The Jensen Huang memes: Is that this AI grievance or AI embrace?
However put apart the elegant technical execution of the meme. And put apart the right cultural synergy between the film everybody’s speaking about and the Jensen spectacle that instructions the week’s information cycle.
What actually strikes me concerning the meme — and never simply this meme, but in addition the avalanche of comparable AI-generated memes authored at Jensen’s expense — is that they characterize two issues directly. On one aspect of the ledger, the Jensen memes are a celebration of AI creator instruments, a mass pop-art motion that explores a brand new medium with giddy pleasure. And on the opposite aspect of the ledger, the memes are a hearty center finger to AI.
From AI NSYNC to AI Dunder-Mifflin
We will scroll by our vertical video platform of alternative and giggle on the cleverness, the sheer madcap zaniness, of Jensen and Alice dancing to NSYNC. As a result of typically AI slop is simply good, easy enjoyable. Certainly, should you can’t snigger at a video of Jensen getting his ankles damaged by Alice Huang on the basketball court docket, then please simply loosen up.
Or how about Napoleon Dynamite reimagined with Jensen, Alice and Elon? Jensen as Kip. The videocard toss. It’s slop, sure, however it additionally is perhaps artwork. Warhol appropriated Campbell’s soup cans, and whereas he’s not universally admired, we nonetheless see his venture as one thing greater than a easy rip-off.
However the Jensen memes aren’t simply any outdated slop memes. The goal issues, and the memes level to an indictment of all that Jensen has come to characterize. To many individuals, he’s a residing totem for each shitty factor about AI: tech oligarchy extra, datacenters, RAM shortages and extra.
And so, by this veritable avalanche of AI slop, Jensen meets his comeuppance. And to toss extra irony on the hearth, Jensen’s critics are utilizing the AI slop instruments that Nvidia helped allow to mercilessly roast the person. It’s kind of like Spartacus and his rebels turning the Roman legionaries’ weapons in opposition to Rome.
