It doesn’t matter if the AI is fake, it’s all magic anyways

Magical thinking accompanies today's AI boom just as it accompanied earlier technologies, according to Nick Susi, Executive Director of Strategy at dotdotdash, in his Substack piece "magic, online!". Susi points to historical examples such as phones that let people talk to the dead and fairies that appeared in some of the first photographs. In a podcast interview, he and the host discuss magical thinking as a coping mechanism for uncertain times, the split between AI doomers and hypemen, and why content creators are described as illusionists.