<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">Meta’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1344461651205053" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">newest advertisement</a> 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.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“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.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“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.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That’s a nice sentiment — 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.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you are not familiar with this song, I urge you to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObjtVdsV3I" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">give it a listen</a>, <a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/davidbowie/fiveyears.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">read the lyrics</a>, and think about what it is trying to say. It seems clear to me, but I studied poetry in college, so as a control for this experiment, I asked my brother — a blockchain analyst who loves Claude Code and does not read for fun — if he could tell me what the song is about.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“I thought climate change at first, then zombie apocalypse, then an asteroid hitting the earth,” he told me. He is correct. It is a song about the human race panicking after learning they will die in a mass-extinction event in five years.</p>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="680" width="433" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?w=433" alt="" class="wp-image-3145754" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg 1179w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=95,150 95w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=191,300 191w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=768,1207 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=433,680 433w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=764,1200 764w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=814,1280 814w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=274,430 274w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=458,720 458w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=573,900 573w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=509,800 509w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=977,1536 977w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=425,668 425w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=239,375 239w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=393,617 393w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=338,531 338w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_8577.jpg?resize=32,50 32w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 433px) 100vw, 433px"><strong>Image Credits:</strong>Texts from my brother, a consenting participant in this literary experiment <p class="wp-block-paragraph">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 that is 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.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But if we look at the lines directly preceding this section:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">News had just come over<br>We had five years left to cry in<br>News guy wept and told us<br>Earth was really dying<br>Cried so much his face was wet<br>Then I knew he was not lying</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We “had five years left to cry in” and the “earth was really dying.” It’s pretty bleak.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want,” he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1344461651205053" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">wrote</a> 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.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then again, tech leaders are not known for their literary analysis skills. Meta’s Oculus used to give new hires copies of the science fiction novel “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oculus-gives-all-its-employees-ready-player-one-2016-7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">Ready Player One</a>,” 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 <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/openai-gpt-4o-chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-her-movie/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">directly cited</a> inspiration from the movie “Her,” which warns us about what can go wrong when we <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/23/chatgpt-told-them-they-were-special-their-families-say-it-led-to-tragedy/">use AI for emotional support</a>. Palantir, a company that builds AI surveillance systems for the government, is named after Palantir, a seeing stone from the “Lord of the Rings” franchise that the Dark Lord uses to spy on his enemies. Elon Musk is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/22/elon-musk-grok-imagine-historically-accurate-ai-homers-odyssey-christopher-nolan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">currently throwing a fit</a> 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 guys make a great argument for the value of studying the humanities.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale<br><br>Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus</p>— Alex Blechman (@AlexBlechman) <a rel="nofollow" href="https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2021</a></blockquote>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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. As my colleague Lucas Ropek <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/14/anthropics-newest-ad-is-creeping-people-out/">described</a> it:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The ad begins with a video of a burning house (not exactly a heartwarming start) before pivoting to a series of still images. These images include 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 (presumably) raw materials for smartphones are being dug up.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">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.”</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something <a rel="nofollow" href="https://t.co/4AVBA93Z27">https://t.co/4AVBA93Z27</a></p>— Sam Altman (@sama) <a rel="nofollow" href="https://x.com/sama/status/2076824686307271125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2026</a></blockquote>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/2076824686307271125?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">responded</a> to the Anthropic ad, “I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As these companies spar to control the public perception of AI, their efforts don’t seem to be making much progress. A recent <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/only-16-percent-of-americans-think-ai-will-have-a-positive-impact-on-society-a-new-study-shows/">Pew survey</a> 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. Better luck next time, Meta.</p>
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