Technology

“How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?” he added. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

This is very telling. Jensen is pulling this "6 months" figure completely out of his ass here, but the reason why he wants that number to be true is because it moves the goalposts. If AI hasn't actually, really, been here for even a single fiscal year then it explains away everything. Suddenly the fact that it's made zero impact on productivity, that no one is making any profit on it, all of that becomes justified. "It's still early." You'll recall that this was the narrative around crypto too. Every time anyone criticized anything about it a herd of sheep would bleat "It's still early" even over a decade into the technology existing.

Investors are starting to ask serious questions about when these tools are actually going to start delivering greater productivity to their companies. Managers are starting to get the screws put to them about why their budgets are ballooning to cover subscription and token costs with nothing to show for it. Jensen can't have that, because AI is the whole reason why his company is on top of the world, so he's trying to reset the clock.

For the record, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that AI has ever become productive and useful, but that wouldn't fit Jensen's narrative either. So instead he has to invent a world where AI is totally productive, 100% useful, just trust me! When did that happen? Oh, just now. That's, um... Yeah, that's why you didn't notice. It just happened, right before you walked in.