From the Lab 1
A new format. Talking vibecore, Green AI, and more.
Welcome to Mutant Futures: a newsletter about culture, futurism and strategy.
In this edition, I’m debuting a new format called From the Lab: a digest curating my latest signal-tracking, discoveries and cultural curiosities.
Enjoy!
INDEX:
🧬 TREND RECODED: Vibecore and beyond
🔬 UNDER OBSERVATION: Gen(erative) Z: young people’s complex entanglement with AI
🧪 CULTURE SAMPLE: System Crash Podcast on sci-fi, power and possibility
📘 FINDINGS: GreenPT, an eco-conscious AI platform
TREND RECODED
An emerging trend, its ripple effects, and counter-trends
Vibecore and beyond:
What’s emerging?
Vibecore, as coined by
, is the growing trend of AI-based applications seeking to commodify our subjective sensibilities. You may have heard of ‘vibe coding’, but there’s more: vibe essay-marking, vibe marketing, even vibe lawyering? As He notes, there’s a growing list of companies that claim they can capture the ‘je ne sais quoi’ of human preferences through algorithmic means. According to He, ‘vibe’ can be understood as:a shortcut for translating complex tasks into ‘feels right’ workflows, and
the externalisation of your unique taste into something machine-readable
The proposition of these companies is to unburden you from the tedious and time-consuming execution involved with knowledge work. Instead, you can simply prompt your way to the finished product, using a bespoke AI model as your sounding board. It brings to mind those gestural interfaces in sci-fi films, you know the ones? Where you wave your hands around and command your AI butler with Type A conviction, while indulging in the feeling of an imminent breakthrough.
Welcome to the ‘thought-to-product’ economy.
What does this mean for us?
What I find interesting about this trend is what it says about our relationship with convenience in 2025. When LLMs can produce detailed outputs instantly, we feel like we have a magic genie at our beck and call. But as He points out, vibecore taps into the addictive allure of automating daily complexity by supposedly just being yourself, out loud.
This convenience, of being able to vibe your way through work, is why
thinks we may see a new social hierarchy emerge—one that’s organised by cognitive ability. I agree with her warnings: if we outsource more of our thinking to the machines without questioning them, we risk eroding our capacity to think. AI’s outputs are now so convincing that it seems inefficient and inconvenient not to use it, when tackling knowledge work. But for those who aren’t motivated enough to keep their thinking caps on (or lacked them in the first place), this can lead to a dangerous feedback loop, resulting in cognitive cannibalisation. Those who can tap into AI’s superhuman capabilities while continuing to think critically and strategically, will rise. But those who treat it as a cyberbutler, to handle the ‘inconvenience’ of thinking, will fall.“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
Frank Herbert, Dune
Also, if vibeworking continues to spread, we’re likely to see (aside from an explosion of content and digital products) a macro-level erosion of meaning online. In a world of frictionless execution, productivity becomes a paradoxical treadmill: constant motion, with no direction. Brands jumping on the AI bandwagon may flood the zone with increasingly bland outputs, mistaking scale for value. But the real value will come from what not to make. Think of something like Spotify’s 2024 ‘Wrapped’, which many users criticised for feeling soulless and lacking resonance, due to AI use. From a strategic standpoint, the most successful brands and creators going forward may be those that resist AI opportunism, prioritising restraint and coherence with everything they do.
And beyond…?
While acceleration and automation may seem inevitable, we can still challenge the vibecore narrative by thinking about opposing currents. So here are some counter-futures already being teased today, that could rise up in opposition to that narrative:
Human craft = cultural cachet: human-led creativity may increase in cultural impact, precisely because it involves resistance to GenAI. For example: after the ChatGPT action figure trend went viral on Linkedin and elsewhere, a counter-trend of illustrators sharing hand-drawn versions of the action figures gained traction.
Brands gain more consumer affinity for being real. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, some brands could shift to a human-centred creative and marketing approach. They might start showing more of the process behind the product, with BTS content and the like. By contrast, brands that shortcut craftsmanship algorithmically could alienate consumers for doing so.
The return of consumer tech with friction: the nostalgia for Y2K tech, the ongoing appeal of analogue and the rise in simple but modern tech, all point to a counter-movement of slow tech as resistance to unsolicited AI.
If you’ve enjoyed the newsletter so far, be sure to catch the next edition of From the Lab by subscribing!
UNDER OBSERVATION
A compilation of signals on a particular subject
Gen(erative) Z: young people’s complex entanglement with AI
From novelty to necessity: For Gen Z, AI has become all but ubiquitous. As of early 2025, over 75% of global Gen Z are active AI users across personal and professional activities, with many integrating it into daily routines. In the US, a survey found that 93% of Gen Z knowledge workers use two or more AI tools each week.
The post-AI education landscape: When it comes to learning, Gen Z readily relies on AI for instant explainers, proofreading and other uses. A global study in 2024 reported that 86% of uni students uses AI tools for their studies, with over half engaging with them at least weekly. But as dependency grows, so does the risk of cognitive atrophy. Aside from teachers of course, students themselves feel conflicted about outsourcing heavy cognitive lifting to AI.
Using machines for career success, while competing with them: Graduating into economic volatility and amidst concern about AI-induced job losses, Gen Z has embraced AI as a tool for career strategy. In the US, young workers increasingly turn to it for career advice, often rating it more highly than feedback from their line managers. In Europe, 57% of Gen Z report using AI for tasks like CV building and job hunting.
Seeking support in echoes, with AI therapy: A growing number of studies are showing that Gen Z is turning to LLMs as makeshift therapy. In the UK, 31% of people aged 18 to 24 feel most comfortable sharing their mental health issues with a chatbot. In the US, young people are increasingly relying on LLMs for free therapy, amid recession fears. A sticky situation, given that a quarter of Gen Z already believe that AI is conscious.
Young people want a more ethical future for AI: The question for Gen Z is no longer if AI belongs in their future, but what values it should be built on. They expect the technology they work with to be ethical, accountable and human-centred. And the same goes for AI, particularly its environmental impact. While Gen Z loves AI, they’re also demanding sustainability from the tech companies that make these tools.
CULTURE SAMPLE
A film, TV, podcast or other media recommendation (usually sci-fi related)
System Crash Podcast on sci-fi, power and possibility:
Tech journalists
and were recently joined on their pod by sci-fi writers Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, for a lively conversation about:How sci-fi is often misread and commodified by people like Elon Musk. Instead of engaging with the deeper critiques embedded in sci-fi, tech folks engage with these stories in an extractive way, for their product ideas or aesthetic blueprints. Musk is known to have borrowed surface-level imagery from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Culture series, without heeding their anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist messages.
How nostalgia is holding back our visions of the future. A huge chunk of today’s pop culture, especially Hollywood, is rehashing the aesthetics and fantasies of the 70s and 80s. Reboots, retro-futurism and comfort-zone storytelling keep audiences locked into yesterday’s dreams. In doing so, they reinforce old hierarchies (white, cis, male, heroic) instead of pushing towards inclusive or visionary futures. This creative stagnation narrows the imaginative bandwidth needed for real cultural evolution. Good year for Tron fans though.
How sub-genres like hopepunk and solarpunk are carving out space for collective resilience. There’s a growing body of sci-fi imagining futures rooted in sustainability, cooperation and radical hope. In doing so, they offer a vital counterweight to the techno-dystopias dominating mainstream culture, reminding us that envisioning better futures is itself an act of resistance.
And there’s more where that came from! I love how the conversation explored its bleak subject matter in a light-hearted way. And it was accessibly delivered—no need to be a big sci-fi reader to enjoy it.
Listen on YouTube, or below:
FINDINGS
A recent discovery that caught my attention
GreenPT, an eco-conscious AI platform:
Shout out to my fellow Londoner and friend
for surfacing this. In her write-up, she talks about the hidden environmental costs of LLMs and how GreenPT, a Dutch climate tech startup, was born:it all started when a group of students in a small apartment realised that their laptops were keeping the room warm. That sparked a thought — if computers give off heat anyway, why not use it? What if, instead of cooling data centres just to throw that heat away, we put servers in places that actually need warmth? From that simple question came a bigger idea: design digital infrastructure that works with the environment, not against it.
It’s an inspiring example of circular computing—in this case server heat is recycled into heat for living spaces (elderly care homes!) Could this be the Ecosia to OpenAI’s Google? If you're curious about regenerative futures for AI, absolutely give Camilla’s piece a read!
Thank you for reading Mutant Futures! 💜 If you haven’t subbed already…
Great read!! Mirrors a lot of my sentiments about AI and branding as well.
"nostalgia is holding back our visions of the future" this is a great point, I wonder if us getting fed up with empty nostalgia marketing and big corporations squeezing the last of it means we will jump onto aspirational portrayals of future ...