Something that strikes me as really weird about the AI age that we're in is we all know we've entered it, but no one was aware when we entered it.
It was like a time jump.
Two years ago we were mocking AI videos for their crappiness, speculating that AI may or may not be all they're saying it's cracked up to be.
And now, we're in solid "AI is terrifying and I can't imagine the dystopia someone born today is going to grow up in regarding the all encompassing nature of AI"
And it's like having a black out when drunk. One minute you're in a bar. The next minute you're behind bars for public intoxication and you didn't remember anything in between.
That's how it feels with the AI thing.
Of course we always had trepidations from early on, but unlike certain ages, the age of woke, the age of covidians, the age of seeing the extent of the brainwashing, there were solid markers of "we were there, and now we're here and here's what led to that."
But with AI, I don't know if it's similar to you, but it was like a realtime mandella effect where suddenly we're in the AI age and it felt just like yesterday we were mocking the "Will Smith eats spaghetti" and there doesn't seem to be a clear moment where everyone took AI for the serious existential threat that it is....it just happened, like a black out from drinking. It's a very strange feeling.
At this point I don't think it is "about AI"... more that the tech has been hyped up so much that for corporations and governments, it has become the next convenient excuse to enshittify the world even more.
Just idea of AI's potential is good enough reason to ruin lives and disrupt what has worked for so long.