The Download: AI’s popularity paradox and EmTech Future 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

People really hate AI, so why can’t they get enough?

Over the summer I talked to the CEO of Springboards, a startup building an LLM designed to come up with a wide variety of responses. He said something that’s been stuck in my head since: “We often say that we’re a self-loathing AI company. We don’t know if we really like what we’re doing.” My reply? “I guess that makes me a self-loathing AI journalist.”

It was a joke! I love my job. But I do not love many of the things the technology I write about has become: warped by hype, steered by zealots, inescapable —and I’m far from alone.

Around the world, a love/hate attitude toward AI is very much the vibe right now. …