We’re Doing AI All Wrong.

I’ve written a lot about AI lately, and I’ll admit, most of it is critical. Plenty of you have asked me why I’m so down on the sector. The crux of it is this: I think we’re approaching AI without considering history’s lessons, and because of that we’re failing to ask the questions that will matter as the technology becomes inextricably embedded in our culture.

Perhaps the most important question is metaphorical — what’s the best metaphor for how we interact with AI? We’ve got plenty of examples to chose from. Will our interactions with AI end up being like the PC — a personal device that we own and control? Or will it instead end up like social media or search (or worse, television) — a centralized service that is owned and controlled by large corporations?

As generative AI took root over the past few years, I’ve been watching the early returns, and they’re not encouraging. We’re barreling down the “AI as a service” road, oblivious to the tradeoffs we’re making along the way. If AI is indeed the most significant technological breakthrough of our lifetime, do we really want to adopt it into our lives under the same big tech business model that gave us Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, and the gig economy?

Just yesterday brought yet another story about how big tech’s approach to AI constrains our choices. In “Amazon Locks Down Against Google’s AI Shopping…