After the arrival of ChatGPT, and subsequent AI technologies, I noticed an enormous shift in the conversation online. Influencers and tech leaders gushed at the possibilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

People spoke of jobs being displaced and AI revolutionizing medicine, extending our lifespans, and helping us explore space. There was an extreme optimism that was refreshing but also mildly confusing. Can one new technology really do all of these things? And why are these stories about AI so addicting?

The term foomscrolling is an homage to doomscrolling, where one gets caught in an algorithm fueled loop of increasingly dire stories about the state of the world, which often leads to negative consequences for one’s mental health.

A foom is considered a rapid advance in artificial intelligence’s abilities, becoming extremely powerful on its own. Foomscrolling is the indulgence of stories on a prominent new technology. But unlike doomscrolling, there’s an embedded optimism and excitement to this consumption.

Foomscrolling tends to emerge with technologies where the benefits are eminently recognizable, as they surely are with ChatGPT. Foomscrolling also happens when there’s an open-endedness to the possible benefits of this technology, which fuels speculation and excitement.

But this isn’t to say foomscrolling doesn’t lead to anxiety as well. ChatGPT and language learning models in particular, have invoked job anxiety with a number of my friends.

I was recently on vacation with a friend who works for META, and we discussed how safe we felt our jobs were. Though slightly concerned, I’m admittedly more skeptical on the prospects of being displaced by AI — mostly because I’ve seen how much readers loathe AI writing, and because I know places like Medium care enough to invest in human voices.

My friend was much more concerned on the subject, betting that things will change for us both by 2035. He spoke as someone working within a company that is spending billions on AI, which was mildly concerning, as I wondered if he knew something the rest of us don’t.

The sourcing issue with foomscrolling

Technologists often believe technology is the solution to many of our woes. Out on the edges, this belief system sometimes leads to wonky and wildly overpriced products, like Juicero, the overengineered $600 juicer that was mediocre at actually juicing — yet still drew in hundreds of millions in Silicon Valley funding.

Pop culture often takes this a step further, with a sort of drunken techno-optimism, leading to shows like Lost in Space, and movies like 2001 Space Odyssey, which were both laughably inaccurate about the advanced state of society in the now-passed future.

This isn’t to say that AI is bound to disappoint and deliver little value. But it’s worth remembering how many technological predictions have fizzled in the past.

The hype is exciting and easy to indulge. The challenge is that many distributors of this content aren’t actual experts. Many AI influencers were promoting cryptocurrencies only weeks before they jumped on the ChatGPT train. In the unending quest for distribution, they push increasingly huge claims and clickbaity posts about the achievements of AI.

The shift isn’t new

Last year, I was scrolling Twitter, seeing the gleeful hysteria around LK-99, a superconductor that was a huge leap forward, which would ostensibly elevate quantum computing and nuclear fusion to new heights, and enable levitating machines. This was informed by a wildly viral video of the semiconductor levitating a small rock via the Meissner effect (where a magnetic field is released as the chip transitions to its superconductor state). I too was in awe, watching a tiny rock hover without rotating or spinning in any way. It was visceral visual evidence of a new technology.

Conversely, and as a professional writer, everything I’ve seen with AI content generators has been interesting, but far from compelling. ChatGPT tends to produce obvious fluffy content, which I easily spot when I’m taking submissions at my publication.

Perhaps AI is in for what LK-99 went through: deflationary realism. This is the moment people realize the thing they placed so much hope on to launch us into the future, is just another “thing”. A thing that takes orders from humans. A thing that milks consumers for more private data and hard earned dollars. With LK-99, many realized that it was simply a ferromagnet, rather than a world changing innovation.

The thing to remember

New technologies are exciting, and watching their developments can be terrifying and invigorating all at once. I would caution you to seat your expectations, and resist falling for the hype until proper evidence as been presented.

Foomscrolling can be quite addictive and counter-productive. And, full disclosure, I’m a huge offender on this front and have been for far longer than the term’s existence.

I was looking through my old saved links on Facebook, and I lost count of how many exciting technologies I’d saved there that I’d completely forgot ever existed. I have countless articles saved about scientists being able to reverse aging in rat after rat. Yet no real treatment has arrived yet.

Back in 2010, it felt like we were only a year or two from having self-driving cars. I worked at a trucking company at the time and it was all the conversation. And yet, each year, it seemed pushed back, like this mirage that stayed equidistant as you moved towards it like a thirsty consumer with an outheld wallet. Yes, I know we’ll one day have self-driving cars. But worth mentioning: it’s now 2024, and it still feels like self-driving cars are only a few years away.

I’ve seen so many major headlines about the latest breakthroughs, only to never hear about that one thing again, as it faded into obscurity against the rain of shinier new objects.

One should also remember that much of this hype around new technologies is also what drives funding for that service. There’s an intrinsic interest for companies to drum up media attention. AI startups pulled in an eye watering $50 billion in funding in 2023 alone, with those numbers expected to climb even higher in 2024. It should come as no surprise that founders, like Sam Altman, are so quick to do interviews with the press and appear on podcasts, which then leads to a carpet bombing of AI articles.

There’s an underlying and familiar hunger in people’s interest to binge stories on breakthroughs. We are a restless species by nature, and always on a quest for contentment in the face of so many insecurities, challenges, and uncertainties about the future. Technology is an easy thing to grasp for.

One could imagine the foomscrolling that the printing press, or the first telescope, might have generated in an alternate reality — and that scrolling would have been well justified. But the reality is that it often takes much longer than one expects for new technologies to deliver their full benefits (it took more than 300 years for the printing press to evolve and catch on across the globe).

Yes, AI is here to stay and ChatGPT is a legitimate breakthrough in an ocean of false starts. It’s entirely possible it will shake up industries in the near future and displace many jobs, including my own.

But I’ll refrain from tracking every minor step in that journey. I suspect many of you are like me, in that you have plenty of other things you could be working on — before the alleged AI takeover begins.