Meta's New AI Optimism Ad Soundtracks Human Progress with a Song About Extinction

Meta's newest advertisement begins with a black-and-white shot of an eye, showing us what someone sees as they read countless panicked headlines about how AI is going to take our jobs, isolate us, and spark a global crisis.

"Some people will have you believe AI is going to make us feel less connected. That it's going to leave us behind," a voiceover says. "We couldn't disagree more."

Suddenly, the video shifts to color and shows a cycle of different people opening their eyes and smiling. Then, we see a couple dancing on a rooftop, pointing at a rainbow; a group of teens swimming in a lake; a child frolicking in a field; friends embracing after time apart.

"Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want. But we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the voiceover says. "The future is for everyone."

It's a nice sentiment and pretty convenient for a company betting hundreds of billions of dollars that AI will revolutionize humanity. But the strangest part of the advertisement is not that we're watching these happy moments play out via Instagram posts. It's that the soundtrack to the ad is the David Bowie song "Five Years."

A Bleak Soundtrack for an Optimistic Message

If you're not familiar with Bowie's music, this track might sound happy and inspiring, matching the ad's upbeat tone. The part of the song used for the advertisement was probably chosen because it uses the word "people" over and over again, and without the context of the song, it's not clear what it's about.

But the lyrics directly preceding the section featured in the ad tell a very different story:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew he was not lying

The song is about the human race panicking after learning they will die in a mass-extinction event in five years. It is, by any measure, a bleak and apocalyptic narrative.

It is not reassuring to convince people that AI is going to make the world better while playing a song about the end of the world, and yet, this contradictory musical choice seems to have sailed right past everyone at Meta, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want," he wrote alongside the video. "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone."

A Pattern of Tech Executives Missing the Point

Meta's ad blunder is part of a broader pattern of tech leaders failing to recognize the dystopian undertones of their cultural references. The industry has a long history of embracing cautionary tales without understanding their warnings.

Meta's Oculus used to give new hires copies of the science fiction novel "Ready Player One," which is set in a dystopia in which a tech company making virtual reality products becomes overly powerful and evil. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has directly cited inspiration from the movie "Her," which warns us about what can go wrong when we use AI for emotional support. Palantir, a company that builds AI surveillance systems for the government, is named after a seeing stone from the "Lord of the Rings" franchise that the Dark Lord uses to spy on his enemies.

Elon Musk is currently throwing a fit about the "accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster adaptation of "The Odyssey," a story with such realistic elements as sea monsters, magic, and divine intervention. These figures make a great argument for the value of studying the humanities.

A Race for the Creepiest Ad

Meta isn't alone in its recent promotional foibles. Instead of racing to build AGI, the top AI companies seem to be fighting over who can make the creepiest advertisement. A few weeks ago, Anthropic released an eerie video of its own.

The ad begins with a video of a burning house before pivoting to a series of still images: a crowd of people being surveilled by facial recognition, a homeless person sleeping on the street, rows upon rows of tombstones in a cemetery, and what appears to be a group of laborers toiling in a mine where raw materials for smartphones are being dug up. Meanwhile, a voice-over track features different people asking questions like "Can AI be trusted?" and "Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?"

Anthropic is trying to convince us that it understands the risks AI poses to society, and therefore, this is the company that people can trust to develop AI responsibly. The message it actually conveys feels closer to the mood of Bowie's "Five Years."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the Anthropic ad, writing on social media, "I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something."

Public Skepticism Persists

As these companies spar to control the public perception of AI, their efforts don't seem to be making much progress. A recent Pew survey found that only 16% of Americans think that AI's impact on society over the next 20 years will be positive, and 40% believe it will have a negative impact.

Meta's use of "Five Years" in its AI optimism ad is a textbook example of how tech companies often misunderstand the cultural artifacts they draw upon. Whether through ignorance or willful misreading, these companies consistently fail to recognize that the stories they reference are often warnings, not endorsements.

For a company that claims to be "betting on people," Meta might want to start by paying closer attention to what those people are actually saying and singing about the future.