Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism

The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms. And not in the ways that you already know — cheating on homework, drawing bad art, polluting the web — but in ones that feel surprising and new.

As is a common theme on this blog, I come back to the idea that internet discourse causes people to fall into very binary views of current events. There’s plenty of appetite for AI boosters who think it’s a bigger invention than fire and critics who think it’s just autocorrect with new branding, but nuanced opinions are harder to come by. For my part, I’m skeptical of many of the hype beasts’ claims, especially in how they want to apply AI to everything even if it’s not actually bringing user value, but I feel like I’d have to stick my head in the sand to say that it’s useless and just a glorified autocorrect.

On a related note, I was in a friend’s Tesla recently and they used autopilot to drive us from one location in town to another. I’ve been a self-driving skeptic for years, and I do still think we’re further away from it than the True Believers think we are, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed with how well it got us where we were going. I was similarly impressed with my Waymo experience earlier this year. Again, I don’t think my friend is going to be letting his Tesla taxi people around all day while he’s working or anything anytime soon, but I can see that progress is being made in this space.

Ultimately, my feelings are that skepticism of new technologies is very healthy, especially when they’re a wave of boosters out there suggesting this is The Next Big Thing and you gotta invest now, but I think that it’s important to let your impressions of tech evolve over time as well.