Meta's latest advertisement opens with a stark black-and-white image of an eye, capturing the perspective of someone scrolling through a barrage of alarming headlines about artificial intelligence—predictions of job loss, social isolation, and global catastrophe. A voiceover declares, "Some people will have you believe AI is going to make us feel less connected. That it's going to leave us behind. We couldn't disagree more."

The scene then bursts into color, showing a montage of people opening their eyes and smiling. We see a couple dancing on a rooftop, pointing at a rainbow; teenagers swimming in a lake; a child running through a field; friends embracing after a long separation. The voiceover continues, "Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want. But we're betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone."

This sentiment sounds nice—especially convenient for a company betting hundreds of billions of dollars that AI will transform humanity. But the oddest part of the ad isn't that these happy moments appear as Instagram posts. It's that the soundtrack is David Bowie's song "Five Years."

If you're unfamiliar with this track, I encourage you to listen closely, read the lyrics, and consider its meaning. It seems obvious to me, but I studied poetry in college. As a control, I asked my brother—a blockchain analyst who loves Claude Code and doesn't read for pleasure—what he thought the song was about. "I thought climate change at first, then zombie apocalypse, then an asteroid hitting the earth," he told me. He's right. The song depicts humanity panicking after learning they will die in a mass extinction event within five years.

If you don't know Bowie's work, this track might sound uplifting and inspiring, matching the ad's cheerful tone. The portion used in the advertisement was likely chosen because it repeats the word "people," and without context, the meaning isn't clear. But consider the lines that immediately precede that section:

"News had just come over / We had five years left to cry in / News guy wept and told us / Earth was really dying / Cried so much his face was wet / Then I knew he was not lying"

We "had five years left to cry in" and "earth was really dying." It's quite grim. It's hardly reassuring to convince people that AI will improve the world while playing a song about the apocalypse. Yet this contradictory musical choice seems to have gone unnoticed at Meta, including by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want," he wrote alongside the video. "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone."

Then again, tech leaders aren't known for their literary analysis. Meta's Oculus used to give new hires copies of the science fiction novel "Ready Player One," which is set in a dystopia where a tech company making virtual reality products becomes overly powerful and evil. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has directly cited inspiration from the movie "Her," which warns about the dangers of using AI for emotional support. Palantir, a company that builds AI surveillance systems for governments, is named after the Palantir, a seeing stone from "The Lord of the Rings" that the Dark Lord uses to spy on his enemies. Elon Musk is currently upset about the "accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster adaptation of "The Odyssey," a story with sea monsters, magic, and divine intervention. These examples make a strong case for studying the humanities.

Meta isn't alone in its recent promotional missteps. Instead of racing to build AGI, top AI companies seem to be competing over who can create the creepiest advertisement. A few weeks ago, Anthropic released an eerie video of its own. As my colleague Lucas Ropek described it:

The ad begins with a video of a burning house (not exactly heartwarming) before shifting to a series of still images. These include a crowd being surveilled by facial recognition, a homeless person sleeping on the street, rows of tombstones in a cemetery, and what appears to be laborers toiling in a mine where raw materials for smartphones are dug up. Meanwhile, a voiceover features different people asking questions like "Can AI be trusted?" and "Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?"

Anthropic is trying to convince us that it understands the risks AI poses to society, making it the company people can trust to develop AI responsibly. The message it actually conveys feels closer to the mood of Bowie's "Five Years."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the Anthropic ad, saying, "I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something."

As these companies spar to control public perception of AI, their efforts don't seem to be working. A recent Pew survey found that only 16% of Americans think AI's impact on society over the next twenty years will be positive, while 40% believe it will be negative. Better luck next time, Meta.