The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

Pessimism aversion is an emotional response, an ingrained gut refusal to accept the possibility of seriously destabilizing outcomes. It tends to come from those in secure and powerful positions with entrenched worldviews, people who can superficially cope with change but struggle to accept any real challenge to their world order. Many of those whom I accuse of being stuck in the pessimism-aversion trap fully embrace the growing critiques of technology. But they nod along without actually taking any action. We’ll manage, we always do, they say. Spend time in tech or policy circles, and it quickly becomes obvious that head-in-the-sand is the default ideology. To believe and act otherwise risks becoming so crippled by fear of and outrage against enormous, inexorable forces that everything feels futile. So the strange intellectual half-world of pessimism aversion rumbles on.

The Nodding Class: How Pessimism Aversion Blocks Action