The Mythical AI Bear

This week, Jacob and Igor dissect the "mythical AI bear," the strawman version of AI criticism that gets thrown around in tech discourse. Working through a viral blog post that typifies the genre, they examine how legitimate concerns about code quality, labor displacement, intellectual property, and the erosion of craft get flattened into caricature. Plus: Sam Altman writes ten paragraphs about how unbothered he is by an ad.

Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction

(00:30) - Altman's Super Bowl Meltdown

(03:11) - What is "The Bear"?

(06:41) - But You Have No Idea What The Code Is

(15:44) - But The Craft, But The Mediocrity, But It'll Never Be AGI

(24:43) - But They Take Our Jobs & But The Plagiarism

(31:21) - Stochastic Parrots & Mythical Bears

(42:34) - Outro

Critical Links

Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm.Big Think article - The rise of AI denialismFly.io blogpost - My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nutsantirez blogpost - Don't fall into the anti-AI hypeEmily Bender blogpost - Resistance Isn't DenialismCory Doctorow blogpost - Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradoxWashington Post article - The AI boom is so huge it's causing shortages everywhere elseBusiness Insider article - Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham says AI is 'obviously a bubble'Ipsos survey - Google / Ipsos Multi-Country AI Survey 2026Understanding AI Substack post - AI skeptics and AI boosters are both wrong