On the first day at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, NYU professor and tech investor Scott Galloway delivered a candid speech on technology's impact, highlighting the risks of a screen-dependent society and warning of idolizing technology as “godlike”. Below we have condensed the talk and slightly edited the key messages for readability.
“I think a lot of the risks surrounding A.I. are overblown. Let's assume it becomes sentient and tries to kill us all. Typically on every weapon there is a kill switch. Someone might decide to eliminate us, but I don't think technology is going to make that decision on its own.
I also think it’s overblown that A.I. will destroy all our jobs and that none of us will have work or purpose in the future. With every technology in history, there was some catastrophizing that it will put people out of work. Supposedly, manufacturing or automation was going to put half of automobile employees out of work within 3 to 10 years.
And although in the short run it indeed did destroy some jobs, we didn't envision heated seats or car stereos. And now there are more people employed in the automobile industry globally than pre-automation. Typically, you have some short term job destruction, and then over the long term it creates more jobs than it destroys. I think there will be a lot of startups and new ideas leveraging A.I. technology.
If you look at America, I think the biggest problem can be traced back to one basic statistic, and that is a 30-year-old person isn't doing as well as their parents were at age 30, from an economic perspective. But then you layer on top of that what I think is the biggest crisis in the United States–which is loneliness caused by social media's A.I. algorithms.
The deepest-pocketed, most intelligent companies in the world that have aggregated more human capital than NASA have one mission–and that is to produce an asexual, asocial species of people who do nothing but stare at their phones. Because if they stare at their phones all day these companies can monetize their attention.
"I worry we're evolving a new species, mostly of young males who don't have strong social networks."
–Scott Galloway
And effectively, corporations are trying to convince people that they can experience a reasonable facsimile of life through a screen with an algorithm. So why go through the effort of trying to make friends when you can go on Discord or Reddit? Why go through the pain of putting on a suit and applying for a job and showing up to a workplace when maybe you can make money just on Coinbase or on Robinhood trading crypto stocks?
It has created a generation of anxious, obese, and depressed youth that is really dissatisfied with the current world order. So young people want disruption and change. I worry we're evolving a new species, mostly of young males who don't have a strong social network.
So first off, we should take a collective victory lap and recognize that no group has ascended faster globally than women. And this is a wonderful thing. More women are seeking tertiary education globally than men. In the US it used to be 40- 60 females to males in college. Now it's 60-40. When we leveled the playing field in education, this was the result. Now in the US, women under the age of 30 are making more money than men in cities. The number of women elected to parliament in the last 30 years across democracies has doubled.
We can still recognize women face tremendous challenges, but also recognize that young men are really struggling, especially with loneliness. The problem is if a man, by the time he's 30, hasn't been married or lived with someone, there's a one in three chance he is going to have a substance abuse problem.”
“Technology is the New Religion”
–Scott Gallaway
“Technology has become a sort of modern-day religion. It's treated with reverence, almost god-like, because it creates wealth and solves problems in a way that feels miraculous to many people. And there is an idolatry of money and tech innovators.
It started with Steve Jobs as someone who was the capitalist Jesus Christ, who we still idolize despite the fact that this was someone who denied his own blood under oath for many years to avoid paying child support when he was worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
Today Elon Musk has become the idol for many young men in the West, —someone who has stated that his daughter, after transitioning, 'is dead' to him. The role models we are putting forward across tech, this idolatry of technology and the dollar is producing just some of the shittiest men with this extraordinary amount of power.
And it's not entirely their fault. If you tell a 35 or 40-year-old man he’s Jesus Christ, he's inclined to believe you. It's our fault. We don't hold these people to the same standards. The majority of companies, if they were found that their content was leading to an increase in suicide rates and self-harm among teen girls, we would put those companies out of business. But we let these companies get away with this every day. According to Section 230 of the Communications Act they're not liable for their content.
"The rich are not really that worried, because their democracies are portable. "
–Scott Galloway
I think Europe's been a little bit more aggressive and on the right side with regulation. But in the United States, we've essentially decided that this is a new super class and that billionaires are not subject to the same rules. And this is the problem. They're not worried about people being rounded up after an economic shock when they hear that America's beginning to feel like early thirties Germany, by passing laws that erode democracy. They are not really that worried, because their democracies are portable. When things get real, I have the money to go to Dubai on 24 hours notice.
"The tech billionaires show up at the inauguration and are paraded around, too afraid to speak out. I think the most disappointing thing in the U.S. right now is that people with significant influence—like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Cook—are cowards for not speaking up. And here’s the bottom line: if the Trump tax plan goes through, they, along with me, will save a lot of money in taxes. But if you are wealthy and influential, you have an obligation to speak out against fascism.
Currently everyone is focused on Doge, DEI policies, and other distractions. The right makes outrageous statements to get progressives and Democrats clutching their pearls, outraged over trans issues while the current government tries to push through $800 or $900 billion in tax cuts—at the expense of our future generation burdening our kids with massive debt.
Will the last thing Jeff Bezos thinks of on his deathbed be: 'I need more yachts'? Or maybe he’ll wish he had stood up for the same democratic principles that gave him all his wealth in the first place?"
