What explains the scale of the hype around Generative AI? Why the massive construction of infrastructure, the feverish promotion, and the vast amounts of wealth invested? Why are layoffs, the proliferation of child sex abuse material, and environmental destruction all tolerated? What does all this mean, when three-plus years into this bizarre cultural experiment, Open AI and similar companies have not turned a profit, and when the end product is so underwhelming?

The answer is: Steve Jobs. Around 2010 the whole world was told a very persuasive story about Steve Jobs. The story goes that this genius came along and invented the iPod, iPad and smartphone, transformed everyday life and opened up vast new frontiers for investment and profit.

Capitalism needs a new Steve Jobs every ten years or so to keep the show on the road. It’s not just that there’s a million tech entrepreneurs out there who all want to be hailed as geniuses and to get uber-wealthy. It’s not just that the public is primed to expect this story to unfold again and again. That’s all in our heads (which is not to say it doesn’t matter). The biggest part of this is that capital needs a place to go.

All those rich people, all those funds, need to have a new Steve Jobs that they can throw money at. They don’t want to invest in unexciting, low-profit, bread-and-butter things, even if they might actually improve the world and empower their fellow human beings. They want tech things that sound exciting and radical but that don’t challenge capitalism in any way.

For a while it was crypto. E-vehicles and space travel, which unlike crypto and AI are actually worthwhile things, have been hyped and inflated in the same way in recent years (the gall and illiteracy of SpaceX when they called a basic orbital rocket “Starship”!). Now it’s AI and they are going much harder. 

Hype to an extent creates its own reality. This thing has enormous momentum. But the rules have changed. It’s not the 2000s or the 2010s. The low-hanging fruit that you can grab, the digital commons that you can enclose, are scant now. People who have bought into the AI hype are not convinced by the product itself (how could anyone be?). They are convinced because they believe they are in a familiar story, a story about genius, enterprise, tech innovation, changing the world, getting rich. So did (do) the crypto people. When the reckoning comes their first reaction will be “That wasn’t in the script.”