I’ve got a love-hate relationship with AI and it’s not AI’s fault

Last year we went to a few Xmas parties and AI was the number one hot topic of conversation. Everyone from website builders to book publishers raved to me about how AI was the best thing since sliced bread and told me we couldn’t even imagine what the future looked like now that it was here. The more about AI I heard, the more my skin started to itch.

I grew up in the 1990’s, in awe of super models, inhaling the fashion magazines that served them up. What we didn’t know back then though was that the photo shoots were doctored. Already-beautiful models were Photoshopped, elevating their good-looks to stratospheric new heights of gorgeousness. Editors from Vogue, Elle, Marie-Claire, Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly shared a single lens of what beauty looked-like for women.

Every month, we would pour over the pages of these magazines. We diligently read articles telling us to drink at least two litres of water a day for radiant skin and followed diet advice so we could have ‘beach-ready’ bikini bodies. The inference was, if you follow our advice, you too could look like a super model. Turns out it was a double bluff. Blemish-free skin and a thigh-gap is mostly genetic. And when it isn’t, the digital editors would smooth-over what the fashion editors didn’t like.

What we were served up in fashion editorial/advertorial wasn’t real, it was a figment of someone’s imagination. I feel like every generation gets suckered into at least one good hoax in their lifetime, and Photoshop in the 90’s was Generation X’s.

AI reminds me a little of those times. Not because of the artificial content it generates. It’s the bit that happens before that, the bit with the code and the source it sips from.

I was a little alarmed last year when I was chatting to an IT security consultant and he denied the idea that AI code is written by a human. He went on to assure me that AI codes and algorithms were far too long and complicated to be written by a person. I countered that unless these mega-sums grow on trees, then odds-on a human made it.

AI code is written by people. People with their own individual hopes, dreams and internal bias. People at distinctive life stages, within sets of demographics, and all complete with their lived-in experience of life to date. It’s through their lens that these codes operate. Their code is the framework that guides and sets the parameters of the search.

Where does the code go looking for research? The internet, of course!

Whilst 55% of the internet is reported to be serving websites in English, only 25% of internet users are native English speakers. That’s a 30% over-indexed gap between user to content ratio. And who are these enthusiastic uploaders? Straw poll of one, my guess – the Karen’s and the Bro’s – across everything from TikTok, Fortnite, X, Counterstrike, Facebook, Among Us, YouTube and beyond.

In broad brushstrokes, AI generated content is a product of three moving parts: the code that researches and recommends, the source it gathers data and the directive from the user. I’m ok with all of that and full disclosure, I’ve even dabbled in using it myself.

But back to the Xmas party circuit. I realise now why I felt so irked on being sold the AI dream. As these lovely, smart and professional peers earnestly explained to me how amazing AI is, I felt like I was back in the 1990s. I was reminded of an era where magazine editors, diet companies and fashion brands sold us a dream, covertly driven by their opinions, bias and agenda.

Fast forward to now and I’m all for tech advancements, but once bitten, twice shy. This time around, I’m going to need to have to see what lies beneath the gloss before I buy in.