Ten Things - June 12, 2026

Jun 12, 2026

If you think public opinion about AI is depressing, you should see what academics are saying. *

“This panicked rush to do GenAI everywhere and make sure to not be ‘left behind’ by governments (and universities I might add) is really not going to end well. Except it’s us that will be left holding the bag.”

“The issue is that many professors absolutely loathe GenAI and want nothing to do with it. I didn’t sign up for this bullshit.”

“AI boosterism on social media is mostly Astroturf.”

_{*And by academics… I mean just some. And these quotes are real, anonymized, and out of context. But they’re certainly illustrative.}

Academia is more prone to disruption from AI than almost any other industry. It attacks our core value proposition directly. How we teach and assess student comprehension (and our effectiveness as teachers) has ruptured. And (some… maybe even a lot of) academic research is also in a precarious place (see this post from Vincent Grégoire for a fascinating example).

Given the disruptive potential, we’re panicking. A lot of that panic takes the form of the “stochastic parrot” argument. It suggests there’s no reasoning, no creativity, no deeper capability - just a fancier version of a calculator. As a result, all the hype around AI is just like the hype around crypto, VR/AR, or the metaverse. But what I’m worried about is that academic panic is morphing into denial.

This week, Rutger Bregman dropped a fantastic essay that put words to these intuitions. There’s a new form of denial playing out. This time it’s on the political left (a place where a good chunk of academia resides). And it denies that AI is actually all that important - they see bubbles, hype, hoaxes, and costs without benefits.

Rutger Bregman

An Inconvenient Truth About AI

Hey everyone! I don’t say this often, but I think this is the most important thing I’ve published in quite some time. Watch it as a video essay or read it below. I think we're sleepwalking through the most important shift of our lifetimes, and the people who should be sounding the alarm are looking the other way. If you agree, please share it widely…

4 months ago · 766 likes · 180 comments · Rutger Bregman

What’s being ignored? AI’s remarkable progress around math problems, passing bar exams, generating novel hypotheses, clinical supports, and winning awards in “easy to detect” areas like art and writing.

Yes, AI-boosterism is dominated by voices from the techno-libertarian right. Marc Andreessen’s essay on Techno-Optimism is a perfect encapsulation of this (and in my view is based on some wild premises that don’t stand up well).

But conflating a distaste for the new techno-libertarian-right with a distaste for all that AI can be and do is dangerous and naive.

Read Bregman’s whole piece. Agree or disagree - there are some sound arguments being made, and they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. And if he’s right, those in panic or denial are going to ensure that future applications of AI are shaped without their input.