My friends think I should be a streamer.
Every week. "You're funny, just turn the camera on." Every week I don't.
A stream has no backspace. You say the dumb thing once and it's out there forever, clipped by strangers.
Writing has a backspace. I can be smart on the second try. Or the ninth.
So I type. To you. Why this instead of a real novel, with a desk and a tote bag? No clue. It's the closest I got.
That's my crisis. The world's working on a much bigger one.
Jeff Bezos stood on a stage in Paris and said, basically, relax. AI won't take your job. It'll cause a labor shortage. Drop the barriers and everyone becomes a builder. More work than there are people to do it.
Which, hilariously, is me. The exact case he's describing. Building little things with AI because the door finally opened wide enough to let me in. The optimist's poster child, in sweatpants.
The public, though, isn't buying it.
Pew asked if AI will make society better over the next 20 years. 16% said yes. One. Six. Percent.
And the under-30s, my crew, came in bleakest of all. 14%. The generation raised on this stuff trusts it least.
So: Bezos up front, calling it a golden age. My whole generation in the back going, yeah, we'll see. Me in the middle, building the thing anyway.
Truth is, I don't know if I'll make it as a creator.
I don't know if I should be on camera. I don't know if the robots save us or sink us. I don't know why this is a newsletter and not a novel.
But I do know I like you.
You're the one thing I'd never hit backspace on.
See you tomorrow.
-Melly