I feel like if people keep using AI as a blanket term for "inequality" and "inequality accelerants" then yeah, it's "AI"'s fault. When in reality the whole thing needs to be decoupled.. "Gleefully taking away people's livelihoods will be met with violence, and nothing good will come of it." - fixed.
I wholeheartedly agree with and encourage this kind of academic distinction. However... Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money to offset the financial hardship that they're knowingly - and gleefully - bringing to others... The distinction has no practical use. (And before someone says "that's the government's job!", consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and compa…
To hear Marc Andreessen tell it, the US tech industry's rightward turn in the 2024 campaign was specifically intended to head off any attempt to regulate AI [0]. So the blame rebounds to tech CEOs even if you believe that only the government should take a holistic view of a given technology's impact.
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-06-11/marc-andr...