Meta's AI optimism ad uses Bowie song about human extinction
David Bowie's apocalyptic 'Five Years' soundtracks Meta's upbeat AI ad campaign.
Meta's newest advertisement aims to counter AI doomerism with a feel-good montage of smiling people, connecting via Instagram posts. The voiceover declares, 'The future is for everyone,' while CEO Mark Zuckerberg promotes the campaign as a celebration of human potential. However, the chosen soundtrack is David Bowie's 'Five Years' — a song about humanity learning it has only five years before a mass-extinction event. The lyrics include 'News had just come over / We had five years left to cry in' and 'Earth was really dying.' The ad only uses the upbeat, repetitive chorus about 'people,' but the context is unmistakably apocalyptic.
This blunder fits a broader pattern of tech leaders misreading literary and cinematic dystopias as blueprints. Meta's Oculus once gave new hires 'Ready Player One' (a dystopian critique of virtual reality). OpenAI's Sam Altman cites 'Her' (a cautionary tale about AI relationships). Palantir is named after a spying device from 'Lord of the Rings' used by the Dark Lord. The irony underscores a lack of humanities education in tech's leadership, as they adopt cautionary tales as inspirational guides while playing a song about the end of the world to sell AI optimism.
- Meta's ad uses David Bowie's 'Five Years,' a song about humanity learning it will die in a mass-extinction event in five years.
- The ad shows happy people dancing and embracing, with voiceover claiming AI will keep us connected — despite the apocalyptic soundtrack.
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg promoted the campaign without apparently recognizing the song's true meaning, mirroring other tech leaders' misinterpretation of dystopian sci-fi.
Why It Matters
Highlights tech leaders' tone-deafness and lack of humanities literacy, risking trust in AI messaging.