Tech made us fat, jobless, and miserable

There’s no need to blame it on genetics anymore. If you’re fat, you can now say it’s because of tech. You can also blame tech for pushing you out of the job market. Or for eroding democracy. As long as we have scapegoats, we'll manage to live even the shittiest lives, as anger seems to be one of the best coping mechanisms.

Being fat or slim shouldn't even matter anymore. Online, it seems the conversation is shifting towards the advocacy of strong and healthy bodies. But when you talk to actual people, you still hear how they are trying to lose weight, not for the sake of being strong or healthy, but slim.

Online predators looking for a quick buck know this, and prey on human weaknesses. One outrageous ad targeting women promises weight loss while eating kebabs, pizzas, and other junk food. All that is important, they say, is that you stay in a calorie deficit.

When that doesn't work, you'll be able to blame the scammer "dietist." Easy.

If you're feeling guilty, you can also simply blame it on your convenient and nice life. A new study from the University of Bonn discovered a link between obesity and so-called super apps (basically, all delivery services). Who could have thought that ordering food instead of cooking or at least getting off the couch to go to a restaurant would result in a few extra pounds?

It sounds self-explanatory, but maybe it's a good reminder to be more mindful of the food we consume and how we do it. Are we hungry or just bored most of the time? Those apps indeed made our lives easier, and we have more free time on our hands. Do you have any ideas about what to do with that time?

Aha, why not just scroll through social media for hours on end? Even people who don't see any problem with spending their time like that recently started complaining about AI overtaking their feed. Social media isn't that social anymore as algorithms and AI control what you see. Some even argue this development might hurt democracy.

Yuval Noah Harari, about whom I have mixed feelings due to his simplification and dramatization of issues, might have gotten this right. If democracy is a conversation and many of our conversations are online these days, “computers could make it extremely difficult for large numbers of humans to conduct a meaningful public conversation.”

"First, it is pointless for us to waste time trying to change the opinions of a propaganda bot, which is just not open to persuasion. Second, the more we talk with the computer, the more we disclose about ourselves, making it easier for the bot to hone its arguments and sway our views."

Yuval Noah Harari

Now we sit fat at home and scream into a void as the algorithm silences us. What else? Jobs.

According to Aalto University in Finland, the AI adoption failure rate stands at 80%, partly due to employee-saboteurs who simply distrust AI and want to see it fail.

As long as companies can't rely on AI, our jobs are somewhat safe. But only somewhat. With DeepSeek, the LLM made in China, overtaking the American ChatGPT on Apple's App Store and sending shock waves through the stock market, we shouldn't expect AI development and investments to slow down in the near future.

Would you sabotage an AI model deployment in your company to keep your job? Or is there another way for you to stay afloat?