AI through our eyes – three generations’ perspectives
AI is no passing fad – it’s already embedded in everyday tech and growing fast. With concerns around ownership, safety and fairness, the challenge now is how we regulate it. David Doren speaks to people across generations to explore hopes, fears, and what comes next.
As told to David Doren | Illustration by Luara Hurst
Mark: Generation X (1965 – 1980)
My main frustration with AI is when I contact various companies like my energy, television and broadband providers over the phone or online and I expect to speak with a human being. I get frustrated, annoyed and anxious when I get a response-based service. I also have a lack of trust in AI projects compared to humans who I’m sharing personal information with.
Being housebound and dealing with a machine-generated question and answer algorithm gives me a feeling of helpless isolation as I am not speaking and interacting with a human being. AI is incapable of knowing if my mood is up or down. Therefore, it can’t act accordingly to this with reassurance and words of support that I need and depend on.
I live in constant fear of the prospect that the majority, if not all, business will be online, and I’ll have no human contact at all with anyone. This inevitably taps into my anxiety and it starts consuming my thoughts negatively, until I start overthinking things and catastrophising over the possibilities of how events will pan out in ever increasing scenarios. Like what I would do if there’s a fault and my internet or phone line fails. It's also becoming more expensive to stay connected to the internet as costs keep increasing.
Rebecca: Generation Y / Millennial (1981 – 1996)
I work in the art industry, so AI is a widely-debated topic within my field. The most prevalent and noticeable issue is the non-consensual appropriation of working and living artists’ work.
A lot of us are familiar with seeing scenes fed to us on social media that feature far-off lands and overtly cute animals (one AI image even fooled the art critic for The New York Times).
Artists will figure out a way to use it as a tool in their larger practice. There is a lot of experimenting and exploring from a creative’s perspective.
I have read that AI still has bias against women and other marginalised members of the community. There are many biases and challenges that affect the most vulnerable in our community that need addressing outside of AI. If we want an unbiased AI assistant, it needs to be fed unbiased materials – that’s on us.
I believe that AI is still an amazing tool and if it were regulated appropriately, would have remarkable benefits to society at large, without taking advantage of individuals.
Andrew: Generation Z (1997 – 2010)
AI has applications used in many of today’s apps. You can create media which would have required a recording studio to produce, but now it’s at your fingertips. It can raise issues though, on who has ownership over the content of AI-created works. There is also the seedier side of using it to create deep fake content of real people saying or doing all kinds of things.
AI is also like a cheat code, and can be intentionally or unintentionally manipulated to bypass certain security measures put in place by search engines that protect people from finding harmful information.
Advances in AI technology and quantum computing are accelerating problem-solving capabilities. It won’t be long before they solve complex mathematical equations, which would’ve taken many years by mathematicians and physicists to solve.
I have a young child, and I fear what the future holds for them. It’s always at the back of my mind, how soon it will be before they get access to things unsuitable for their age group? Or worse, things which could have a greater influence on them in later years.