The Singularity: Which Side Are You On?
A Simplified Guide to AI Extremism
The Ideological Divide
Artificial Intelligence is not just technology. It’s philosophy.
With the emergence of ChatGPT, the tech world has fractured into three distinct factions.
Some fear it will unravel the fabric of society.
Others dream of AI-driven utopias where all work is automated.
And some think it is so overhyped that a dotcom-style bubble is inevitable.
Let’s take a look at these viewpoints:
The Doomers
The End is nigh.
The Doomers believe AI will either destabilize the job market beyond repair or fall into the hands of a powerful elite, leading to an Orwellian future. Either way, their outlook is collapse.
Some predict mass unemployment. Others warn of rogue superintelligence or authoritarian misuse.
Their arguments may sound extreme, but they’re grounded in real concerns—history has shown we’re great at building tools we’re not ready to wield.
The Zoomers
Zoomers are the techno-optimists. They dream of a world where AI handles all of the tedious labors of life, freeing us to create, explore, and play Fortnite ad infinitum.
They tend to celebrate automation and advocate for accelerating development at all costs. If the technology gets us closer to post-scarcity, they’re on board.
Critics say they’re naive. But their faith in AI as a liberator reflects a broader hope: that maybe—just maybe—technology can finally set us free.
The Zoomers are the arch-enemies of the Doomers.
The Boomers
The Boomers don’t understand the hype, don’t want to, and believe that AI technology is a fad with hard limits. They’ve seen enough empty promises to be suspicious of anything with a sleek demo and too many buzzwords.
Many of them work in finance or adjacent industries. They’ve watched entire markets pivot around vaporware. From blockchain to NFTs to whatever WeWork was supposed to be, they’ve been burned before.
To them, artificial intelligence looks like another inflated dream—impressive, yes, but destined to plateau. They’re not warning of doom or dreaming of utopia. They’re just not buying it.
The Boomers look across the slop-filled landscape of the internet and whisper humbug.
Seriously?
Okay, yes—this classification is overly simplified and incredibly dumb. You probably lost a few IQ points reading this.
But beneath the memes, the division is real. Most people fall somewhere on the axis of optimism, pessimism, or healthy skepticism.
As to which viewpoint has most validity, that’s harder to answer than most admit.
The most outspoken optimists often include startup founders and visionaries—the people building AI or betting on its potential.
Pessimists include researchers and ethicists, many of whom are alarmed by our historical track record of using powerful tools for horrifying ends.
And skeptics tend to be industry veterans, systems thinkers, and cynical financiers. They’ve seen miracle tech before. They know not everything scales.
All three camps make valid points. The problem is, they’re mostly talking past each other.
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.”
— Roy Amara (Amara’s Law)
My opinion
As for me? I’m not idealistic enough to be a zoomer, not fatalistic enough to be a doomer, and too reliant on ChatGPT to be a boomer.
Maybe the loudest voices in this space—founders, influencers, armchair prophets—should be taken with a grain of salt.
The truth is, no one knows what AI is really capable of yet. And anyone claiming otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. Time will tell.
But, my hope is this:
If we survived the atomic bomb, we can survive AI.