4 ms·

GenAI is the first technology that I've ever seen that is actively rejected by young adults and fervently pushed by people over 55. It seems Eric Schmids of th

by romaniv 5mo ago

GenAI is the first technology that I've ever seen that is actively rejected by young adults and fervently pushed by people over 55. It seems Eric Schmids of the world think they (in their 70s) have more say about the future of these students than the students themselves. That is very unlikely.

ryandrake 5mo ago
My own conspiracy theory is that AI, and the increasingly authoritarian government swings, are the Boomer generation's last shot at freezing the world in time and ensuring our world is shaped to their vision long after they're all gone. The thing that generation fears the most is that we're all going to just move on from them when they're dead, and finally progress past this "1970-2020" economic/cultural stasis that we've been stuck in for basically my entire life.
- amoss 5mo ago
  kind of wild that you think there has been no shift in culture between 1970 and 2020
  - Larrikin 5mo ago
    A lot of the cultural changes that were achieved are actively being fought against and are slowly being reversed. Seems like every few weeks there is something from the civil rights era being chipped away at.
  - runarberg 5mo ago
    I grew up in the 90s in Europe. Back then Europe had strong consumer protection, pretty strong worker protection, low entry jobs still payed a bunch, cheap housing (my single parent mom was able to buy a flat while working at a gas station at the age of 23). Today’s Europe is nothing but austerity, there is no consumer protection left, they’ve split the society by having “jobs that only immigrants want” (i.e. insultingly low paying jobs), nobody can buy a flat anymore unless they’re a 10 year senior at a tech company. Today’s Europe is exactly the kind of world I always imagine the 1970s to be like. The only exception is in the 1970s Europe had a strong communist or socialist opposition which actively fought for a better world with strikes every week (or at least that is how I read European history).
- barebearcountry 5mo ago
  +1
- mxuribe 5mo ago
  I think you stated better what i was trying to babble in another comment here. :-) And you might think it is a conspiracy theory...but the sentiment i'm seeing (obviously a limited data set to only folks i engage with) seems to align so much to it...that if not fully true, *feels* quite close to it - even if not an intentional thing.
gruez 5mo ago
>and fervently pushed by people over 55. Source? I think you're conflating "pushed by CEOs" (which might lean on the older side) with "pushed by people over 55".
- lenerdenator 5mo ago
  CEOs are hired by boards. Boards are hired by shareholders. Most publicly-traded American companies have their shares held by pension and retirement funds. Pension and retirement funds exist to send money to people over 55.
  - whatshisface 5mo ago
    I'm sure VPs are sweating bullets over the instructions they will receive during the part of the shareholder's call where mutual fund managers dial their members and hold the phones up to each other.
    - lenerdenator 5mo ago
      I know you're trying to reduce it to absurdity, but there's still pressure to make their members happy. The fund managers are under the same competitive pressure as anyone else and are incentivized to get the best possible returns for their clients. If they don't, the members leave and take their money to another fund that is better at making money.
  - gruez 5mo ago
    By that definition anything that happens in politics or corporate america is "fervently pushed by people over 55", because that's the group with the most political and economic power. AI push? Boomers. Datacenter backlash? Boomers. ESG push? Boomers. ESG backlash? Boomers.
    - lenerdenator 5mo ago
      I know that there's backlash and push on each issue from every age range, but people ultimately vote with their wallets. They're sending their money to people who get them the most money regardless of what they think on an issue.
mxuribe 5mo ago
I think it might be because some folks from the older generation have a sense of entitlement...mostly because they often lived through a glorious period that en masse has been beneficial to them...They expected flying cars, etc...So, now, this time they'll get their AI servants...So, its sort of an expectation (for some from this older generation) that the world will keep giving them lots of good (well, good for them!) things in life. My sincere apologies if my comments are offensive to anyone (of any age group)...but i do agree that I'm seeing way more older people in support of the AI evolution, and many many more younger people fearing it. My age is far closer to the older generation, but lots of times, i'm feeling what i see lots of younger folks feeling: fear.
- ElevenLathe 5mo ago
  I think it's much less about generation than about material conditions. It's easier to convince someone that AI is going to be good for their bottom line if they are already retired, or at least have a significant chunk of savings (and therefore investments) and a job higher up the food chain/org chart than a new college grad does. For most working class people, age is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have these things, but there are plenty of older workers who are feeling the fear as well.
  - mxuribe 5mo ago
    Yeah, i agree that there might be older folks also fearing AI - i'm one of them! :-) As to your point about likely being more due to material conditions rather than age, perhaps you're right....but, then again, on average I'd say the older generation tends to have better material conditions/positions, tends to have at least some savings (maybe retirement, or at least will have more solvent social security, etc.?)...than say young folks who started graduating college from around the great recession to about now? So, maybe we're both right???
    - ElevenLathe 4mo ago
      Yeah, I didn't mean to be argumentative, but I hate that issues like this are frequently framed as generational conflicts when they're really class conflicts. There are a lot of people that benefit from erasing the whole concept of class conflict from the public consciousness (though there are many many more that would benefit from the opposite!).
dyauspitr 5mo ago
This is not even close to the reality on the ground. But America’s enemies would be smacking their lips and rubbing their hands together imagining a regressive youth.
lenerdenator 5mo ago
Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmidt were hired by boards, who were elected by shareholders, with the hope that they'd increase returns. The biggest shareholders in most American companies are pension and retirement funds, followed by funds that are not necessarily retirement funds but are often used by individuals to back IRAs and 401(k)s. When the executives of Schmidt's generation were hired, they were incentivized with stock options instead of cash. Their compensation was directly tied to how much money was returned to shareholders. When you maximize a return to a shareholder, you do that by minimizing the costs of the inputs to the business. One of those costs is labor. Payroll, benefits, the costs of the office space people work in, etc. GenAI offers shareholders - which can be seen as synonymous with people who are approaching retirement or who are retirees - a promise of massively reducing labor costs. In the minds of a lot of institutional investors, they could have companies where the same amount of value is created with only c-suite and executive-level employees working with teams of AI agents that, over time, will become cheaper and cheaper. What was once hundreds or thousands of employees is now a few dozen. Now, where does this leave young and middle-aged people? In a place where they have a wildly uncertain future. But that's not the retiree's problem. They want the villa on the golf course in Florida, and by the time you have real social problems resulting from a population with no hope for the future, the retirees will be dead or too old to care. Schmidt's cohort, for their part, have enough money to deal with those problems in the near to mid-term. Or, at least, they think they do. EDIT: Love getting downvoted for what is, essentially, a factual statement.
- QuercusMax 5mo ago
  Since when does retirement mean living off money you didn't labor for? The whole point is the opposite - you can only retire if you have enough resources/income (pension, 401K, gold bars, etc) that you can support yourself without working. In the US we have a problem that a lot of seniors can't afford to retire.
colechristensen 5mo ago
Oh don't you know? The young people don't know how to use technology any more. They've never had computers they control. The new hires and the nearly retired have the same computer skils. Locked down OS iPad kids don't know how to use computers because the manufactures and their parents wouldn't let them. The Matrix' 1999 "peak of human civilization" wasn't wrong, the world is moving to a society built by a small number of wizards owned by billionaires.
JohnFen 5mo ago
> fervently pushed by people over 55. It is? I know very few people in that age group who are excited by this stuff.
empath75 5mo ago
This is pretty wrong. There are a lot of people who _hate it_, but it is still a minority. And older people dislike it more than younger people. https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/2/27/public-opinion-on-artificial-intelligence-varies-widely-by-age-gender-race-and-frequency-of-use https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/2/27/public-opinio... Feelings on it are quite mixed, but people who hate it and boosters are both incredibly loud about it.
- intended 5mo ago
  > AI optimism is rising, but so is anxiety. > Globally, the share of respondents who say AI products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks rose from 55% in 2024 to 59% in 2025, even as the share saying these products make them nervous increased to 52%.
intended 5mo ago
It’s also the one tech that has been picked up by porn but not video games. I’m kinda surprised by that. Gaming and porn were the ones that spearheaded tech uptake.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
furyofantares 5mo ago
Folks of retirement age or nearing it are largely free to either play with it or not depending on their interest. This segment may present as largely positive if those without interest get to just opt out. For folks in the middle of their career or earlier, or just starting out, it's more of a labor vs capital thing where capital doesn't care if skills that have been invested in are devalued, and raises expectations where skills are amplified. This segment will likely present as largely negative. Younger still, high school and earlier, probably fairly free again to play with it or not depending on interest, but subject to temptation to use it to cheat, and subject to teacher influence not to.
arjie 5mo ago
Schmidt's speech to students goes: > The future does not simply arrive. It gets built in laboratories, in dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislators, and the people building it will be you and people like you. This prompts you to say: > It seems Eric Schmids of the world think they (in their 70s) have more say about the future of these students than the students themselves. That is very unlikely. This doesn't seem like an accurate read on what the Eric Schmidts of the world think.
- romaniv 5mo ago
  Here is a quote that is far more representative of his overall message: “When someone offers you a seat on the rocketship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”
Ferret7446 5mo ago
It's really quite simple. AI is threatening to take their jobs. Everyone gets defensive when their livelihood is on the line. Most technologies offer new opportunities to young adults.

by romaniv 5mo ago

ryandrake 5mo ago

My own conspiracy theory is that AI, and the increasingly authoritarian government swings, are the Boomer generation's last shot at freezing the world in time and ensuring our world is shaped to their vision long after they're all gone. The thing that generation fears the most is that we're all going to just move on from them when they're dead, and finally progress past this "1970-2020" economic/cultural stasis that we've been stuck in for basically my entire life.

amoss 5mo ago
kind of wild that you think there has been no shift in culture between 1970 and 2020
- Larrikin 5mo ago
  A lot of the cultural changes that were achieved are actively being fought against and are slowly being reversed. Seems like every few weeks there is something from the civil rights era being chipped away at.
- runarberg 5mo ago
  I grew up in the 90s in Europe. Back then Europe had strong consumer protection, pretty strong worker protection, low entry jobs still payed a bunch, cheap housing (my single parent mom was able to buy a flat while working at a gas station at the age of 23). Today’s Europe is nothing but austerity, there is no consumer protection left, they’ve split the society by having “jobs that only immigrants want” (i.e. insultingly low paying jobs), nobody can buy a flat anymore unless they’re a 10 year senior at a tech company. Today’s Europe is exactly the kind of world I always imagine the 1970s to be like. The only exception is in the 1970s Europe had a strong communist or socialist opposition which actively fought for a better world with strikes every week (or at least that is how I read European history).
barebearcountry 5mo ago
+1
mxuribe 5mo ago
I think you stated better what i was trying to babble in another comment here. :-) And you might think it is a conspiracy theory...but the sentiment i'm seeing (obviously a limited data set to only folks i engage with) seems to align so much to it...that if not fully true, *feels* quite close to it - even if not an intentional thing.

gruez 5mo ago

>and fervently pushed by people over 55. Source? I think you're conflating "pushed by CEOs" (which might lean on the older side) with "pushed by people over 55".

lenerdenator 5mo ago
CEOs are hired by boards. Boards are hired by shareholders. Most publicly-traded American companies have their shares held by pension and retirement funds. Pension and retirement funds exist to send money to people over 55.
- whatshisface 5mo ago
  I'm sure VPs are sweating bullets over the instructions they will receive during the part of the shareholder's call where mutual fund managers dial their members and hold the phones up to each other.
  - lenerdenator 5mo ago
    I know you're trying to reduce it to absurdity, but there's still pressure to make their members happy. The fund managers are under the same competitive pressure as anyone else and are incentivized to get the best possible returns for their clients. If they don't, the members leave and take their money to another fund that is better at making money.
- gruez 5mo ago
  By that definition anything that happens in politics or corporate america is "fervently pushed by people over 55", because that's the group with the most political and economic power. AI push? Boomers. Datacenter backlash? Boomers. ESG push? Boomers. ESG backlash? Boomers.
  - lenerdenator 5mo ago
    I know that there's backlash and push on each issue from every age range, but people ultimately vote with their wallets. They're sending their money to people who get them the most money regardless of what they think on an issue.

mxuribe 5mo ago

I think it might be because some folks from the older generation have a sense of entitlement...mostly because they often lived through a glorious period that en masse has been beneficial to them...They expected flying cars, etc...So, now, this time they'll get their AI servants...So, its sort of an expectation (for some from this older generation) that the world will keep giving them lots of good (well, good for them!) things in life. My sincere apologies if my comments are offensive to anyone (of any age group)...but i do agree that I'm seeing way more older people in support of the AI evolution, and many many more younger people fearing it. My age is far closer to the older generation, but lots of times, i'm feeling what i see lots of younger folks feeling: fear.

ElevenLathe 5mo ago
I think it's much less about generation than about material conditions. It's easier to convince someone that AI is going to be good for their bottom line if they are already retired, or at least have a significant chunk of savings (and therefore investments) and a job higher up the food chain/org chart than a new college grad does. For most working class people, age is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have these things, but there are plenty of older workers who are feeling the fear as well.
- mxuribe 5mo ago
  Yeah, i agree that there might be older folks also fearing AI - i'm one of them! :-) As to your point about likely being more due to material conditions rather than age, perhaps you're right....but, then again, on average I'd say the older generation tends to have better material conditions/positions, tends to have at least some savings (maybe retirement, or at least will have more solvent social security, etc.?)...than say young folks who started graduating college from around the great recession to about now? So, maybe we're both right???
  - ElevenLathe 4mo ago
    Yeah, I didn't mean to be argumentative, but I hate that issues like this are frequently framed as generational conflicts when they're really class conflicts. There are a lot of people that benefit from erasing the whole concept of class conflict from the public consciousness (though there are many many more that would benefit from the opposite!).

dyauspitr 5mo ago

This is not even close to the reality on the ground. But America’s enemies would be smacking their lips and rubbing their hands together imagining a regressive youth.

lenerdenator 5mo ago

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmidt were hired by boards, who were elected by shareholders, with the hope that they'd increase returns. The biggest shareholders in most American companies are pension and retirement funds, followed by funds that are not necessarily retirement funds but are often used by individuals to back IRAs and 401(k)s. When the executives of Schmidt's generation were hired, they were incentivized with stock options instead of cash. Their compensation was directly tied to how much money was returned to shareholders. When you maximize a return to a shareholder, you do that by minimizing the costs of the inputs to the business. One of those costs is labor. Payroll, benefits, the costs of the office space people work in, etc. GenAI offers shareholders - which can be seen as synonymous with people who are approaching retirement or who are retirees - a promise of massively reducing labor costs. In the minds of a lot of institutional investors, they could have companies where the same amount of value is created with only c-suite and executive-level employees working with teams of AI agents that, over time, will become cheaper and cheaper. What was once hundreds or thousands of employees is now a few dozen. Now, where does this leave young and middle-aged people? In a place where they have a wildly uncertain future. But that's not the retiree's problem. They want the villa on the golf course in Florida, and by the time you have real social problems resulting from a population with no hope for the future, the retirees will be dead or too old to care. Schmidt's cohort, for their part, have enough money to deal with those problems in the near to mid-term. Or, at least, they think they do. EDIT: Love getting downvoted for what is, essentially, a factual statement.

QuercusMax 5mo ago
Since when does retirement mean living off money you didn't labor for? The whole point is the opposite - you can only retire if you have enough resources/income (pension, 401K, gold bars, etc) that you can support yourself without working. In the US we have a problem that a lot of seniors can't afford to retire.

colechristensen 5mo ago

Oh don't you know? The young people don't know how to use technology any more. They've never had computers they control. The new hires and the nearly retired have the same computer skils. Locked down OS iPad kids don't know how to use computers because the manufactures and their parents wouldn't let them. The Matrix' 1999 "peak of human civilization" wasn't wrong, the world is moving to a society built by a small number of wizards owned by billionaires.

JohnFen 5mo ago

> fervently pushed by people over 55. It is? I know very few people in that age group who are excited by this stuff.

empath75 5mo ago

This is pretty wrong. There are a lot of people who _hate it_, but it is still a minority. And older people dislike it more than younger people. https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/2/27/public-opinion-on-artificial-intelligence-varies-widely-by-age-gender-race-and-frequency-of-use https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/2/27/public-opinio... Feelings on it are quite mixed, but people who hate it and boosters are both incredibly loud about it.

intended 5mo ago
> AI optimism is rising, but so is anxiety. > Globally, the share of respondents who say AI products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks rose from 55% in 2024 to 59% in 2025, even as the share saying these products make them nervous increased to 52%.

intended 5mo ago

It’s also the one tech that has been picked up by porn but not video games. I’m kinda surprised by that. Gaming and porn were the ones that spearheaded tech uptake.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

furyofantares 5mo ago

Folks of retirement age or nearing it are largely free to either play with it or not depending on their interest. This segment may present as largely positive if those without interest get to just opt out. For folks in the middle of their career or earlier, or just starting out, it's more of a labor vs capital thing where capital doesn't care if skills that have been invested in are devalued, and raises expectations where skills are amplified. This segment will likely present as largely negative. Younger still, high school and earlier, probably fairly free again to play with it or not depending on interest, but subject to temptation to use it to cheat, and subject to teacher influence not to.

arjie 5mo ago

Schmidt's speech to students goes: > The future does not simply arrive. It gets built in laboratories, in dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislators, and the people building it will be you and people like you. This prompts you to say: > It seems Eric Schmids of the world think they (in their 70s) have more say about the future of these students than the students themselves. That is very unlikely. This doesn't seem like an accurate read on what the Eric Schmidts of the world think.

romaniv 5mo ago
Here is a quote that is far more representative of his overall message: “When someone offers you a seat on the rocketship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”

Ferret7446 5mo ago

It's really quite simple. AI is threatening to take their jobs. Everyone gets defensive when their livelihood is on the line. Most technologies offer new opportunities to young adults.