Gen Z Calls Out the Big Tech Hype
Nolan Higdon May 26
https://nolanhigdon.substack.com/p/the-emperor-has-no-artificial-intelligence
When a speaker at the University of Central Florida’s May 8, 2026 commencement declared, “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution,” it triggered boos that escalated when she spoke of “living in a time of profound change.” Gloria Caulfield, an aloof real estate executive, paused and looked around confused, asking, “Whoop, what happened?” She seemingly did not realize the graduating students were booing her techno-utopian position on AI, a fact made clear seconds later when she drew cheers for saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.”
Caulfield was hardly alone in missing the room at a 2026 commencement. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was also booed at the University of Arizona after giving a fawning speech about AI. He acknowledged the pushback, arguing that there was “fear in your generation” over not getting a job because of AI, calling that fear “rational.”
Current estimates suggest that AI could threaten more than ten percent of all jobs. However, students, who utilize these tools far more than older generations, are experiencing an anxiety that goes far beyond mere grievance over lost employment. Instead, they are calling out the hype. They recognize that the AI frenzy is a mirage, predicated on Big Tech propaganda designed to convince the public that unintelligent platforms can, and should, replace human capability.
LLMs vs. True Human Intelligence
This delusion was made abundantly clear during entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer Marc Andreessen’s May 19 appearance on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, where Andreessen boasted that Big Tech had achieved human-like intelligence known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). The so-called AI tools that most people use are Large Language Models (LLMs), which are considered below human intelligence. LLMs are trained on vast oceans of internet data simply to recognize linguistic patterns and mimic human text.
To be clear, while today’s AI is incredibly impressive, it does not constitute true intelligence. Indeed, AI is simply a marketing tool to describe these LLMs. Yet, when the public hears “AI,” they think of AGI, equal to human intelligence, or artificial superintelligence (ASI), which exceeds it.
Replicating “human intelligence” requires a precise understanding of the concept, which remains an unresolved challenge for humanity. Researchers increasingly believe humans possess multiple intelligences, such as emotional intelligence. At its core, emotional intelligence is the capacity to read the room, make sense of complex human feelings, and channel those emotions into constructive actions rather than destructive reactions.
AI clearly lacks emotional intelligence, as these systems have tragically led kids to suicide rather than offering the human support they needed. Nor do these models possess the basic moral baseline of the average human, many having been caught aiding individuals in creating child pornography.
Digital Eugenics
Historically, attempts to define intelligence quantitatively have repeatedly led down the dark path of scientific racism predicated on eugenicist ideology. The eugenics movement and scientific racism relied entirely on a dangerous loop of biased data collection and flawed analysis. By using culturally rigged tools like early IQ tests to evaluate biological attributes, eugenicists manufactured the political cover needed to enforce forced sterilization, economic exploitation, and systemic murder. Indeed, the outcomes of these rigid definitions have historically been weaponized to validate systems of oppression, such as systemic racism and sexism, as well as mass atrocities, including the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
In search of AGI, the tech sector is ushering eugenics into the digital age. Modern algorithms and automated systems are falsely promoted as objective tools, mirroring the way early IQ tests were incorrectly framed as unbiased measures to justify eugenicist policies. Far from being neutral or objective, AI systems inevitably reflect the biases of their programming and training data. The trend is terrifying, given the persistence of eugenicist attitudes among contemporary Silicon Valley leaders who frequently view humanity through the lens of genetic superiority and algorithmic ranking.
A stark nexus of this ideology was the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who maintained high-profile connections with prominent industry leaders like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Reid Hoffman. Epstein openly championed the eugenicist belief that intelligence is racially stratified, explicitly claiming that technological innovations might be needed to make Black people “smarter.” This culture of innate biological bias is widespread among his peers; Epstein’s associate and former Harvard President Larry Summers infamously suggested that women lacked the innate ability of men in science and math.
Today’s tech giants are actively keeping the legacy of eugenics alive. Elon Musk, head of X and Tesla, frequently interacts with antisemitic rhetoric, performs Nazi salutes publicly, and utilizes his platform to amplify baseless, racist theories. Others, such as Peter Thiel, are accused of pioneering a digital-age eugenics under the banner of transhumanism. Transhumanism is frequently compared to historical eugenics because both movements share the core objective of actively directing human evolution to optimize our physical and cognitive capacities.
The Economic Bubble of Automation
On Rogan, Andreessen claimed that human-level intelligence has been achieved simply because the AI responds like a human when prompted. This represents a fundamentally distorted interpretation of intelligence and the Turing test. Named after Dr. Alan Turing, who tragically died by suicide after being chemically castrated for his homosexuality, the test was designed to measure an entity’s ability to convince humans of its intelligence, not to prove that it actually possesses consciousness. Human perception of intelligence does not equal actual intelligence. It is a digital magic trick: the AI system claims it is “thinking” to convince humans it is just like them, when in reality, it is simply processing data without intelligence, exactly as it was designed to do.
Andreessen further argued that AGI is here because industry is adopting it rapidly. This assumes that because industry does something, it must be intelligent. History begs to differ. The financial collapses of 1857, 1873, 1893, 1929, 1987, 2001, 2008, and the looming AI bubble illustrate that industry will always chase short-term profits regardless of long-term costs—especially when the politicians they paid to get into Washington, D.C. stand ready to bail them out.
More importantly, Andreessen completely ignores a glaring corporate reality: ninety-five percent of companies are seeing zero return on investment from their AI pilot programs, leaving businesses with a severe case of buyer’s remorse. In fact, recent data from Microsoft highlights an emerging AI cost crisis, demonstrating that the extensive token consumption required by autonomous agents often makes running the technology more costly than hiring human employees.
Marketing has sold the illusion that AI can outperform humans in everything from medical diagnoses to matchmaking. In practice, individuals and corporations are finding out the hard way that these tools fail to match human capability. For example, on Rogan’s podcast, Andreessen lauded the adoption of AI in medicine while completely ignoring extensive Reuters reporting on AI-driven hospital disasters and botched surgeries. He likewise ignored how AI wreaks havoc by giving dangerous medical advice, hallucinating nonexistent studies, and fabricating summaries.
The Youth Revolt Against Faulty Systems and Dismissive Elites
The youth are acutely aware of these flaws because they are already experiencing the fallout. For instance, at Glendale Community College, President Tiffany Hernandez was met with resounding boos after revealing that the school had used AI to read names during the graduation ceremony. The AI system had glitched, skipping names entirely and leaving numerous graduates unrecognized on their big day.
When critical observers point out these failures and question the overall utility of AI, they are too often met with elite derision. A stark example occurred on May 9 at Middle Tennessee State University, where music executive Scott Borchetta was booed during his commencement speech for claiming that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” Instead of listening to the audience’s frustration, he doubled down, telling the crowd to simply “Deal with it.” This is Big Tech’s universal decree: submit to the AI overlords. It makes perfect sense for an industry built on the premise that humans are merely buggy creators in need of an algorithmic fix. This explains why these tech oligarchs reject human-centric systems like democracy. It is an anti-democratic sentiment deeply embedded among Silicon Valley barons and Trump allies like Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and Alex Karp.
Stripping away the hype of Big Tech, it becomes glaringly obvious why the younger generation is rightfully angry. They are witnessing a massive surge in data center construction, which depletes natural resources, exacerbates climate change, and inflates energy costs, ultimately jeopardizing both the environment and their future economic stability. They witnessed firsthand how the normalization of AI among faculty and students eroded the college experience, fueling anti-intellectualism while triggering cognitive burnout and profound psychological alienation among users.
They see the public being bamboozled by an industry that consistently overpromises and underdelivers. The same public that bought the lie that “smart” devices are intelligent, when they are dumb (as Donald Trump recently pointed out, “a lot of people” don’t even know there’s a “B” in the word). Just as users were tricked into thinking social media was inherently social, they are now buying the myth of AI intelligence. Young people haven’t just watched this rerun; they have survived it. Decades of uncritical screen use have already linked technology to cognitive decline, and by falling for the AI hype, society is simply condemning another generation to an intellectual purgatory.
Young people have every right to be furious as AI is blamed for their evaporating job prospects. But make no mistake: they aren’t being replaced by a superior intelligence. It is the exact opposite. They are being replaced by a deeply flawed, inferior product, one that Big Tech is happily testing live on the human population for profit. The real danger isn’t the critical thinkers who recognize AI’s inherent limitations; it is the undiscerning masses blindly rushing to deploy it.
