I believe that the pervasion of artificial intelligence will eventually trigger extreme reactions from segments of the populace. Some will react to the impact of AI data centers on electricity costs and local ecologies. Others will be angered by the impact of AI on labor, not just the displacement of human workers, but the further deskilling of workers and their increased alienation from the process and product of their labor. Lastly, there will be some who will decry AI’s undermining of people’s connection to reality. That is, many people will find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real photographs and AI-generated images, videos of actual human events and AI-generated fabrications, and the replacement of human relationships and connections with AI-based avatars. In fact, we already see these things occurring. These disaffected individuals and groups will posit that AI has occasioned a break of humanity from their social world, and will therefore conclude that AI’s societal impacts are intolerable.
I offer this to suggest that while much of the economy hinges on the success of artificial intelligence and while the so-called tech oligarchs increasingly bend the policy-making apparatus to their will, it is highly presumptive to believe that the ascent of AI will proceed absent any concerted human resistance. There will be resistance, some forms of which will be unpredictable. However, I think that it is highly plausible that many will consider AI to be a source of profound alienation, and thus an intolerable source of social and cultural malformation.
The future remains unwritten.