WIRED's editor-in-chief Katie Drummond just delivered the most brutally honest take on AI coverage you'll read this year. In a candid editorial, she argues the worst thing about artificial intelligence isn't the technology itself - it's that everyone won't shut up about it. Her message to the tech industry and media: calm down, it's not that profound.
The tech world's most uncomfortable truth just got delivered by someone who actually has to live with the consequences. WIRED editor-in-chief Katie Drummond published a scathing takedown of AI coverage fatigue that reads like a frustrated scream into the void - if the void was packed with venture capitalists and PR flacks.
"I have been inundated - fully drowning, water rushing into the nostrils and flooding the lungs - with inquiries about my point of view on the technology," Drummond writes in her editorial. The requests come from everywhere: conference organizers, her dad, fellow journalists, even her dermatologist who apparently has an AI diagnostic tool she wants opinions on.
But here's the kicker - Drummond's frustration isn't just personal. She's calling out what many in tech have been thinking but afraid to say: this AI moment might be more hype than substance. "The technology has been around and iterating and evolving for decades," she explains, noting that current AI fanaticism specifically refers to deep-learning models trained on massive datasets.
The timing couldn't be more pointed. While OpenAI continues pushing Sora and Google integrates AI features that arguably make search worse, Drummond is asking everyone to take a breath. She describes generative AI as "genuinely useful in some contexts, profoundly useless in others, and decidedly unproven in most."
The economic reality check hits hardest. "A growing number of signs indicate it is an economic bubble," Drummond writes, echoing concerns from analysts who've been tracking AI company valuations against actual revenue. The infrastructure costs alone - training, deploying, and commercializing these models - suggest the current spending spree isn't sustainable.
For journalism specifically, Drummond takes direct shots at Big Tech's handling of publishers. She describes Google's relationship with news organizations as "decades-long abusive," where publishers face either "taking a major haircut or shutting down entirely" if they try to escape the search giant's ecosystem. Meanwhile, Meta gets dismissed even more brutally - she calls their AI-generated video feed "slop, basically. Total shit, pretty much."