How much AI is too much? Everyone wants in on it, apparently, lured by the prospect of doing something new and innovative with it.
But alongside the genuine use cases for the technology – saving us from drowning under the boredom of repetitive tasks, protecting us from the AI-powered cybersecurity threats and allowing companies to save enough money to plough it right back into the technology – there are the more dubious scenarios.
AI labels are being slapped on older products to give them a shiny new look. AI has infiltrated our offices, our homes, our healthcare – even our bathrooms – with products that have no real need for technology. We have ‘AI-powered’ toothbrushes and cat translator apps, home appliances that learn from you and apps that will attend virtual meetings on your behalf.
Even eco-friendly shoe company Allbirds recently made the switch to an AI business, in a twist that no one would have predicted.
The question is how much of this technology is actually improving society, and how much of it is unnecessary, complicating our lives while quietly gathering huge amounts of data.
While the business world appears to be gung-ho for AI and all its benefits, consumers are a little more reticent. And the very market that AI needs to capture – those under 30 – are finding the technology increasingly frustrating, changing their lives in ways that are less than the utopia they were promised it would bring.
A report from Gallup published in April found that although around half of Gen Z users said they used generative AI, almost a third said the technology made them feel angry. Who would blame them? The much-promised benefits of the technology seem to be aimed more at the people making money from it than those trying to hang on to their livelihoods.
Even getting started seems to be an impossible, AI-filled task; candidates are using AI to fill out applications and employers are using the technology to sift through the prospects.
It is a vicious, AI-powered cycle and it feels as if there is no getting away from it.
[ Anthropic confidentially files for US IPO as investors bet big on AI futureOpens in new window ]
To paraphrase an expert on the subject – in this case, Anthropic’s chatbot Claude – AI is not neutral. It is built by humans, trained on our data, and open to every bias, blind spot and commercial interest of those behind it. When we use it blindly, we aren’t removing human judgment from the equation; we are simply making that judgment invisible and unaccountable.
In the end, it all comes back to trust. Can we trust the information that is being served back to us by AI? And can we trust the people who are responsible for designing these systems?
The recent spat between Elon Musk and OpenAI that played out in court gave us an insight into how things work inside some of the biggest tech companies pushing the advancement of the technology.
The billionaire had accused the company and founder Sam Altman of wrongfully trying to enrich investors and insiders at the nonprofit’s expense, breaching its founding principle of developing AI to benefit humanity. He had taken time out of his busy schedule of posting on X about space, societal issues and reposting Tommy Robinson’s updates to stand up to a fellow billionaire founder, ostensibly for the good of society. Not to mention taking some time away from building his own AI business, which (apparently) wants to accelerate human scientific discovery and understand the universe. Which I’m sure is a priority, alongside the investigations it is facing into its Grok chatbot’s nudification controversy.
In a ruling that surprised no one, Musk lost the case against OpenAI. But not before it dragged a few people through the mud. Altman was portrayed by former colleagues as an untrustworthy leader, a character assessment that he obviously disputed. Former chief technology executive (and one-time interim CEO) Mira Murati was thrust into the middle of events that led to Altman’s brief removal as head of OpenAI in 2023, and his subsequent return. And then you had Musk, being, well, Musk.
It wasn’t pretty. And it wouldn’t give most people paying attention to the saga any comfort that AI and the companies behind it should have our full confidence and embrace this technology even more closely into our lives.
So back to the original question: how much AI is too much? Regulators may make the decision for us. In the UK, the competition regulator recently ruled that Google must allow publishers the chance to opt out of having their content included in AI summaries. There is also the possibility that European authorities could tighten up copyright rules, raising fears that it may make it harder to train and deploy competitive AI systems in Europe.
Regardless of the source, whoever can answer that question satisfactorily might be able to win over consumers with the one thing that AI has so far been unable to guarantee: our trust.
