MIT Technology Review's daily newsletter, The Download, opens with a pointed question: "People really hate AI, so why can't they get enough?" The line captures a familiar tension in tech adoption—public wariness coexisting with growing reliance on AI tools. The newsletter frames this as a paradox worth exploring, though the excerpt stops short of offering an answer.
The piece is anchored in a conversation the author had over the summer with the CEO of Springboards, a startup. No specifics from that interview are included in the excerpt, so the reader is left with the framing rather than the evidence. As a single source, the newsletter presents one viewpoint; there are no competing claims to compare.
Still, the central observation stands on its own: AI may be unpopular in the abstract, but that has not stopped people from using it. The gap between attitude and behavior is the story—and, for now, the mystery.