Back to the Future?

AI and You. 1 week left to sign up.

In order to see the “AI Revolution” in the right perspective, we need to look backwards to a previous promise.

The Industrial Revolution promised change—and it changed everything.

It pulled societies away from handmade, human-scale living and into machine-driven production. Cities, wealth and industry exploded. So did exploitation.

The steel and oil “robber barons” of the 19th century built unimaginable fortunes through monopolies, labor abuse, and the extraction of human value. The promise was progress. The reality was long hours, low wages, crushed unions, and entire populations reshaped to serve the machine.

Today, we have a new brand of robber barons: unsavory tech bro billionaires with monopolies on AI, data, algorithms, crypto, platforms, and surveillance.

Their companies promise convenience, speed, efficiency and optimization. But you—my creative brothers and sisters—know in your heart of hearts these tools were NOT made for us. AI was not designed with human creativity in mind, it is infrastructure for surveillance, behavioral prediction, advertising, and warfare. In their own words they want to extract all human knowledge and creativity and sell it back to us.

These people are greedy— not creative. Like their predecessors, they are hoarders and exploiters. So, while we’re making goofy Lego videos and asking ChatGPT for pie recipes, these systems are quietly learning us, tracking us and taking from us.

Every revolution carries with it the promise of possibility. The point is not whether AI is “good” or “bad”—the question is intention. Does AI amplify your voice or erase it? Does it make you creatively more courageous or just average? And what happens when we no longer value the art of human voice, song and expression?

Henry David Thoreau warned us back in 1854: “Men have become the tools of their tools” and we are in that same spot today.

We didn’t ask for this future and it is not being built to protect the creative spirit, but it’s here. It’s up to us to decide whether we blindly hand ourselves over to it… or fight to remain human inside it.

There’s one week left to decide what side of this future you want to stand on. Join us for “AI and You.”