“Some people will have you believe AI is going to make us feel less connected. That it’s going to leave us behind,” a voiceover says. “We couldn’t disagree more.”

Suddenly, the video shifts to color, and shows a cycle of different people opening their eyes and smiling. Then, we see a couple dancing on a rooftop, pointing at a rainbow; a group of teens swimming in a lake; a child frolicking in a field; friends embracing after time apart.

“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 voiceover says. “The future is for everyone.”

If you are not familiar with this song, I urge you to give it a listen：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObjtVdsV3I, read the lyrics：https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/davidbowie/fiveyears.html, and think about what it is trying to say. It seems clear to me, but I studied poetry in college, so as a control for this experiment, I asked my brother — a blockchain analyst who loves Claude Code and does not read for fun — if he could tell me what the song is about.

“I thought climate change at first, then zombie apocalypse, then an asteroid hitting the earth,” he told me. He is correct. It is a song about the human race panicking after learning they will die in a mass-extinction event in five years.

But if we look at the lines directly preceding this 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 the “earth was really dying.” It’s pretty bleak.

It is not reassuring to convince people that AI is going to make the world better while playing a song about the end of the world, and yet, this contradictory musical choice seems to have sailed right past everyone at Meta, including 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：https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1344461651205053 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.”

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

The ad begins with a video of a burning house (not exactly a heartwarming start) before pivoting to a series of still images. These images include a crowd of people being surveilled by facial recognition, a homeless person sleeping on the street, rows upon rows of tombstones in a cemetery, and what appears to be a group of laborers toiling in a mine where (presumably) raw materials for smartphones are being dug up.

Meanwhile, a voice-over track 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, and therefore, this is the company that people can trust to develop AI responsibly. The message it actually conveys feels closer to the mood of Bowie’s “Five Years.”

i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something https://t.co/4AVBA93Z27：https://t.co/4AVBA93Z27

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded：https://x.com/sama/status/2076824686307271125?s=20 to the Anthropic ad, “I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something.”

As these companies spar to control the public perception of AI, their efforts don’t seem to be making much progress. A recent Pew survey：https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/only-16-percent-of-americans-think-ai-will-have-a-positive-impact-on-society-a-new-study-shows/ found that only 16% of Americans think that AI’s impact on society over the next 20 years will be positive, and 40% believe it will have a negative impact. Better luck next time, Meta.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission：https://techcrunch.com/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards/. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.

You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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