Growing AI scepticism reflects rising ethical and social concerns

There have been some major headlines around the world that suggest that AI has reached a moment of reckoning. For example, graduating students in major universities in the United States, such as the University of Central Florida and the University of Arizona, showed their disapproval over the graduation keynote speaker’s enthusiastic recounting of the potential of AI. They were clearly speaking to the wrong crowd. Fresh graduates are statistically most prone to facing an economy aided by AI, resulting in the loss of entry-level jobs.
This puts the question of Artificial Intelligence and its role in society front and centre. To be sure, there have been AI sceptics right from the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, but most have embraced these advances without looking into the wider social, cultural, or educational implications. That these studies are coming up now is a comment on how urgent it is.
A study in New Zealand found that only 2 out of every 5 respondents believed that AI would provide positive outcomes for society. The same study found that 68 per cent of users of services preferred to have a human to speak to in case of complaints and follow up – a number many of us would believe.
Interestingly, attitudes to the use of AI have been split geographically. While western countries report higher levels of scepticism about AI usage and prefer partial human intervention, South-East Asian countries have been documented to express higher levels of enthusiasm, aligning AI usage with efficiency while dealing with larger populations. Japan, with its aging population and stagflation, however, is already pushing back on increased use of AI.
As always, India shows a mixed picture with 16 per cent of respondents in a survey sharing concerns of ethics and copyright. This stands alongside data that employees trained in AI can boast of a 30-per cent increase in salaries.
Such data shows what is now considered to be an almost universal phenomena: what started out as a curiosity and willingness to try something new has now evolved into a faceless, nameless entity that has encroached every possible human activity, from accounting and medicine to painting and literature. Most people did not bargain for this wholesale control of our lives and creative pursuits.
Nor have the important questions propped up by AI been answered: ultimately, who controls this data? How are questions like bias, fairness and access addressed? Who owns the generated creative output like paintings, sculptures, or even novels, when co-written with AI?
The obvious advantages of AI have been documented early on: advances in medicine that makes it possible to perform a surgery in conflict zones from far away, building bridges with limited resources or even coding DNA to predict and prevent diseases. But, like with every other invention and advancement, it comes at a cost.
A few years of public use of AI has brought to the fore a host of social, cultural and ethical dilemmas. It will take many more years for them to be sorted. Meanwhile, conversations surrounding its usage need to be entertained and even encouraged.