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It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the market for artificial intelligence and its associated industries are over inflated. In 2025, just five hyperscalersAlphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracleaccounted for a capital investment of $399 billion, which will rise to over $600 billion annually in coming years. For the first nine months of last year, real GDP growth rate in the U.S. was 2.1%, but would have been 1.5% without the contribution of AI investment. This dependence is dangerous. A recent note by Deutsche Bank questioned whether this boon might in fact be a bubble, noting the historically unprecedented concentration of the industry, which now accounts for around 35% of total U.S. market capitalization, with the top 10 U.S. companies making up more than 20% of the global equity market value. For such an investment to yield no benefit would be a failure of unprecedented proportions. In their book Power and Progress, Nobel Prize-winning economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson narrate the calamitous failure of the French Panama Canal project in the late 19th century. Thousands of investors, large and small, lost their fortunes, and 20,000 people who worked on the project died for no benefit. The problem, Acemoglu and Simon write, was that the vision for progress did not include everyoneand failure to incorporate feedback from others resulted in poor quality decision making. As they observe, what you do with technology depends on the direction of progress you are trying to chart and what you regard as an acceptable cost.Fast forward 150 years and a significant chunk of the U.S. economy is similarly dependent on a small coterie of grand visionaries, ambitious investors, and techno-optimists. Their capacity to ignore their critics and sideline those forced to bear the costs of their mission risks catastrophic consequences. Trustworthy AI systems cannot be conjured by marketing magic. We must ensure those building, deploying, and working with these systems can have a say in how we direct the progress of this technology. Mistrust and a general lack of optimism The data suggests that there is an urgent need to chart a new course. Even a generous analysis of the market for generative AI products would likely struggle to show how a decent return on the gargantuan investment in capital is realistic. A recent report from MIT found that notwithstanding $30 billion to $40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, 95% of organizations are getting zero return. It is difficult to imagine another industry raising so much capital despite producing so little to show for it. But this appears to be Sam Altmans true superpower, as Brian Merchant has documented extensively. This is coupled with significant levels of mistrust and a general lack of optimism from everyday people about the potential of this technology. In the most comprehensive global survey of 48,000 people across 47 countries, KPMG found that 54% of respondents are wary about trusting AI. They also want more regulation: 70% of respondents said regulation is necessary, but only 43% believe current laws are adequate. The report concludes that the most promising pathway towards improving trust in AI was through strengthening safeguards, regulation, and laws to promote safe AI use. This, most obviously, sits in stark contrast with the position of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly framed regulation of the industry as an impediment to innovation. But the trust deficit cannot simply be hyped out of existence. It represents a significant structural barrier to the take up and valuable deployment of emerging technologies. One of the key conclusions of the MIT report is that the small subset of companies that actually saw productivity gains from generative AI products were doing so because they build adaptive, embedded systems that learn from feedback. Highly centralized decisions about procurement were more likely to result in employees being required to use off-the-shelf products unsuited to the enterprise environment and generating outputs that employees mistrusted, especially for higher-stakes tasks, resulting in work arounds or dwindling rates of usage. The problem is that these tools fail to learn and adapt. In turn, there are too few opportunities for executives to receive that feedback or incorporate it meaningfully into model development and adaptation. The narrative spun by politicians and media commentators that the AI industry is full of visionary leaders inadvertently points to a key cause of why these products are failing. Trust in AI systems can only be earned if feedback is both sought and acted onwhich is a significant challenge for the hyperscalers, because their foundational models are less capable of adapting and responding to unique and varied contexts. Unless we decentralize the development and governance of this, the benefits may remain elusive. The workers’ view There are useful ideas lying around that could help navigate a different path of technological progress. The Human Technology Institute at the University of Technology Sydney published research about how workers are treated as invisible bystanders in the roll out of AI systems. Through deep, qualitative consultations with nurses, retail workers, and public servants to solicit feedback about automated systems and their impact on their work. Rather than exhibiting backward or unhelpful attitudes to AI, workers expressed nuanced and constructive contributions to the impact on their workplaces. Retail workers, for example, talked about the difficulties of automated systems that disempowered workers, and curtailed their discretion: unlike a production line, retail is an unpredictable environment. You have these things called customers that get in the way of a nice steady flow. A nurse noted how “the increasing roll-out of automated systems and alerts causes severe alarm fatigue among nurses. When an (AI system) alarm goes off, we tend to ignore or not take it seriously. Or immediately override to stop the alarm. One might think that increased investment in such systems would contend with the problem of alarm fatigue. But without worker input, its easy to miss this as a problem entirely. The upshot is that, as one public servant put it, in workplaces whre channels for worker feedback are absent, a necessary quality of employees was “the gift of the workaround.” Traditionally, this kind of consultation and engagement would happen through worker organizations. But with the rate of unionization slipping below 10% in the U.S., this becomes a problem not just for workers but also employers, who are left with few methods to meaningfully engage with their workforce at scale. Some unions are nonetheless leading on this issue, and in the absence of political leadership, might be the best hope of making change. The AFL-CIO has developed a promising model law aimed at protecting workers from harmful AI systems. The proposal focuses on limiting the use of worker data to train models, as well as introducing friction into the automation of significant decisions, such as hiring and firing. It also emphasizes giving workers the right to refuse to follow directives from AI systemsessentially, building in feedback loops for when automation goes wrong. The right to refuse is an essential failsafe that can also cultivate a culture of critical engagement with technology, and serve as a foundation for trust. Businesses are welcome to ignore workers views, but workers may end up making themselves heard in other ways. Recent surveys indicate that 31% of employees admit to actively sabotaging their companys AI strategy, and for younger workers, the rates are even higher. Even companies that fail to seek feedback from workers may still end up receiving it all the same. Our current course of technological progress relies on narrow understandings of expertise and places too much faith in small numbers of very large companies. We need to start listening to the people who are working with this technology on a daily basis to solve real world problems. This decentralization of power is a necessary step if we want technology that is both trustworthy and effective.
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Reddit is now the fourth most visited social media platform in the U.K., overtaking TikTok. The online discussion platform has seen immense growth over the past two years, reaching 88% more internet users in the U.K., thanks to a combination of shifting search algorithms and social media habits. Three in five Brits now encounter the site while online, according to Ofcom, up from a third in 2023. The U.K. now has the second largest user base behind the U.S., according to company records shared with the Guardian. Reddit has also witnessed a drastic demographic change over the same period. More than half of the platforms users in the U.K. are now women and one-third are Gen Z women, many of whom turn to the platform for forums dedicated to skincare, beauty, and cosmetics. A change in Googles search algorithms last year, prioritizing content sourced from discussion forums, is partly behind the platforms growth. Reddit has since become the most-cited source for Google AI overviews, after inking deals with Google and OpenAI, placing the platform at the lucrative intersection of traditional search and AI discovery. Thats combined with the ways we search online evolving in recent years. Many internet users bypass Google altogether and instead seek out human-generated reviews and opinions on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit. Gen Z are very open to looking online for advice around these life stage moments, like leaving home and renting for the first time, which happens a little bit later for some of this generation, Jen Wong, Reddits chief operating officer, told The Guardian. Its a very safe place to ask questions about balancing a cheque book, or how to pay for a wedding. Rival platforms like YouTube and Facebook have become subsumed with AI-generated slop, and the percentage of Americans using X since Elon Musk took over has dropped drasticallysince overtaken by Redditaccording to new findings from Pew Research. Here, Reddit stands out as one of the last remaining platforms that holds a semblance of the small community-run forums of the early internet. Users follow topics of interest rather than influencers. Everyone is anonymous rather than at the mercy of an algorithm. Rather than offering answers it thinks users want to hear, or serving an endless stream of spam, bots and slop, the human-centred discussion threads that remain at its core invite curiositythe foundation the internet was built upon in the first place.
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Amanda Lee McCarty, sustainability consultant and host of the Clotheshorse podcast, remembers fixing a tear on her Forever 21 shirt with a staplerjust long enough to get through the workday before tossing it out. In the early 2000s, when fast-fashion brands began flooding the market, clothing became so cheap that shoppers could endlessly refresh their wardrobes. The garments were poorly made and tore easily, but it hardly mattered. They were designed to be disposable, encouraging repeat purchases. “It didn’t seem worth the time and effort to repair the top,” she recalls. “And besides, I didn’t have any mending skills at the time.” [Photo: Levi’s] McCarty isn’t alone. Starting in the early 1900s, schools trained studentsmostly girlsin the art of sewing and mending clothes in home economics classes. Students learned how to operate sewing machines to create tidy hemlines and sew buttons by hand. But by the 1970s, partly due to the feminist critique that home economics classes reinforced traditional gender roles, these courses slowly began getting cut from public schools. There are now several generations of Americans with no sewing skills at all. In a recent study conducted by Levi’s, 41% of Gen Zers report having no basic repair knowledge, such as fixing a tear or sewing on a buttonwhich is double the rate of older generations. [Photo: Levi’s] This also coincided with clothes getting cheaper, thanks to a global supply chain and low-wage labor in developing countries. Suddenly, clothes were so inexpensive that even the poorest families could buy them instead of making them. Eventually, as McCarty illustrates, they were so cheap that there was no point in even mending them. Today, the average American throws away 81.5 pounds of clothing every year, resulting in 2,100 pounds of textile waste entering U.S. landfills every second. This transformation of the fashion industry has led directly to the environmental disaster we now find ourselves in: Manufacturing billions of clothes annually accelerates climate change, and discarded clothes now clog up landfills, deserts, and oceans. Levi’s believes that one step in tackling the crisis is to teach Gen Z how to mend. The denim brand, which generates upward of $6 billion a year, has partnered with Discovery Education to create a curriculum aligned with educational standards that teaches high schoolers how to sew a button, mend a hole or tear, and hem trousers. This curriculum, which launches today, is available for free and will be shared with teachers across the country who can incorporate it into a wide range of coursesfrom STEM to civics to social studies. [Photo: Levi’s] “Needle-and-Thread Evangelism” The idea took hold during a poker night. Paul Dillinger, Levis head of global product innovation, noticed that a button had popped off a friends Oxford shirt. Oliver said he didnt have time to throw it away and put on a new shirt, Dillinger recalls. It was an illustration of everything thats wrong with the current paradigm. And it could be fixed with a little needle-and-thread evangelism. Dillinger, who trained as a fashion designer and is a skilled garment maker, spent 20 minutes teaching the groupmen in their mid-twentieshow to sew the button back on. Since then, hes made a habit of preaching the gospel of mending with everyone in his orbit, including his colleagues at Levis. [Photo: Levi’s] One of them was Alexis Bechtol, Levis director of community affairs. She saw an opportunity for the company to scale that education beyond informal demos. Bechtol helped spearhead the Wear Longer program and the partnership with Discovery Education, which specializes in developing age-appropriate lesson plans aligned with state and federal standards. Levi’ and Discovery Education worked together to create a curriculum that teaches students the foundations of mending a garment by hand without a sewing machine. There are four lesson plans that are each designed to take up a single classroom period and are flexible enough to be incorporated into courses across disciplines. Kimberly Wright, an instructional design manager at Discovery Education who worked on the curriculum, says the lessons arent positioned as a revival of home economics. Instead, theyre framed as practical, transferable skills relevant to a wide range of careers. Were seeing a resurgence in skills-based learning, Wright says. Across the country, theres a shift toward not just making students college-ready, but career-ready. The initiative is funded through Levis social impact and community engagement budget rather than its marketing arm, although the curriculum will be branded with the Levis logo. Dillinger believes that it is valuable for Levi’s to be associated with mending, because it emphasizes that its products are designed to be durable and long-lasting. “Levi’s wants to be the most loved item in your closet, the thing you wear most often,” he says. “If we empower our customers to sustain this old friend in their closet, it creates brand affinity.” [Photo: Levi’s] A Small Fix for a Larger Systemic Problem At its core, the curriculum aims to challenge Gen Zs perception of clothing as disposable. In theory, mending keeps garments out of landfills. Its about extending the life cycle of your product so you dont have to buy something new, Bechtol says. Gen Z is coming of age in a world dominated by ultra-fast-fashion players like Shein, where clothes are cheaper than ever. Mending is no longer an economic necessityand in some cases, it can cost more in time and money than a garment is worth. Levis is trying to reframe mending as something else: a creative act that allows wearers to personalize their clothes. Over time, Dillinger says that personal investment changes how people value what they own. Once youve invested time and care into repairing a garment, it shifts the value equation, he says. It becomes more like a plant or a petsomething youre responsible for sustaining. There’s no doubt that mending is a crucial part of the sustainable fashion movement. McCarty, who once stapled her shirt, now repairs her clothing to extend its life. But she points out that the fashion industry’s bigger problem is flooding the market with cheap clothes and encouraging constant consumption. While individuals can buy less and wear clothes longer, she says brands must take responsibility for producing fewer, more durable products. “It’s sort of like putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding wound and calling it fixed, when there are larger issues to deal with,” she says. [Photo: Levi’s] McCarty extends this critique to Levi’s itself. While some Levis products are durable, she notes that the company also produces large volumes of lower-end jeans for retailers like Target and Kohls. These garments are often made with synthetic fabrics that are harder to repair and wont biodegrade. “Levi’s is selling far more volume in lower-end jeans than they do in premium,” she says. “Some of these products are just not repairable.” Still, McCarty believes the Wear Longer program could meaningfully educate Gen Znot only about mending, but also about the broader consequences of overproduction. Dillinger agrees. “Once you become a participant in the life of the garment, it becomes harder to ignore the broader industrial reality of how clothes are made,” he says. “You’re not participating in a similar set of tasks to the people who made the clothes.” Ultimately, Dillinger sees mending as a form of empowerment. Teaching young people how to repair their clothes gives them agencyto extend what they own and to engage with fashion more critically. “The sooner we respect kids as emerging adults with agency, the sooner they can make more responsible decisions for themselves,” he says.
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