The Human Cost of AI: Why We Need to Listen to Those Left Behind

From Fear to Wisdom: Why We Need to Listen to Our Feelings About AI

Philosopher John Gray said:

When negative feelings are suppressed positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies.

Until now,, my writing has all been about connecting with you, through ideas & analysis, about the impact of AI on society.

Yet, I have a growing sense that many people, perhaps most people, don't primarily understand or see the world that way much of the time.

We are thinking beings, yes, sometimes, but we are also very much feeling beings.

I've also come to understand, how you feel about AI, greatly affects how we understand AI.

How can we learn about & really understand AI, if we are fearful of it?

Fear is the killer of curiosity and understanding.

But how can we address our fears, and make better choices, and a better future about AI, unless we spend time listening to and understanding how people feel about this first?

This is something many people in the AI space have failed to do, including me.

Going Beyond AI Analysis

This post is going to be different...

I feel worried that my regular readers expecting an analytical post, might find this post strange... 

I'm also worried that I won't do it well, because, I've never tried to do anything like this or write this way before... and this is out of my comfort zone of writing.

So how might we find out how people feel about AI?

I've been in sharing circles in many forms of therapy.

One of the things I most value about sharing circles is having a good sense of how the whole group feels overall, after hearing a range of sharings from how different people feel.

To do something similar here, I've looked at qualitative studies on how people feel about AI. There are not many sadly, but I'm using this one which seems the most extensive.

I'm ignoring the analysis, and conclusions of this study, because this post is not about that. 

This is not really about analysing, or judging what people express, what is factually correct or not about what they say.

This post is more about hearing, giving space for, and trying to understand how a range of people feel about AI, in their own words.

What I have also done is distinguish between thoughts of the mind and feelings in the study responses, and I have only included responses that seem more about feelings than thoughts of the mind.

That is what this post is about, hearing people's feelings about AI.

I'll share a bit more at the end.

So let's begin...

How People Feel About AI - In Their Own Words

I feel like it’s one of those things that we’d all be diving headfirst towards, but maybe something that could have long-term implications for us as a society down the road that maybe we didn’t fully understand when we dove into it at first. 

So, when I think of AI, I have mixed feelings about it because I think about, ‘Will my job exist in the future, or will most jobs exist in the future?’ …. I think very few of us actually know what AI could be in the next year, ten years, 50 years from now. 

Are we phasing ourselves out?

It’s portrayed as friendly and helpful, but it’s always watching and listening … So I’m excited about the possibilities, but concerned about the implications and reaching into personal privacy

You talk to somebody about something and then an ad will pop up on your phone for it. It’s almost like you’re being listened to 

Scary. Out of control … are they [AI] going to take over. It’s going to be jobless.

There’s no guarantee that they [the people developing AI] are going to have any kind of integrity or confidentiality or anything like that. 

Are they going to take my information, are they going to sell it? So, it kind of makes you scared when other companies are buying it. 

But it also misses out on that human component where the (personal support worker) comes in and talks to you and things like that. 

Feeling The Fear About AI

How do you feel when you read these words? How does it impact you?

For me, the overriding feeling I get from reading all of these is: fear, most people seem to feel an incredible amount of fear about AI.

If you're wondering, did I somehow choose only the most fearful responses?

I didn't.

This is representative of the feeling responses of people to AI in the study.

How does this impact me? I feel incredibly sad about this.

For me, while I know we have many challenges to deal with around AI, overall I feel optimistic about AI for the benefits it could bring humanity, if used wisely.

I also feel sad, because I feel the only way we are going to ensure we use AI wisely, is if people better understand what AI is.

Only if we can all understand AI better, can we make better choices about it, including making good laws & regulation.

I worry about so many people being fearful and avoiding learning more about AI, being left behind, while at the same time, major AI companies rush ahead with the development and deployment of ever more advanced AI systems.

I see this growing gap between a small tech elite rushing ahead with AI, regardless of most people's growing fears about AI. 

This to me feels incredibly bad for society and humanity, and it doesn't have to be this way.

From Fear to Wisdom For AI

I have been part of that small tech elite that understands AI, and I am deeply troubled by this growing disconnect between them and the rest of society.

Is this also perhaps reflective of a bigger disconnect in society, a society that perhaps values only a certain kind of intelligence, the intelligence of the mind as the only kind that matters? 

What about our emotional intelligence and the intelligence of the heart? 

Is it intelligent to ignore how we feel as a society about AI?

Is it intelligent to just push ever faster with AI while leaving most people behind?

The fear many people feel around AI, paradoxically, might make the worst outcomes more likely - if this leads to people not learning or being curious to understand AI better, so we can make better, more informed choices.

I'd like us to work towards a better future, and for us to use AI wisely, together.

But that needs all of us to take more seriously the feelings & fears many people have around AI first.

We also need to be willing to also move beyond those fears, with more curiosity and education to understand AI better.

As Philosopher Debasish Mridha said:

Fear comes from the lack of knowledge and a state of ignorance. The best remedy for fear is to gain knowledge.

But how do you feel about this? Let me know in the comments.