The Mythical AI Bear
Mar 17, 2026·
·
3 min read
muckrAIkers
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.
EPISODE RECORDED 2026.02.08; TRANSCRIPT
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
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
Links
(People Talking About) Strawman AI Haters
- Big Think article - The rise of AI denialism
- Fly.io blogpost - My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
- Hacker News discussion on My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
- antirez blog post - Don’t fall into the anti-AI hype
- Bentham’s Newsletter Substack post - “The AI Con” Con
- Jonathon Ready blog post - Everyone in Seattle Hates AI
Actual AI Haters
- Emily Bender blogpost - Resistance Isn’t Denialism
- Cory Doctorow blogpost - Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox
- The Verge article - Indie game developers have a new sales pitch: being ‘AI free’
- Simon Willison blogpost - How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop “act of kindness”
- Daniel Stenberg LinkedIn post on AI slop DDoSing curl’s HackerOne bug bounty
- Gary Marcus Substack post - Hard-forked! Casey Newton’s distorted portrait of Gary Marcus and AI skepticism
- Dark Reading article - Contrarians No More: AI Skepticism Is on the Rise
Benefits and Externalities
- Washington Post article - The AI boom is so huge it’s causing shortages everywhere else
- CNBC article - Amazon leads Big Tech’s $1 trillion wipeout as AI bubble fears ignite sell-off
- Business Insider article - Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham says AI is ‘obviously a bubble’
- CNBC article - Goldman Sachs taps Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles
Public Sentiment
- Ipsos survey - Google / Ipsos Multi-Country AI Survey 2026
- Fortune article - Silicon Valley’s tone-deaf take on the AI backlash will matter in 2026
The Anthropic Ad Saga
- Sam Altman X post responding to Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad campaign
- Hacker News discussion - Sam Altman Responds to Anthropic Ad Campaign
Other Links
- Understanding AI Substack post - AI skeptics and AI boosters are both wrong
- Clayton Christensen talk - Disruptive innovation
- Zvi Mowshowitz Substack post - Brought To You By The Torment Nexus
- Eruditorum Press blog post - The Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method
- Jason Kottke post - “AI skeptics need to update their priors”
