One thing right now is changing us as humans – and not always for the better
By Tim Duggan
One of the indisputable facts about AI is how quickly it has conquered the world. You only need to look at a single product from a single company to confirm this truth. Twenty-two months ago, OpenAI had not one product on the market, and now ChatGPT alone is used by more than 800 million people every week.
The AI arms race has been so stratospherically swift that many legal, moral and societal questions about it have been swept to the side in its wake.
An image of Donald Trump created by Grok, an artificial intelligence program owned by Elon Musk.Credit: Grok
In 2023, 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. These companies were “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds” they said, “that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict or reliably control”.
Sadly, their request fell on deaf ears – including Musk’s own as he’s raced to create his own problematic AI model – and the pace of technology has only increased since then.
It’s been willingly integrated into workplaces, team processes, households and governments around the world, and if you’re not using AI every day in your job, you are probably already falling behind.
But now, for the first time since Large Language Models (LLMs) awed us almost two years ago, it seems to be hitting a technological plateau. After a year of delays, OpenAI’s highly anticipated GPT-5 landed this month with an underwhelming thud, as many users openly mocked the minimal advancements and minor tweaks.
So if we have reached a welcome temporary pause, why don’t we take this moment to zoom out and assess where we are at. AI is a revolutionary technology, but that doesn’t mean we need to ignore several important questions, such as, how is it changing us as humans? Is it a sustainable business model? And what is the future of AI going to look like? These questions are obviously loaded and impossibly deep, but we’re starting to see some early answers.
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’.
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.
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.
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
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