The billionaire tech elite faces mounting scrutiny over AI spending

Bluesky's technology community, buzzing with skepticism and critique, is sharpening its focus on the uneasy alliances between capital, innovation, and power. The daily pulse reveals a collective reckoning: not just with the promises of new tech, but with the motives and excesses of those who wield it. These conversations are less about gadgets and more about the heavy price of digital progress—and who's paying it.

The Billionaire Tech Reckoning

Discussions around technology's titans have taken a darkly satirical turn. The crescendo of criticism is evident in the way users dissect the behavior of figures like Musk and Zuckerberg, as seen in a post denouncing the billionaire class's self-preservation instincts, where bunkers and doomsday prepping replace any semblance of public good. This narrative is echoed and mocked in a TechCrunch post about an event so tone-deaf it's debated whether it's a joke or not—a sign of just how far removed these elites are from everyday realities.

"Proof, if it were needed, that wealth is no measure of intelligence."- @petersealy.bsky.social (2 points)

The sense of disconnect is compounded by stories of extravagant capital allocation. Big Tech's $660 billion AI spending spree is met with market skepticism, investors wary that hype is outpacing returns. Meanwhile, it's argued that without this massive hyperscaler spending, the US economy itself might contract—a dependency that feels less like progress and more like a dangerous addiction to tech's endless escalation.

"The amount of capex is insane and makes me sad because it is game changing money that a sane species would allocate towards poverty, education and medicine."- @harveyfliester.bsky.social (2 points)

Illusions of Progress: Quantum, AI, and Surveillance Culture

Bluesky users are increasingly questioning whether so-called breakthroughs are more illusion than substance. The debate over quantum computing's reality exposes a broader impatience with vaporware culture—grandiose claims masking underwhelming results. The AI conversation is similarly fraught, with Microsoft's Copilot agents invading OneDrive and users voicing concerns that trust in such systems is dangerously misplaced. Meanwhile, the emotional attachment to AI is met with derision, as one user's anthropomorphizing of code sparks incredulity in a debate over LLMs' “presence.”

"Delusion."- @wordsandchaos.bsky.social (2 points)

Parallel to the AI hype, the specter of surveillance and social manipulation looms large. The exposure of mobility startups pitching to the notorious Jeffrey Epstein and warnings from a senator to the CIA about secret government programs keep suspicion simmering. And the European Commission's accusation that TikTok is designed to be addictive only underlines the mood: platforms and technologies are not just failing to liberate users, they are engineering new dependencies.

Journalistic duty means questioning all popular consensus. - Alex Prescott