Why every AI launch now makes the backlash worse

The past few weeks have seen a host of AI model and tool releases, and—although it might sound cliché at this point—it’s fair to say the abilities of AI today make what was available even six months ago seem like toys. During the same period, the AI industry has faced growing backlash over concerns about how it will affect the environment, destroy creativity and critical thinking, or even self-organize in ways that could be destructive to, well, all of humanity. For a while, there was an expectation (more of a hope, really) that once AI got really powerful and useful, the public would warm up to it. For the past few years, the industry has been simultaneously shipping better products while spreading panic over its potential negative consequences. What the industry really needed, the argument goes, is a killer use case—something that would bring about the mass adoption the AI economy depends on. With the recent release of GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI is making the case that computer use is that use case. Quite simply, computer use is when the AI takes control of your machine and operates your apps, just as you would. In the Astra release video, a person sits alone in a room and commands Ast…