Roger’s $0.02 - A.I. As a Service, Hot Take

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Sitting through this year’s Google I/O event I was suddenly struck by the large-scale commitment to productize and integrate AI tools into the company’s web-based services. Google’s of course not alone. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta have all made big investments in the space. Everything from search assistant to document and image generation, if there’s a nice that can be filled with AI there’s a company angling to do it. But in the rush to AI everything I wonder how long we’ll have till we, consumers and society at large, get buyer's remorse?

While credible voices like Geoffrey Hinton and less credible ones like Elon Musk critique the speed at which AI tools and services are being rolled out, companies and organizations are making AI technology a priority. In other words, while a segment of the population vocally warns for a more circumspect approach to AI commercialization the money invested and public demand says the exact opposite. This leads, for me, to an interesting parallel to other technologies and products that were deemed to later be a public threat, PFAS. PFAS or Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a group of synthetic compounds that have been called “Forever Chemicals” due to their high resistance to breaking down to their constituent compounds. Popular examples of PFAS include water-repellent coating used on outdoor apparel, fighter fighting foam, and teflon-coated cookware. When PFAS products were introduced in the 1940s they were considered inert (non-reactive to other chemicals) and therefore safe. Recent studies in the past 20 years have revealed evidence to the contrary. In the US alone it’s estimated that healthcare costs from PFAS-related illness are as high as $62 billion. From increased rates of cancer to hormone disruption, PFAS has been found incredibly deleterious to human health. Its also been found in so many crucial aspects of modern life that a total blanket ban on them remains off the table in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, although with increasingly stricter regulatory constraints on their use.

AI promises to be a breakthrough in the way humans not only work but also generate ideas and interact with society at large. Yet in the current rush towards commercializing, I have a feeling will we be reacting to the repercussions of the technology well after it becomes embedded in our everyday lives. In the same way, data privacy and algorithmically proffered content on social media have now become a concern after high-profile incidents like Cambridge Analytica and a particularly contentious series of national elections in the US and abroad. Currently, the approach seems to have been somewhat inconsistent. Influential companies involved in AI are requesting government regulation while taking advantage of an industry still in its infancy that has no real oversight hoping to gain a leading position in the next big tech “thing”. In time I’m sure concerns over AI data privacy, false information, emotional well-being, and a number of other issues will be addressed. But I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of buyer’s remorse before we get to that point.