Spend five minutes with a tween or teen and you’ll probably hear them say something along the lines of “that’s so AI.”
What they *really* mean is that something looks fake, that someone is being fake, or that someone is acting robotic, i.e. showing little emotion.
Gen Z’s AI angst is manifesting in their lingo.
This comes as the majority of adults under 30 report feeling more concerned than excited about AI — for the first time since Pew Research started tracking that sentiment.
One viral example of the latest vernacular trend was over the summer, when Love Island fans nicknamed the show’s Corbin ‘CorbinGPT’ because of his machine-like mannerisms.
But it’s everywhere.
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Just a couple of weeks ago, we declared that the counterculture is human as anything real, tangible, and decided by an actual person instead of a robot (or an algorithm) is trending with Gen Z.
It’s not that young people today are anti-progress or even anti-AI. They’re using it every day. It’s just that as AI becomes more and more ubiquitous in their everyday lives, they’re increasingly sensitive to and skeptical of anything that feels fake, produced, or obviously artificial.
Keeping Up
This week, The Up and Up’s ambassadors went on a mission to see what comes to mind when people their age think of AI.
As Allison, who’s 18 and from Illinois put it, she has “mixed feelings, mixed emotions.”
I think that’s how most people feel.
Here’s what we heard.
On My Radar
Retail brand Pacsun released a youth trend report with survey insights from young Americans ages 11-24 and it’s chock-full of details about Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s priorities. Three dynamics stood out to me most:
Asked their life goals by age 35, having a stable job is the top ambition, while meeting a life partner, getting married, and having kids ranked last.
Young women’s hobbies are centered on art, storytelling, and social media, while young men are more into gaming.
AI is making it harder for young people to plan for the future. The survey asked respondents about their “careers of interest” and — even if by a small margin — across every single career (including becoming an influencer, artist, skilled trades or hands-on worker, tech professional, and entrepreneur or startup founder), respondents were less likely than last year to say they are interested in the job listed. The only reply that saw more responses than last year was “not sure yet/still figuring it out.”
Noteworthy Reads
The ‘unprofessional’ item Gen Z brings to interviews could be costing them jobs, Andrea Palladino for The New York Post
The rising price tag of romance, Avery Lotz for Axios
‘Don’t spend $20 on an acai bowl’: gen Z are shunning private equity’s restaurant takeover, Alaina Demopoulus for The Guardian
College Is Coming Apart, Ian Bogost for The Atlantic
This Has been building for a while, too. From 2023:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/ai-as-insult-chatgpt-jokes/674232/?gift=b54mkSPHTWRTjztnTC7tWXmLXOFuNMfsqgD5ceZWmfo&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share