Meta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinction
Meta — “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.” If you are not familiar with this song, I urge you to give it a listen, read the lyrics, 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. “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. But if we look at the lines directly preceding this section: News had just come overWe had five years left to cry inNews guy wept and told usEarth was really dyingCried so much his face was wetThen I knew he was not lying We “had five years left to cry in” and the “earth was really dying.” It’s pretty bleak. 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.
