My hottest tech take is that what big tech has actually succeeded at more than anything is a complete outsourcing of any and all responsibility for their actions.
They've succeeded at building wildly irresponsible tools that get used in wildly irresponsible ways and nobody in power seems to care.
Right now, the proliferation of "AI" threatens to slow down the energy transition. Energy demand from data centers is growing faster than anything else, despite the progress we've made making data processing, transmission, and storage more energy-efficient.
That's fucked up.
If there's a new religion, it's the one that techbros have: more computing will solve all our problems.
The faith that throwing more effort at cracking the AI nut will unlock new potential for humanity or whatever blinds the believers from considering any problems they might create along the way.
An addendum to this thread:
I have seen this attitude persist in the open-source world, too.
The finer realities are different, of course, but an author's imagination of how someone /should/ use their idea often blinds them to the real problems that show up later.
"That's misuse, not my problem"
Different, but many years ago I suggested some changes to the interface of a program that was as useful as cumbersome to use to the point of being almost unusable. The authors response went something like "the visual interface is for your convenience, not mine, I use the command line version".
