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Perfect storm: how AI entered public consciousness

by Michael DempseyXpublished

Hraness republishes this public post from a saved copy. The post is the author’s own words.

Michael Dempsey @mhdempsey

Dreaming about the future, romanticizing the past | MP @compoundvc investing & researching former science projects & crypto | we are only creativity constrained

I think a few things happened in tech from 2022-2026 that created a perfect storm alongside the breakout of scaling laws and AI performance that led to a miserable approach/result in how AI made its way into the public consciousness.

In no particular order we:

  • Embraced a more hardo and "based" culture, at a time in which "softness" and pro-humanism/EQ matters most due to the fear created.
  • Moved towards a very experimental and "don't be too serious" frame of comms at a time in which the experiments we are running are incredibly serious and at a minimum scare the shit out of people who aren't on the ground.
  • Pushed comms to be founder-led (and good god the founders were not ready) and isolationist versus the rest of the media and population broadly.
  • Proliferated financial nihilism aggressively post-COVID.
  • Wholesale abandoned climate as a category that mattered and replaced it with weapons and defense. (again, not saying this was wrong or correct, but this was the perception and quantitatively where investor dollars shifted).

I'm sure there are many others but it's interesting to imagine what it would have been like if technology was at a different cultural positioning had we stumbled into this breakthrough years earlier.

We spend a lot of time at Compound talking about how technology pushes society and then society pushes technology. I think the larger bet for many is that technology will continue to push society and it will not be a pendulum.

My sense is we will find this out soon.

Image 1 transcription

Compound is a set of questions

An endless pursuit to answer...Is society shaping technology or is technology shaping society?

Society Driven

Technology Driven

Crypto

Distrust in Financial System

Bitcoin

Broad Self-Sovereignty

Smart Contracts

Decentralized Collective Behaviors

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure

Recreation of Core Institutions

Biology

Personalized health recommendations

Genome sequencing

Biohacking, self-directed care

Wearables, D2C biomarker tests

Human enhancement

Consumer CT scans, peptides, BCIs

Compound Moving Forward | Compound Annual Meeting 2024

COMPOUND

Image 2 transcription

A Time for Chaos and Amazement

And now we are climbing

You are here

Disappointment

Chaos/ Amazement

Compound Moving Forward | Compound Annual Meeting 2024

COMPOUND

Compound Annual Meeting 2024 slide titled Compound is a set of questions, with Crypto and Biology sine waves oscillating between Society Driven and Technology Driven labels.Compound Annual Meeting 2024 slide titled A Time for Chaos and Amazement, with a green exponential curve crossing a linear line at You are here between Disappointment and Chaos/Amazement.