Japan is turning footsteps into energy… jk.
But that’s an example of one of the many ways AI is enclosing the internet. We, as young people, have seen its slow creep into our lives, from uncanny AI generated images to Russian bots celebrating Putin’s gains in the Donbas. But old people haven’t. They haven’t grown up immersed in social media, they haven’t seen AI develop into fruit love island firsthand, they’ve just heard about some new cost cutting technology surrounded by buzzwords and Silicon Valley investment.
A seemingly logical argument for AI’s unchecked development is how people are always scared of new technology, folks thought radio would pacify us, tv would make us larval. But this is different. In the past it’s been older generations who have feared the new tech but – and this is the point of our editorial – with AI, it’s us young people, who have experienced it more and understand it better, that dislike AI, and deliverable-streamlining and productivity-maximising old folks, who don’t know AI, that fund and embrace it.
Another argument minimising our fear of AI is financial, ‘AI is a bubble, soon it will pop’. Current AI investment is a bubble, that’s clear to see in the US stock market, but when the AI bubble pops, the US government will bail them out just like they did with the dot com bubble. Washington, among others, has invested many billions of dollars in AI, thanks to its current and potential economic, military, and national intelligence benefits. The dot com bubble burst, but we still all use google.
In terms of labour, the argument goes that new technology, like the sewing machine or tractor, frees humanity from menial work so we can move into more specialised and skilled careers. This doesn’t hold for AI, where the expertise and expression that we have always seen as uniquely human, music, art, poetry, writing, film, etc. are themselves the frontline of AI expansion. AI isn’t replacing children mining Cobalt in the Congo, its replacing writers, transcribers, programmers, accountants, because human labour is still cheaper on the ground. It’s jobs in the digital world, anything involving words and numbers (so almost fucking everything) that can be performed cheaper and quicker by AI than university graduates.
The scale of AI’s integration into our world should be the choice of young people. It’s us who will have to live with its consequences.
