One came from researchers at MIT a few months ago who theorised that writing an essay using OpenAI’s software was eroding our critical thinking abilities. They called this the “cognitive costs” of using AI to think for us. Now, the sample size was admittedly small, and it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, but it’s an early indicator of how AI is changing the way we work and possibly even think, and not always for the better.
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The second common question concerns the growing AI bubble and if it’s going to burst. The hype certainly has echoes throughout history, from tulips to dot com, and the eye-watering valuation any business can get by simply adding AI to their name might be dead giveaway. There are intense costs to AI, economically and environmentally, and the numbers don’t always add up.
The Australian government is facing intense pressure from big tech right now to sacrifice the bedrock principle of Australian copyright on the altar of AI, all in the name of “productivity”. But please, let’s call this exactly what it is: theft.
I’m the chair of the Digital Publishers Alliance, a group representing the leading independent publishers in the country. In meeting after meeting, I am yet to hear a valid reason that justifies large tech companies stealing original work of Australian authors, musicians and publishers that everyone else must pay for, outside vague assertions of “innovation”. AI is a generational new technology, but if the business model relies on stealing other people’s content and repackaging it with a subscription, it’s not going to be sustainable.
Elon Musk and more than 1000 tech leaders were so aghast at the speed of change that they wrote an open letter urging a moratorium on the development of the most powerful types of AI.Credit: AP
The final open-ended question is: where is all this heading? We know the direction the AI companies want to accelerate us towards, and in the heady whirl of recent years they’ve decided to drag us there whether we want to go or not.
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The future of this technology has yet to be written, so let’s please take this brief pause in advancement to decide what kind of future that should be. Of course, we’d all love some of AI’s efficiencies to be integrated into our workplaces and homes, but it shouldn’t come bundled with unintended consequences that we haven’t fully thought through.
Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com