With lots of competition, the argument that "nobody asked for AI" is probably the dumbest idea being talked about right now.
Doctorow talks about it a lot, as if some douchey rich guys made up this giant lie and are selling it to everyone who doesn't want it.
It's fucking ridiculous. But let me describe why.
Nobody asks for anything. We don't ask for inventions.
We didn't ask for penicillin. Or cars. Or electricity. Candles and horses and hospitals were working just fine before that.
The general population never said, "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we could just inject some shit and it would cure tons of bacterial infections?"
Nobody also said, "We should have wires running in everything with alternating current so we don't need so many candles."
People don't ask for things in the form of solutions.
So, no. They didn't ask for AI.
But what they DID do is complain about their soul-crushing knowledge work jobs for decades upon decades.
We DID complain that working for giant corporations doing work we don't care about was vapid and horrible. We DID write countless books about it. And movies. And TV shows.
<2022: We hate our corporate jobs
2025: Don't let AI take my corporate job
2026: Fine, now I get to be what I was supposed to be in the first place[Daniel Miessler on X, March 2026]
We also complain constantly as workers because so many of our peers should never have been hired. Tons of people in the workforce are lazy. Negative. Incompetent. People don't want to work. People do the very minimum to get by. They blame others. They take credit for others' work.
We also complain that customer service sucks. Again, for decades. It's the centerpiece for some massive percentage of comedy.
Getting hired at a job sucks. The process sucks. Doing performance reviews suck. They're not super fair. Lots of people get way more money for doing less work because they're better at ass-kissing with the boss, or they're great looking and articulate or whatever.
Only a tiny percentage of people on the planet have access to basic healthcare. Like to even ask a question. A basic question that's in any text book. They will never talk to a nurse or doctor in their lives.
Millions, or hundreds of millions, of people are suffering from loneliness and mental health issues. They have absolutely NO ONE to talk to. Would it be better if they did? Sure, but if there were something to help them get there that would be nice.
Cancer kills people every day. Dementia turns loved ones into painful strangers.
It's not an exaggeration to say that, for some significant percentage of people on Earth, life fucking sucks.
No career. No medical or mental health support. No relationships. No prospects. No hope.
Hundreds of millions, or BILLIONS, of people.
Every single one of these problems can be at least addressed, if not significantly solved, if we had billions or trillions more brains and hands, and near infinite time to work on these problems.
We could actually make all these things way better. And that's what AI offers. Billions and Trillions of new brains and hands working on problems 24/7.
Human problems.
So, no. Nobody asked for AI.
But nobody asked for computers or lifejackets or airplanes either.
Inventions arise naturally out of problems.
AI isn't going parabolic because of some crazy marketing campaign.
It's doing so because it can address millions of human problems that we've been struggling with as a species for thousands of years.