The one question AI needs to answer to avoid the pitfalls of other massively hyped tech

Generative AI is the story of technology of the last three years. But will it be story of the next three?

After all, those of us who have been in or adjacent to the wider tech industry for any period longer than that likely remember hearing a whole lot of hype about some other emerging trends — NFTs, cryptocurrency, the Metaverse and augmented reality/virtual reality/mixed reality, even "bots" — that never really seemed to take off in a mainstream way.

Obviously, cryptocurrency has become something of a massive, multi-billion dollar market — but is largely used for speculative trading and illicit substances and ransomware . The Metaverse and XR and NFTs, by contrast, have all so far failed to become major markets or parts of most people's lives around the world.

The Future of AI and Work

Generative AI is integrating more and more into day-to-day work and there’s no slowing down. At VentureBeat’s Transform 2024, July 9-11 in San Francisco, 微软 's WorkLab Cofounder and Copilot GM, Colette Stallbaumer , will take the stage to talk about the latest research on the state of AI at work, where and how to integrate gen AI into existing workflows, and how customer feedback and requests influence Copilot development and innovation. Don’t miss it!

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That could change, of course. It's too early to write off any of these technology advances for good. And already, AI seems off to a brighter start, with a Pew Research Center survey from early 2024 revealing 23% of U.S. adults had used OpenAI 's ChatGPT in particular, up from 18% in July 2023. Furthermore, usage among ages 18-29 spiked from 33% in 2023 to 43% in 2024, nearing half of that entire age group (largely Gen Z). Common uses included work, learning, and entertainment.

Yet, just as notably, the opposition to, and criticism of, generative AI has also increased since 2023, with artists and media companies such as The New York Times and just this week, Center for Investigative Reporting , as well as major music labels , suing AI startups for copyright infringement over unauthorized scraping of the data the plaintiffs posted to the web — which AI companies use to train their models on.

One computer scientist who received a PhD from 美国斯坦福大学 , Ali Alkhatib , even recently published a piece entitled, provocatively, "Destroy AI ," in which he states:

"I’m gravitating away from the discourse of measuring and fixing unfair algorithmic systems, or making them more transparent, or accountable. Instead, I’m finding myself fixated on articulating the moral case for sabotaging, circumventing, and destroying “AI”, machine learning systems, and their surrounding political projects as valid responses to harm."

While clearly not the majority view (yet), my own feed on X is filled with people of not dissimilar persuasions bemoaning such AI generated media as the new Toys 'R' Us commercial and the general increase in AI generated content around the web, including the often hilariously bizarre AI generated images posted to Facebook and catalogued dutifully by one of my favorite X accounts, "Insane Facebook AI Slop ."

Many of the concerns and criticisms I've seen among AI skeptics and detractors are not just about the data scraping, but the energy requirements and subsequent environmental impact that training and serving up AI model inferences is having on our already dangerously warming world .

Less potentially devastating for life on Earth, yet alarming in its own right, are the viewpoints expressed by some AI executives that content posted on the internet is essentially "freeware" and can be scraped by them to do with whatever they wish, or, in the case of Perplexity AI (whose CEO Aravind Srinivas is one of the featured speakers at our upcoming #VBTransform2024 conference in San Francisco July 9-11 , with limited tickets still available ), circumventing explicit requests by media companies not to scrape their data (such as Wired magazine, where my wife works as editor-in-chief).

So even though AI usage has increased, and model providers tout its benefits to provide efficiencies primarily to professional occupations and enterprises, there is still a chorus of critics who are not unfounded in their concerns about whether the cost of AI — not pure monetary — but socially, energetically, environmentally — is worth it.

Indeed, while AI provides some undeniable capabilities, that alone might not be enough to convert the critics or win over all of society. After all, the insecticide DDT was effective too , but its side effects — cancer and a variety of health conditions extending across multiple generations — were so great that much of society ended up aggressively limiting its use.

Same with chlorofluorocarbons — used in aerosol sprays and packaging — which were linked to the hole in the ozone layer and summarily banned and limited as well . Given the environmental concerns and real data supporting climate change I linked to above, society may (rightfully) decide fossil fuels are another technology whose cost does not outweigh its benefits.

All of which leads me to the key question generative AI needs to answer now if it is to remain a fixture of mainstream society and our lives going forward: does generative AI create more opportunities and solve more problems than it creates?

Does generative AI create more opportunities and solve more problems than it creates?

I don't know the answer to this question, or even when or how we can definitively answer it. But if I were building generative AI tech or seeking to use it in my business or organization, it's the one I would be focused on trying to answer as soon as I could.

That's all for this week. Happy Independence Day in advance to my fellow American readers. For the rest of you: I hope to see you at VB Transform 2024 in San Francisco on July 9-11 , where I'll be moderating several interesting panels and attending many more as an audience member. If you are interested in attending but have budgetary concerns, please contact me directly here on LinkedIn messages and I'll see if we can make an accommodation for you.

— Carl Franzen

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