What are the options to bet against AI hype without betting against actual useful technologies?

Bet on industries and companies with good unions and workers rights/treatment, the economic value of a corporation valuing its workers as human beings is in the process of being ejected from the collective awareness of many societies, but that does not make the value of that unreal only camoflauged.

I think a good example from the past of what is happening in tech is what happened with The Big Three US Automakers during the Malaise Era of US automotive design.

Through an in-depth examination of labor relations and the production processes of automakers in the U.S. and Japan both before and after World War II, they demonstrate that the decline of the American manufacturers was the unintended consequence of their attempts to weaken the bargaining power of their unions.

Today Japanese and many European automakers produce higher quality cars at lower cost than their American counterparts thanks to a flexible form of production characterized by long-term sole suppliers, assembly and supply plants located near each other, and just-in-time delivery of raw materials. While this style of production was, in fact, pioneered in the U.S. prior to World War II, in the years after the war, American automakers deliberately dismantled this system.

As Murray and Schwartz show, flexible production accelerated innovation but also facilitated workers’ efforts to unionize plants and carry out work stoppages. To reduce the efficacy of strikes and combat the labor militancy that flourished between the Depression and the postwar period, the industry dispersed production across the nation, began maintaining large stockpiles of inventory, and eliminated single sourcing. While this restructuring of production did ultimately reduce workers’ leverage, it also decreased production efficiency and innovation. The U.S. auto industry has struggled ever since to compete with foreign automakers, and formerly thriving motor cities have suffered the consequences of mass deindustrialization.

https://policycommons.net/artifacts/1357311/wrecked-how-the-american-automobile-industry-destroyed-its-capacity-to-compete/1970543/

The future, at least of the US, will be littered with this kind of thing. The question is where are the places you can focus on that are not like this? That are not stuck in this kind of thinking?

Bet on companies that operate within legal contexts that provide meaningful protection for the natural and human environment they operate in, no I am not talking about financial protection of banks and things, I am talking about protecting the environment (specifically fresh water wetlands, anywhere that understands the necessity of protecting them is somewhere you want to invest) and providing a real social safety net to human beings.

Invest in corporations that operate in places with good affordable mass transit and affordable housing.

Certainly, we are going through a rock bottom period for highly skilled tech workers in the US, the idea of valuing technical computer work has never been less popular, so I think any company that goes against that current and treats workers well is actually going to tend to outperform the market pretty easily because people want to show up to work… which makes them better workers. I don’t think this current attempt to pretend AI can replace tech workers will work for tech any more than it will for most other industries, but for now the value is distorted downwards.

Another thing, there is an IMMENSE difference between what most of the insurance industry in the US understands about the current and future costs of Climate Change and what other powerful, wealthy sectors of the US economy understand about the current and future costs of Climate Change. AI is connected to this, especially with water use, and there is likely profit to be made addressing that reality in a way that many powerful people refuse to.

Look at insurance company outlooks on the future expected costs of insuring different areas, I imagine that decent corporations in relative havens from the worst impacts of climate change will fair far better and this is definitely not something being priced into the economy.