe they believe it. Maybe it's ego. Maybe it's just the job. Either way, believing something and selling it aren't the same thing, and they seem to be doing both.

And they're not prophets. They're selling something. A big part of the sell is getting you to believe the narrative.

It's not a new trick, either. Carissa Véliz makes this point in her book Prophecy — that the powerful have always used prediction not to see the future but to determine it. The oracles, the astrologers, and now the founders. Same move, new robes.

The fallout

The prophets are one thing. What they leave behind is another, and it's the part I actually see around me.

I've noticed real fear in people this year. Not the vague kind — you can see it on them. And a mental exhaustion that comes with the new pressures, the sense that the ground keeps shifting under you. The pressure doesn't really switch off.

Some have lost something quieter than fear. A satisfaction that used to be in the work, gone. Their environment changed around them, the work changed with it, and they've been left trying to find their footing in a place that doesn't quite fit the way it used to.

Others are afraid for their futures.

And then there are the ones at the other end. Fully on board. No hesitation, no fear, all aboard the hype train.

Same noise. Opposite reactions.

The ripple

It doesn't stop with the prophets themselves. They say something, and the followers carry it on. The noise ripples. It travels much further than the original claim ever could have on its own.

So it reaches people who never asked for any of this. Developers I know who have real concerns. Environmental ones — what does all this compute actually cost? Moral and philosophical ones. Machines replacing humans. Handing over something of what makes us human, and for what? Someone else's margin?

And then there are the ones who just aren't sure. People who don't know how to feel about AI yet, or who'd rather have nothing to do with it, and find themselves surrounded by it anyway. The ripple reaches them whether they wanted it or not. That's the part that bothers me most.

Velocity

Running underneath all of it is the same word, over and over: speed. Velocity. Move faster. Ship more. Keep up.

But speed was never really my goal. Why does it have to be the goal? The more I think about it, the more it feels like a capitalist value — the thing you optimise when the point is output and return. And there's always someone counting. The counting never stops.

Of course they push speed. Speed is the thing they sell. The faster the world moves, the more you need someone to tell you where it's going.

What if the point was to think deeper about a problem? Not just to produce faster, but to understand better. To sit with something longer, turn it over, see it from an angle you'd have missed. That's the version of AI that actually interests me — and it's the one the noise almost never talks about, because it doesn't sell velocity.

What are we going to do with all of this extra speed? Do we really need more?

Maybe the prophets are right about some of it. Maybe not. But that's almost beside the point. What's worth being wary of isn't the future they describe — it's the certainty they describe it with, and the way it moves through everyone around them.

I don't have a prophecy of my own. Just a preference: slow down enough to think. Turn down the volume of the noise and listen to my own voice as well. It's served me well enough so far.