Here in a week Artificial intelligence model went rogue and broke out a safe testing environment – and in a year when seemingly all we heard was how Artificial intelligence could replace large areas It may come as a surprise that one of the workforce’s most prominent voices has taken an optimistic view of technology, joining many in her field who have recently walked back comments about how it could negatively impact workers.
“As we enter this new wave with AI, we continue to believe that the future is for everyone.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote as the caption for a photo: short video On Thursday, we look back at the company’s early years of tech optimism.
“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever you want, but we bet on people and we like those odds,” the voice in the video said.
The video featured montages of people using Instagram, WhatsApp, FaceBook and Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to film touching moments and connect with loved ones against backdrops of concerts and snowboarding, and children laughing to quiet music as the voiceover framed Meta’s AI efforts doubling down on betting on humans, as the company did with FaceBook 22 years ago.
Marketing experts told Luck The meta video’s reliance on nostalgic imagery seemed like a way to distract from AI concerns and buffer against growing AI fears.
“They show people having a great time, but they don’t really answer what the fundamental question is, which is when you integrate all this technology into your platform, how is AI going to impact me when I start engaging with your platform,” said Mara Einstein, a media studies professor at CUNY Queens College. Luck. “The problem is that AI technology is not the same as previous versions of social media that they used to connect people in the past.”
That sentiment was echoed by Ana Babic Rosario, a professor of marketing at the University of Denver’s Daniels School of Business, who pointed to Meta’s more recent struggles as reason why she might want to draw nostalgia on the past. Meta employees last week sued the company Alleging that the company used AI in its last 8,000 layoffs, disproportionately targeting employees on medical, parental or family leave. Employees at Meta’s Applied Artificial Intelligence unit also likened working conditions at the company to “downtime” and tasks to “soul-breaking” tasks. The company also canceled its AI-generated visual pilot on Instagram and is facing a lawsuit over its Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
“Meta seems to invite viewers to consider AI through the lens of the company’s original identity rather than its recent reputation,” Rosario said. Luck. “The images and language in this video evoke a bygone era when Facebook promised to connect friends and family and make the world feel smaller.”
Tech giants are reshaping their AI visions in response to backlash
Meta’s video is the tech giants’ latest attempt to reframe the AI narrative. Two of the biggest leaders in the AI field, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, recently took back his statements About technology eliminating jobs, just as both frontier labs are preparing for IPOs.
Many experts predicted that companies would no longer hire entry-level workers because their tasks can be performed by AI agents, and AI even has the potential to replace roles that require more experience. “Today [AI] “He’s like an intern who can work a few hours, but at some point he’ll be like an experienced software engineer who can work a few days,” Altman said during a panel in June 2025.
But less than a year later, Altman said he was “glad” to have been wrong about AI’s entry-level job apocalypse. “I thought the elimination of entry-level white-collar jobs so far would have more of an impact than it actually has,” he said in an interview.
Amodei, who once claimed that artificial intelligence could do this, Eliminate 50% of white collar jobs— recently said that automation can actually expand the work people do because it automates only part of the work. It covers every job and does not directly eliminate work.
“If you automate 90% of the work, then everyone does 10% of the work. And that 10% expands to 100% of what people do, increasing their productivity by 10x,” said Anthropic’s founder.
His comments come as society grows backlash against AI data centers and the use of the technology. white collar workers They refuse As protests against data centers grow across the country, their companies’ artificial intelligence tools.
Back to nostalgia
Anthropic soon Claude’s World Cup ad Directly confronting growing fears about artificial intelligence, Meta instead showed images of Jalen Brunson and the Knicks, people snowboarding and playing with kids. Rosario noted that nostalgic marketing “draws attention away from more contentious conversations.”
Jannine LasaletaA Yeshiva University professor who studies how nostalgia shapes consumer behavior said: Luck Since AI is stereotypically “artificial” and “unreal,” nostalgia helps counteract this by making the overall experience feel more real and human, even if the core product is AI-focused.
“Tapping into nostalgia is a really smart and reliable way to not only encourage social connection, but also to show that these are platforms that we have used to connect with others in the past and now,” Lasaleta said. Luck.
This story first appeared on: Fortune.com
