The Download: AI’s Popularity Paradox and EmTech Future 2026
By Thomas Macaulay | October 5, 2026
Plus: Trump has unveiled a “Super Intelligence Force” to oversee AI.
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 of It?
—Will Douglas Heaven
Over the summer, I spoke with the CEO of Springboards, a startup building an LLM designed to generate a wide variety of responses. He said something that has stuck with me 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. Public sentiment is souring fast, with more people saying AI will have a negative impact than…
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