Meta’s latest ad opens with a shot of a black-and-white eye, showing what people are seeing when they read countless panicked headlines about how AI will take our jobs, isolate us, and cause a global crisis.
“AI will make us less connected, leading some to wonder if it will leave us behind,” the narrator says. “We couldn’t disagree more.”
Suddenly, the video changes to color and shows a cycle of various people opening their eyes and smiling. We then see a couple dancing on the rooftop, pointing at the rainbow. A group of teenagers swimming in a lake. Children playing in the field. Friends hugging each other after being separated.
“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever you want. But we’re betting on people, and we like the odds,” the voiceover says. “The future belongs to everyone.”
This is a wonderful feeling. That’s great for companies that are betting hundreds of billions of dollars that AI will revolutionize humanity. But the weirdest thing about this ad isn’t that we’re watching a happy moment unfold through an Instagram post. The soundtrack for this ad is David Bowie’s song “Five Years.”
If you don’t know this song, please give it a listen, read the lyrics, and think about what it’s trying to say. It seems obvious to me, but I studied poetry in college. So, as a control for this experiment, I asked my brother, a blockchain analyst who loves Claude Code and doesn’t read for fun, if he could tell me what the song was about.
“First I thought it was climate change, then a zombie apocalypse, then an asteroid was going to hit Earth,” he told me. He’s right. This is a song about humans who panic when they learn that a mass extinction will occur in five years.
For those not familiar with Bowie’s music, the song may sound happy and moving, matching the upbeat tone of the ad. The promotional part of the song was probably chosen because the word “person” is used so many times that it’s hard to tell what it’s about without the context of the song.
But if you look at the line just before this section, you’ll see:
The news had just come in.
We had five years left to cry.
A newsman told us through tears.
the earth was really on the verge of extinction
I cried so much that my face got wet
Then I found out he wasn’t lying
We “only had five years left to cry out” and “the earth was really dying.” It’s quite dark.
Convincing people that AI will make the world a better place while playing a song about the end of the world isn’t reassuring, and yet this contradictory musical choice seemed to ignore everyone at Meta, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“Meta has always believed in empowering people to share, connect and shape the world the way they want,” he wrote alongside the video. “As we enter the next wave of AI, we continue to believe that the future is for everyone. We are focused on giving everyone the tools to reach their full potential and ensuring the benefits of technology reach everyone.”
Then again, technology leaders aren’t known for their literary analysis skills. Meta’s Oculus once distributed copies of the science fiction novel “Ready Player One” to new employees. The novel is set in a dystopia where technology companies that manufacture virtual reality products have become overly powerful and evil. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman directly cited inspiration from the movie “Her,” which warns of what can go wrong when using AI for emotional support. Palantir, a company that builds AI surveillance systems for governments, is named after Palantir, the vision stone used by the Dark Lord in the Lord of the Rings series to spy on his enemies. Elon Musk is currently furious about the “accuracy” of his adaptation of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film The Odyssey, which features realistic elements such as sea monsters, magic and divine intervention. They have a great discussion about the value of studying the humanities.
The meta isn’t the only problem with recent promotions. Instead of competing to build AGI, the leading AI companies seem to be competing over who can create the creepiest ads. A few weeks ago, Anthropic released their own creepy video. My colleague Lukas Lopek said:
The ad opens with a video of a burning house (not exactly a heartwarming beginning), then transitions into a series of still images. These images include what appears to be crowds being monitored by facial recognition, homeless people sleeping on the streets, tombstones lining a cemetery, and (presumably) a group of workers working in a mine where the raw materials for smartphones are being mined.
Meanwhile, in the voiceover track, different people ask questions such as “Can we trust AI?” and “Who will step on the brakes if it becomes necessary?”
Anthropic understands the risks that AI poses to society, and therefore seeks to convince us that Anthropic is a company that people can trust to develop AI responsibly. In fact, the message conveyed by this work feels close to the atmosphere of Bowie’s “Five Years.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Anthropic’s ad by saying, “I thought this was satire and kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something.”
These companies are racing to control public perception of AI, but they don’t seem to be making much progress. According to a recent Pew survey, only 16% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society over the next 20 years, while 40% think it will have a negative impact. Good luck next time, Meta.
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