The global economy increasingly depends on the notion that AI will be inexorably intertwined with every aspect of our lives. There are also increasing signs that consumers (or at least some consumers) don’t feel good about it at all. This can be seen most clearly in the backlash against data centers, which is gaining momentum.
The global economy increasingly depends on the notion that AI will be inexorably intertwined with every aspect of our lives.
There are also increasing signs that consumers (or at least some consumers) don’t feel good about it at all.
This can be seen most clearly in the backlash against data centers, which is gaining momentum. Or when fans of A24, the hipster film studio, despise the indie for daring to work with Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab.
But I think it’s equally telling when people you wouldn’t think would be worried about AI say they are worried about AI. Or at least understand why are worried about AI.
That’s the gist of Tuesday’s announcement from newsletter tool/wannabe social network Substack: It says the decline of AI is overwhelming the Internet and it wants to fight back.
For now, that effort amounts to giving Substack users access to a tool created by Pangram, an AI discovery startup. In the future, the company says, it may introduce other features, such as the ability for Substack readers to keep AI-generated content out of their feeds.
Substack CEO Chris Best is at pains to say that Substack is not opposed to the use of AI in general or in the creation of Substack content:
We are not against people using AI to help in their work and believe that people should have the freedom to choose which tools they use to express themselves. Some on the platform are maximalists of human writing, others are publicly exploring the frontier of using AI tools while worrying about the details of doing the work they support. We use AI all the time at Substack to write software, research, and create product features like snipping, translations, and more.
But common sense tells you that Substack wouldn’t be making an anti-AI plan if it wasn’t worried about AI. Or if I didn’t think it was users They were worried about AI.
The revelation is when Best uses the dreaded “L” word to describe what could happen if the growth of AI is not curtailed: “One thing we do know is that we don’t want to wait until your Substack app becomes LinkedIn before we start learning and progressing.”
LinkedIn! How disgusting, at least in Best’s mind, or at least in the minds of the people Best imagines using Substack.
Except 1) I’ve seen a lot of crappy Substack rules and sometimes I see a really insightful LinkedIn post. There is a wide world of content. And 2) a couple of months ago, LinkedIn said it He was also trying to fight the decline of AI.
I think there’s a pretty good debate about a lot of this. Do people oppose any Use of AI in writing or any other type of communication? How much is too much? Who decides how much I can see? And honestly: if the SVP of widget production wants to use ChatGPT to write a boring post about widget workflow automation, who really cares?
But I don’t think there’s any debate about the fact that a lot of real people have real anxiety about AI.
Tech leaders act baffled by this. They shouldn’t do it.
They spent a couple of years telling us that AI was going to reorder the entire world (and most likely most people’s jobs) and that its progress was unstoppable. During that same time, many of them became explicitly linked to Donald Trump, a man many, many people dislike. It would be strange if people they were not scared by this.
I agree with the technological point of view that AI is unstoppable. So I think all of this is probably reflected in a labeling regime.
In that world, the average person will spend a lot of time encountering AI and probably won’t know about it or think much about it. And for some consumers and some brands, an “AI-free” label will be a selling point, in the same way that a certain portion of our population pays more for organic foods.
And for many of us, it may be something that matters to us in different amounts, at different times and contexts. I really love an organic hot dog, and I also eat and buy a lot of super gnarly junk food made who knows where using who knows what. You may be fine with AI on your LinkedIn, but hate it on your Spotify.
The tech industry may be right that AI will be inevitable. But “inevitable” is different from “accepted.” And there will be money and opportunities to give people places where there are none.