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AI Commercials Highlight Class War at Heart of Imitative AI Push [1]

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Date: 2025-02-11

You’ve seen the ads if you have been anywhere near a TV.

Mathew McConaughey in all his Mathew McConaughey-ness in various situations that AI would supposedly save him from. In one, he sits outdoors at a restaurant in the pouring rain as a waiter dashes out to bring him food that he apparently did not order. An AI agent, a class of imitative AI tool, supposedly would save him from drowning while eating. In another, he stands in a store, by a window, where a salesperson dresses him in clothes that he says he doesn’t like but actually does seem to admire while a friend walks by and laughs at him. AI would save him from that embarrassment … somehow. And finally, he runs through an airport afraid he’s going to miss his plane because and AI agent didn’t show him the fastest route through the airport or tell him that his flight had changed. They are all silly, if well done, and they all have one theme in common: employees are morons.

No one at a restaurant would seat someone outside in the pouring rain and if the food is not to his liking, then why the hell did he order it? The salesperson may or may not be giving him the right advice, but she is certainly getting him to explore new things instead of buying the same old same old, potentially opening up new sales avenues. Any airline employee could have helped him get to his gate, and the airline apps and airports already tell you when a flight has changed gates. None of the ads really contain examples of things that employees could do or do better than imitative AI. All of them, especially the restaurant one, depend upon employees being beyond complete and utter morons. Most of the employee behavior in the ads rises to the level of sabotage, if we are being frank.

And that is why they are in rotation. Many CEOs and business owners hate their employees and want to believe they bring no value to table.

Silicon Valley employers, in particular, hate the idea that employees bring value. They hate that they need employees to run their business, because employees demand that the companies live up to basic moral values. They hate that employees have families and demand a work life balance. They don’t want some creative jobs to exist. They want to believe that all the value in their companies comes from their unique genius, and not the people they employ or subsidies they get from the government. It doesn’t matter that nothing in the ads demonstrates how imitative AI is better than employees, because the message to a certain kind of boss is “You are right. Your employees are worthless, and you can replace them!”

The fact that the ads argue against that view doesn’t really matter. The restaurant, if it had listened to its employees like the one across the street did, would have had a covered space to eat outside or would have put Mathew inside. The airport ad demonstrates that the airline apps that tell you when a gate changes — no imitative IA necessary — are helpful and that airports they need employees to help people find their way around. The clothing store ad in particular highlights this truth. It is like the creative people needed to put such an ad together staged a tiny little thirty second rebellion.

In that ad, McConaughey is being shown clothes that his friend outside (played by Woody Harrelson being deliciously malevolent, as he is in all the ads) laughs at. But McConaughey, despite the words of the ad, seems to actually be liking some of the clothes that the salesperson brings. Mathew may say that an AI agent would give hm only thig she likes, but he is demonstrating that the salesperson is good enough and creative enough to show him things he does not yet know he likes, opening him up to classes of purchases he would never otherwise make. An AI agent, given how terrible and repetitive we know existing recommendation engines to be, likely could not do that. But an AI agent, then, would not threaten the notion that employees do not bring value or deserve to share in the success of the business.

Imitative AI is not a solid business. No company profits from it today. The fact that Google and Microsoft do not break down how much they make form AI is a pretty big tell. As is the fact that they force people to use, putting it in their tools whether they want it or not, shows that they cannot sell the tools on their own merits. Likely because they just do not work very well. And this money loss comes before the companies have to raise their prices to actually cover their costs. No, they don’t really have a business model for these tools, at least not one that can pay for their creation and running.

But they do have a class war case.

Imitative AI is not good at any job, not really, but they can look good enough, superficially at first, for people who hate workers. And so many people hate their workers. That, more than anything else, is what imitative AI is selling right now. Imagine a world with no workers, it says. Imagine that your workers are all idiots and parasite upon your wonderful genius, wouldn’t it be wonderful to never have to deal with their demands for fair pay, decent treatment, and honoring basic moral precepts? Imitative AI can give you that world. And hey, if it’s not as good as your normal employees, at least it never talks back. And you are a business genius — surely you can make this work? It’s not as if your employees are doing anything hard. I mean, look at them — they seat diners in the rain. Surely AI is better than that.

Imitative AI is not cheap, it is not profitable, it generally doesn’t do a good job at anything reliably enough to be left to its own devices. In most business terms, continually pushing for its adoption would be irrational. But the monied class wants to believe it can be used to punish employees so badly that such a desire opens up the only real sales path available to these companies.

There is no sales pitch but the class war sales pitch. And the imitative AI companies intend to lean into that class war sales pitch with all their might. It is likely the only chance they have.

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