Generally speaking, 3 years ago there wasn’t as much paranoia as there is now. The paranoia stems from 2 things.
1) layoffs resulting in uncertainty which in turn results in people being less civil while jockeying for position.
2) open AI being first to market with a gen AI product that stuck. It feels a lot different working at a company that feels in the lead than one trying to catch up.
The culture changed drastically between 2020 and 2024.
AI being thought of - by the Parasite Class - as an effective replacement for many employees, thereby eliminating the employment that most people depend on in order to survive, all the while it wildly hallucinates entire industries straight into the dirt.
I mean, yes, the Parasite Class will get their comeuppance for their greed and arrogance and hubris and stupidity. But not before the majority of working-class people get driven into abject poverty and destitution from job loss. It will hurt the common man _long before_ it hurts those who truly deserve the pain, and if rolled out too fast and too far, may even trigger economic or societal collapse.
And while this is quite similar to your № 1, I feel it is materially different enough to stand separately: the paranoia here being that average working-class folk cannot turn aside this diesel locomotive because they have zero control over it, and the Parasite Class that does control it being so obsessed with obscene levels of profits that they are eagerly driving everyone off of a cliff just to get to it.
1) layoffs resulting in uncertainty which in turn results in people being less civil while jockeying for position.
2) open AI being first to market with a gen AI product that stuck. It feels a lot different working at a company that feels in the lead than one trying to catch up.
The culture changed drastically between 2020 and 2024.