There is no running away from artificial intelligence. Open any newspaper, website, podcast or social media feed, and there it is.
AI will save humanity. AI will destroy humanity. AI will steal your job. AI will create your next job. AI will become your colleague, your boss, your therapist and, at this rate, probably your marriage counsellor too.
I, too, have been guilty of jumping on the AI bandwagon and writing about it.
Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT has become one of the world’s most searched terms on Google. Yet, we are astonished by lawyers who are caught citing AI-hallucinated cases in court while we continue to source information from the same platform for our own purposes.
Everyone is doing it; we tell ourselves.
Then there’s the fear factor.
The impact of AI on human intelligence is already the subject of intense debate among researchers. According to the Harvard Gazette, a recent study found that “excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions” contributes to a shrinking of critical thinking abilities.
To make matters worse, research showed that students who used AI to write essays had lower neural engagement and brain connectivity than those who worked unaided.
Fear not; this current anti-AI sentiment will probably follow the same dramatic cycle as every other revolutionary craze.
When calculators appeared, teachers worried children would forget mathematics. They were right to some extent.
Today, many adults require assistance just to divide a restaurant bill by three. Thank heavens for the calculator function on smartphones. But the world did not succumb to numerical illiteracy.
When television appeared, critics warned it would destroy reading, family interaction and intelligent thought. Sorry, that didn’t happen.
Other experts declared that television would make newspapers extinct. Fat hope. Newspapers continued for decades until, alas, social media transformed every smartphone owner into a part-time journalist, political analyst and food critic.
Then came the internet. Experts promised a global village of enlightened citizens exchanging ideas politely.
Oops. Instead, half the population ended up watching videos of animal and baby stunts on YouTube, while the other half became addicted to TikTok clips.
More recently, social media has been predicted to unite humanity. However, it only succeeded in allowing complete strangers to argue with one another at all hours of the day.
So now, we have AI.
Soon, refrigerators may automatically order groceries before we realise we are out of milk. Toothbrushes may shame us for brushing for less than three minutes. Rice cookers may analyse our emotional state and gently inform us that we are stress-eating again.
Even businesses have become stricken with AI fever.
Executives who once struggled to attach PDF files to their emails now speak confidently about “leveraging generative AI ecosystems for scalable synergy solutions”.
Say that again, please, because very few people fully understand what this means. Yet, we still nod politely because the presentation slides are AI-animated and accompanied by AI-enhanced voiceover and music.
If history is any guide, society will eventually calm down. After all, human beings adapt remarkably quickly. We panic needlessly, overreact dramatically and then quietly move on to the next obsession.
Once the breathless headlines fade and the endless sound bites fall silent, AI will remain not as a miracle or a menace, but as part of everyday life.
It will simply become another background utility, quietly humming away, while humanity discovers a brand-new trend to lose its collective mind over.
Until then, AI here, AI there, AI everywhere. And every Tan, Malik and Hari will continue speaking about it with the utmost reverence.
Amen to that.
