Matthew Berman, an AI-focused YouTuber who founded the Forward Future AI newsletter, notes that pessimistic coverage of artificial intelligence receives higher average views and engagement than positive reporting

AVAlex Volkov@altryne

Why is new grok algo mostly showing me negative and depressive posts? Folks don't forget that X not real life, switch to followers or lists, it feels really striking since the last update, every second thing on the TL is a dunk, a negative take, a takedown or a beef. Why tho

MBMatthew Berman@MatthewBerman

fear and anger are winning. pessimistic and negative media (including my own videos) on average get higher views and engagement than positive ones. think about it. if a majority of the US has a negative perception of AI, being an optimist literally limits your reach to the minority at a time when AI optimism is desperately needed. it's a vicious cycle and it didn't start with current media. social media amplified fear and anger because it optimized for time on site. same reason 24 hour news networks focus on fear and anger - to keep you watching to serve you more ads. politicians are also incentivized to amplify fear and anger. they need a boogie man to point at so they can be the white knight with the solution and get elected, and AI fits the role perfectly - rich techies, threat of job loss, significant change on the horizon. both sides are guilty - on the left, AI is ruining the environment and concentrating wealth with a handful of billionaires. on the right, it's the tool of mass censorship by a political class that hates them. and the AI industry isn't doing itself any favors. nobody outside of our industry wants to hear about AGI - it's viewed as an amorphous and scary-sounding future state that a handful of tech overlords concocted and are driving towards whether we want it or not. all of this negativity towards AI manifests in harmful ways, including literal harm towards the faces of AI (Sam Altman's house got attacked twice in two days), broad distrust of the technology, politicians actively trying to stop the most important technology of our lifetimes. to be clear, criticism of AI is important. we should not be naively optimistic about AI and the companies building it. but dunking on AI is a meme now, a bad place to be. I know it sounds kind of corny, but the solution is highlighting real people using AI rather than token-maxxing and permanent underclass memes. we also need to show builders (founders, researchers, etc) as the new rock stars. these are real people dedicating their lives to building value for society. the founder story of perseverance and rags to riches particularly resonates in america. there's still time time change the narrative.