Doom or Bloom
Question 1
What do you think AI means for our future—and why?
I would first separate current generative systems from the thinking machines imagined in science fiction. Asking whether a genuinely nonhuman mind might make better decisions is a philosophical question. Letting Amazon or another corporation use an algorithm to make decisions for workers and consumers is primarily a question about power. Calling both things “AI” obscures that distinction.
In the near future, I expect serious economic and social repercussions from companies adopting generative AI to cut costs. Those repercussions do not depend on the technology fulfilling its grandest promises. A company can eliminate jobs, degrade an industry, or reduce workers’ autonomy before discovering that the system performs poorly. Commercial disruption is not evidence of machine intelligence, just as technological disappointment does not undo damage already done.
The same distinction matters in art and education. Producing polished output is not equivalent to making the sustained choices that constitute artistic work, and completing an assignment is not equivalent to developing the capacities the assignment was designed to exercise. A tool can be useful for brainstorming, or help expert researchers identify patterns, without making delegation of thought desirable.
So I do not see one inevitable “AI future.” I see immediate choices about who controls these systems, whose judgment they replace, and whose interests they serve. Science fiction can help us examine more radical possibilities, including artificial persons, but it should not distract us from corporations already using ordinary systems to constrain practical human choices.
