AI won't "displace social drinking." What? Stop it.

A special guest post from Fingers' Dave Infante

This post originally appeared on Fingers, Dave Infante’s excellent newsletter about the business of booze (and other beverages). Dave generously agreed to share it with Expedite’s paid subscribers, so if you like what you see, you should subscribe!

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Currently unfolding in The Discourse™️ are:

• serious conversations about the future role of alcohol in society; and

• far less serious conversations about the future role of artificial intelligence in society.

These two subjects rarely intersect, but they do intersect. Boosted by rising public-health scrutiny of booze both abroad and at home, and the persistent Dunning-Kruger-esque delusion that still has millions of Americans convinced that Silicon Valley types know what’s best, millionaire biohackers, Andrew Huberman fanboys, and other techno-maximalist #productivity perverts have been injecting the teetotaling gospel into mainstream American discussion with increasing success over the past few years.

In one sense, this is good! I’ve written at length here and elsewhere about the necessity of periodically re-interrogating alcohol’s place in American civic life. To some extent, technology can be a useful mediator for booze-related social ills, helping to blunt the costs of drinking without excising its communal, emotional, and cultural benefits.

In another sense, it’s bad, because tech guys and their crank-billionaire patrons are not having that conversation.