AI TECH
Why We Need AI Critics Now More Than Ever
Every technology has — and needs — its critics
“Smartphones have ruined this generation,” declares my grandmother, seeing her grandkids slouched over their iPads and gaming consoles in the middle of the day.
“When I was a kid,” she explains, “we would spend our summer vacation outdoors. We explored nearby hills, picked up the weirdest pebbles we could find, and cycled along the creek till our legs gave in. I don’t remember coming home in the evening without muddied clothes or a bruised knee.
Technology is making these kids soft!”
The kids pay her no heed — what does she know about technology?
Today’s younger generation, having grown up in the age of digital innovation, understands that technological progress has (historically speaking) always improved the standard of living.
Sending emails is more convenient than painstakingly writing letters and waiting weeks for a reply; computer-aided design software offers more creative freedom and precision than stencils and templates; cloud storage boasts almost infinite storage capabilities compared to fragile CDs and DVDs.
Extrapolating this trend, we can expect future technologies to further improve the standard of living. It’s why we continue to research, experiment, innovate, and invest in digital technologies.
This must be evident to my grandmother, too, having lived in the world before and after the introduction of the internet.
New Digital Technologies = More Convenience
Continuous technological innovation makes the world a better place for us, and future generations. That’s the principle society is built upon, right?
Make the world a better place for your kids, so they can do the same for theirs.
Yet, ever so often, we see older generations criticizing the constant drive for technological innovation. They remind us of the older days when people looked up at one another, smiled, shook hands and discussed something as mundane as the weather — all because they didn’t have a screen ten inches from their faces.
While it’s easy to dismiss their criticism of technology by saying it’s misunderstood or driven by rosy retrospection, we’re seeing major push-back from younger, tech-savvy individuals against a certain technology today.
(No points for guessing, folks!)
So, why does AI technology have its critics?
I am disappointed with the current state of the web. We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked.
— Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web
Yes, that’s the creator of the Internet criticizing its current state.
He further states, “If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly.”
Spot on, Tim!
You see, like Tim, being critical of technology is healthy.
To validate the point, let me take you back to the earliest pioneers in history — the Stone Age humans.
Stone tools marked the first-ever technological revolution for our species. Around 2.5 million years ago, we started crafting simple hand axes for hunting, digging and cutting wood.
Yet, by the Upper Paleolithic period, between 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, this simple tool had sparked a revolution that would transform the idea of technological progress.
The rudimentary hand-held axe had paved the way for the bow-and-arrow.
It was a revolutionary shift in technology — one that was fueled by criticism.
Unless someone had criticized handheld weapons for their lack of range, precision and adaptability, the idea of projectile weaponry would never have taken form.
The invention of the bow-and-arrow allowed the Stone Age man to shoot game from a concealed position. It also offered greater precision while requiring less effort than throwing a spear. And, perhaps, it led to the coinage of the term “firing rate,” which has remained a mainstay in our modern vocabulary.
AI is to us what the bow-and-arrow was to the Stone Age man.
However, unlike the centuries-long transition from hand axes to the bow-and-arrow, steeped in the criticism and resolution of its drawbacks, AI technologies have emerged with little to no resistance over the past three decades.
Without criticism, ideas rarely improve upon their prototypes.
It is critical feedback that fuels iterative advancements — an assessment, not of the benefits, but the drawbacks of a technology, that ultimately leads to its refined version.
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.”
— Winston Churchill, 7th January 1939
It is not surprising then, that AI technology also has its critics.
We’re simply conducting a process of iterative revisions that every technology must undergo to reach its optimized version.
The difference is this: AI technologies are already moving at a lightning pace; too quick for its criticisms to be evaluated and the requisite changes to be implemented.
It’s like trying to change the tires of a Formula One car while it’s trying to break the lap record.
And the criticisms are not trivial either.
- McDonald’s experimental AI system, powered by IBM, interpreted drive-through orders including “a handful of butter, hundreds of chicken nuggets, and ice cream loaded with bacon.” The fast food giant announced it is winding down the “test” program.
- AirCanada’s AI chatbot provided incorrect information to a customer, leading to a legal case with the airline’s defence arguing that the chatbot was a separate legal entity “responsible for its own actions.”
- Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles attributed to fake writers — with made-up biographies and professional headshots. When people started asking questions, they simply deleted everything — and fired the magazine’s CEO.
- Google, the ubiquitous technology giant, added AI Overviews to its search, resulting in answers ranging from plain embarrassing to severely misinformed. Google has since then disabled AI Overviews for specific search queries.
Did you notice something in common with the above AI mishaps?
They are all large businesses and enterprises, pushing out half-baked products to leverage the first-mover advantage in the burgeoning AI landscape. This is precisely why AI critics are necessary more than ever.
What happens when a pharmaceutical manufacturer starts developing drugs using an AI algorithm that hasn’t gone through a rigorous, critical assessment? Oh, hold on!
Or a financial institution decides to leverage AI for trading, but loses millions of dollars through a completely avoidable oversight? Wait, that sounds familiar!
AI is moving ahead at an unprecedented pace, whether we like it or not. But like every technology, it needs its critics.
And the time for AI critics is now.
AI hasn’t simply improved upon an existing technology but added a completely new dimension, opening the doors to unforeseen (and potentially harmful) avenues.
Today, I can create deepfake audios/videos of strangers or populate a social networking site with misinformation in just a few clicks. I can execute an AI-powered cyber-attack or manipulate stock markets with algorithmic trading.
Heck, I can even personalize a context-aware phishing attack on an unsuspecting individual, thanks to AI-driven behavioral analysis.
That’s like giving an AK-47 to a Stone Age man who has just mastered the spear.
Every technology has and needs its critics because every technological innovation comes at a price. We are wired to innovate, but we now need to hard-wire ourselves to ask “Should we?” before asking “Can we?”
That’s the role AI critics need to play in the inevitable Age of AI.
Think back to the last technology that brought about an irreversible societal change: social media. It brought us closer to each other — but also to cyber-bullying, data privacy violations and more effective distribution of misinformation.
With AI emerging as the defining technology of our time, we need more critics to ensure we don’t repeat the same mistakes. Perhaps there are risks we are yet to consider, and a measured approach, driven by criticism of drawbacks and their potential implications, is an ideal way to proceed.
Yet, criticism for its sake is a double-edged sword.
Criticism of AI technology needs to be part of a larger, multi-level mechanism to assess, understand and address its potential risks. An approach that takes into consideration the opinions of not only the (money-hungry and so-far callous) board members of AI corporations but ethicists, legal experts, policy-makers, technologists, data security experts, sociologists and others who can offer a broader perspective.
Anyone who can potentially be affected by AI technology can be critical of its unchecked development —from graphic designers and writers worried about being replaced to parents concerned about their children’s deepfakes or misinformation being as accessible as cat videos on the internet.
The fact is we do not fully understand the potential of AI yet.
Like our ancestors being critical of stone axes, it is time for us to listen to our primal instincts to ensure we don’t create something that we cannot control.
After all, the ramifications of not criticizing reckless, revenue-driven AI innovation may be too great to reconcile later.
As my grandmother would say, “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Whether it would be used for warmth or war was always up to us.”
Thank you for reading!
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