Earlier this week, I watched a technologist terrify a room of restaurant people. Dex Hunter-Torricke is an insider-turned-critic of big tech who once spun tech messaging for Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Google Deep Mind. Now he’s made a career out of the opposite position, spreading hard-to-hear truths about how artificial intelligence will upend life… and we heard it all before lunch on a Monday.
“Humans are under attack,” he told the audience about a third of the way through his presentation at the Welcome Conference, a 2,000-person event led by restaurateur-turned-author Will Guidara. (“Warm fuzzies are in,” I once wrote in coverage of a past year’s event. This was not that.)
The session also included unsettling images of Chinese “dark factories” — there’s no need for overhead lighting when the factory floor is full of autonomous robots, he told us — and one photo of President Trump’s table at the recent state dinner in honor of China’s president Xi Jinping, reminding us that the collective net worth of the people at the table exceeds $1 trillion. AI will consolidate wealth and political influence, Hunter-Torricke explained. It’ll deepen inequality, weaken democracy. It is, he asserted, to be feared.
These are all provocative statements, louder when declared in front of a group of people steeped in the business of humanity. His take on a probable future was so dark, so doomer, that even Guidara — ever the optimist! — seemed to struggle to offer a positive spin after the talk. The audience can make a difference, Guidara finally said, “if we all leave aligned.”
Except I misheard him. At first, thought he said something like, “The people in this room can make a difference… if we all leave alive.”
Oof.
If Hunter-Torricke’s goal was to sell the room on the gravity of this moment in history, it worked.
His talk inspired whispers and concerned chatter for the rest of the day. But Hunter-Torricke failed to empower the assembled hospitality and business leaders with another fact: This AI-dominated moment presents a remarkable opportunity for the restaurant industry. Human hospitality is the antidote to the unchecked dominance of big tech and its march toward an artificially intelligent future.
Historically, the Welcome Conference hasn’t covered much tech at all, aside from nods to title sponsor Resy — someone has to pay for the revelry! — and the occasional dig at the pervasive creep of tech inside restaurants. It’s a miss, in my opinion, because of how these industries complement and contradict one another. There is no business better positioned to mitigate the effects of an overly optimized, highly technical, faceless new technology. We should be encouraged to act, not scared into acquiescence.
In other words: Dex! Tell us what to do about the scary stuff!
The restaurant industry vastly underestimates its power to challenge the tech industry’s self-assured narrative that they alone control the future. It needs encouragement, not fear.
Here’s how we change this: Instead of featuring the big, scary thing, spotlight the weak points of the big, scary thing. What can’t AI do? How can an empowered group of deeply empathetic professionals capitalize on this? How should they wield their power and influence for good in what we have come to understand is a deeply flawed inequitable system?
I wish the audience had received answers to these questions from the expert who’s shared offices and stages and private jets with some of the world’s most divisive and powerful executives. Instead, we left feeling scared, nervous, and nearly powerless on our way back to work.
Later in the day, some of the fear turned to anger. “What was that AI talk?” more than one person asked me. “Is he right? Are we doomed?”
His facts are correct, I answered, but the message is wrong. In the eternal words of Mister Rogers, I reminded them: When you’re scared, look for the helpers. They’re right here in the room.
