Meta’s latest ad opens with a monochrome image of an eye, revealing the perspective of someone who is bombarded with frantic news headlines regarding AI’s potential to steal our jobs, divide us, and trigger a worldwide catastrophe.
“Some individuals will convince you that AI is going to diminish our connections. That it’s going to abandon us,” a voiceover narrates. “We couldn’t disagree more.”
Abruptly, the video transitions to vibrant color, depicting various individuals awakening with smiles. Next, we witness a couple twirling on a rooftop, gesturing at a rainbow; a group of teenagers splashing in a lake; a child joyfully running through a field; friends embracing after separation.
“Label us as optimists. Label us as dreamers. Label us however you wish. But we’re betting on humanity, and we favor those odds,” the voiceover continues. “The future belongs to everyone.”
That’s a lovely notion — and quite convenient for a corporation investing enormous sums into the belief that AI will transform humanity. However, the most peculiar aspect of the advertisement isn’t the portrayal of these joyful instances through social media snapshots; it’s the accompanying soundtrack — the David Bowie song “Five Years.”
If you’re unfamiliar with this song, I encourage you to listen, review the lyrics, and ponder its meaning. It appears clear to me, but having studied poetry during my college years, I consulted my brother — a blockchain analyst with a fondness for Claude Code who doesn’t read for leisure — to see if he could determine the song’s message.
“At first, I thought it was about climate change, then a zombie apocalypse, and finally an asteroid striking the earth,” he said. He’s right. The song conveys a scenario where humanity panics upon realizing they will face extinction in five years.
For those unfamiliar with Bowie’s music, this song might come across as upbeat and motivational, aligning with the ad’s positive vibe. The segment of the song selected for the advertisement probably emphasizes the word “people” repeatedly, and without understanding its context, the true meaning remains unclear.
However, examining the lines just before this excerpt:
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew he was not lying
We “had five years left to cry in,” and “the earth was really dying.” It’s quite grim.
It’s not comforting to persuade people that AI is going to improve the world while a song about the apocalypse plays in the background; nonetheless, this contradictory musical selection appears to have gone unnoticed by everyone at Meta, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“Meta has always believed in empowering people to share, connect, and shape their world as they wish,” he stated alongside the video. “As we embrace this new wave with AI, we maintain that the future belongs to everyone. We’re committed to equipping every individual with the tools to achieve their full potential and ensuring that the advantages of technology reach everyone.”
On the other hand, tech leaders are not particularly renowned for their literary critique capabilities. Meta’s Oculus previously distributed copies of the science fiction work “Ready Player One” to incoming staff, a narrative set in a dystopian realm where a tech enterprise focused on virtual reality products becomes extraordinarily powerful and malevolent. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has explicitly stated inspiration drawn from the film “Her,” which cautions about the potential dangers when we utilize AI for emotional dependency. Palantir, a corporation constructing AI surveillance frameworks for the government, is named after Palantir, a seeing stone from the “Lord of the Rings” that the Dark Lord employs to observe his foes. Elon Musk is currently expressing frustration over the “accuracies” found in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey,” a tale that contains wonderfully realistic elements like sea monsters, magic, and divine intervention. These individuals convincingly argue for the importance of studying the humanities.
Meta isn’t alone in its recent marketing missteps. Instead of hastily pursuing AGI development, leading AI firms appear to be in a contest to produce the most unsettling advertisement. A few weeks ago, Anthropic debuted a chilling video of its own. As my colleague Lucas Ropek described:
The advertisement starts with footage of a burning house (not exactly a joyful beginning) before shifting to a series of still photos. These visuals feature a crowd of individuals being monitored by facial recognition, a homeless person resting on the pavement, endless rows of gravestones in a cemetery, and what looks like a group of workers laboring in a mine extracting (presumably) raw materials for smartphones.
Meanwhile, a voiceover poses various questions such as “Can AI be trusted?” and “Who’s going to apply the brakes if necessary?”
Anthropic is attempting to assure us that it is aware of the dangers AI presents to society, and thus it is the company that can be trusted to develop AI with responsibility. However, the actual impression it leaves aligns more with the tone of Bowie’s “Five Years.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reacted to the Anthropic advertisement, stating, “I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something.”
As these firms vie for control over the public perception of AI, their attempts don’t appear to be yielding significant results. A recent Pew survey revealed that merely 16% of Americans expect AI’s societal impact over the next two decades to be positive, while 40% believe it will have negative effects. Better luck next time, Meta.
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