Perfect for investors, AI is everything and nothing simultaneously. It is a technology that will revolutionize the world, upend the workforce, but also can’t handle working a shift at a Taco Bell drive-thru. Backlash to it is growing vast and deep, as popularity for the emerging tech continues to dwindle in polling. And yet it perseveres, not just from parties financially invested in it, but young people who feel they have no other choice.
In a report from Janus Rose at The Verge, some of the lowest approval for AI use is coming from the same people who use it the most. Only 18 percent of Gen Z say they feel hopeful about the future of AI, and nearly 50 percent saying they feel the risks outweigh the reward. Despite that, 56 percent say they still use AI in their lives.
“The fact that so many young people are well aware of these dangers even as they make use of the tools shows that they aren’t buying the hype of AI boosters,” writes Rose. “Instead, it suggests that Gen Z is hyper-aware of the tools’ limitations — from their well-documented tendency to “hallucinate” made-up information to the social and emotional cognito-hazards of relying on machines for human advice.”
From public institutions to the press, Gen Z are being inundated by the message that AI is going to both destroy their future job prospects, but at the same time, is a necessary tool to find employment. Similar friction is coming from educational institutions. While many colleges and universities are being given financial incentives to implement AI on campus, their teachers struggle with the ethical implications and evidence that it will make students dumber.
These contradictions have become a defining trait for AI as its biggest cheerleaders search for a practical use. Many companies have reduced their workforce for AI dreams, only to rehire people to correct the computer’s mistakes. Sam Altman says the cost-benefit of raising humans to adulthood is far greater than what OpenAI offers (normal!), but at the same time, Sora was so prohibitively expensive that it bled one million per day. Disney wants you to use AI to imagineer all your favorite characters in tailor-made adventures, so long as you pay them ticket fare for your own daydreaming. The use case is becoming so far-fetched that we’re now talking about building moon cities just to cool data centers.
As usual, the youngest are sitting in the front row as this whole dystopian affair unravels. The most familiar with AI are the ones most skeptical of its application. One person Rose spoke to compared AI to fast food, obviously detrimental to your long-term health, but hard to knock once 3AM rolls around.
“AI use has become culturally toxic,” writes Rose. “The use of AI-generated visuals and text is frequently a subject of ridicule on social media, and any anecdotal sampling of young people will suggest that most find it fake and deeply uncool — especially when it’s used to circumvent the creative process and pass off ugly-looking slop as ‘AI art.’”