Artificial Intelligence 4 min read 3h ago

Tech's AI Disruption: Why Curiosity Beats Anger

A tech company owner argues that anxiety is a more honest response to AI disruption than anger, which he says risks targeting the wrong people in a period of near-universal
While acknowledging a widespread belief that AI productivity gains will benefit companies over workers, the author notes that many senior leaders privately share significant
AI gains are described as appearing not only in corporate profits but in a surge of personal side projects, suggesting that the direction of value creation remains genuinely

As artificial intelligence reshapes the technology industry at speed, a debate has emerged about the most honest emotional response to that upheaval — and one tech company owner argues that anger, however understandable, is the least productive of the available options.

Anger versus anxiety

The argument begins with a distinction. Anger, the author contends, requires a target: it converts a loss of control into a narrative with a villain. Anxiety, by contrast, acknowledges uncertainty without demanding someone to blame. In the current climate, anxiety is described as not only reasonable but rational. Questions about what software development will look like in the coming years, whether hard-won skills will retain their value, and what working environment younger people will inherit are presented as genuinely open — and appropriately unsettling.

A question posed in a Lobsters thread — "How can you work in tech right now and not be angry?" — is taken seriously rather than dismissed. The author acknowledges the emotional logic behind it. A widely held narrative holds that if AI delivers productivity gains, those gains will flow to companies rather than to the workers who generate them. A named individual at Meta is cited, without further detail, as someone who has publicly expressed that preference.

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Leaders are less certain than they appear

Yet the picture of leadership is complicated. Many people in senior positions, the author observes, privately express significant doubt about AI: about the rising share of costs being directed to large AI laboratories, about data sovereignty, and about whether major AI providers will ultimately compete with their business partners rather than serve them. Those same leaders, the author argues, often project public confidence as a strategic act — attempting to steady their organisations and improve their odds while the ground moves beneath them.

The author is candid about experiencing that contradiction personally. As both an enthusiast and a company owner, the sense of excitement coexists with genuine uncertainty about where competitive advantage will settle once the current disruption resolves. Ideas previously considered fundamental to the craft are described as changing rapidly.

Gains appearing outside the corporate ledger

One observation offered in partial answer to the anger question is that AI's benefits are not flowing exclusively to shareholders. A significant portion of the gains, the author argues, are materialising not as corporate profit but as a proliferation of personal side projects — work done outside company time. This, it is suggested, indicates that neither owners nor founders have reliable foresight about where value will ultimately accumulate. Working effectively alongside AI, as others have noted, demands a kind of leadership that goes well beyond technical fluency.

Warranted concern, misdirected blame

The author stops well short of dismissing legitimate grievance. When the disruption resolves, some will profit and many will not. Concerns about the societal impact of AI, its environmental cost, and Europe's growing technological dependence on other regions are raised as serious and insufficiently examined. The industry, the author suggests, risks ignoring consequences of significant scale.

The core counsel, however, is to resist the emotional shortcut. Directing anger at the nearest available target — an engineering manager, a leadership team — risks misidentifying the source of the problem when disorientation is, by the author's account, near-universal. Understanding what is genuinely changing, and building the skills to engage with it, may offer more traction than certainty about who to blame. The case made here is for curiosity as a precondition: learning enough about what is changing to earn the right, eventually, to decide where resistance is genuinely warranted.

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