https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/920401/gen-z-ai
"It’s been almost three years since Silicon Valley started aggressively pushing
large language model-based chatbots like ChatGPT as the supposedly inevitable
future of everything, and there’s no group that has felt the pressure quite
like Gen Z.
Like with many tech trends before it, it’s no surprise that young people are
among the biggest adopters of AI chatbot tools. But contrary to the tales spun
by tech companies like OpenAI and Google, polling data shows that Gen Z
students and workers are a big part of the wider cultural backlash against AI.
And even as they utilize these tools, vast swaths of young people are deeply
acrimonious and even resentful of the AI-centric future that many feel is being
forced on them.
Far from the stereotype of lazy young people looking for shortcuts, Gen Zers
have had some of the loudest and most detailed objections to generative AI use.
Their attitudes also reflect a much wider backlash against AI and the tech
industry in general, which has recently resulted in a nonpartisan movement
against data centers across the country and threatened both CEOs and
politicians supportive of Silicon Valley’s AI frenzy.
Meg Aubuchon, a 27-year-old art teacher living in Los Angeles, says their
response and that of many of their peers has been to avoid chatbot tools
entirely. “It just makes me want to dig my heels into a career where I never
have to use AI, even if that’s a career that isn’t going to pay as well,”
Aubuchon told
The Verge.
Emerging from academia and into the vice grip of an increasingly brutal job
market, young people face an impossible contradiction. They are being told, on
the one hand, that these tools are going to eliminate millions of jobs, and on
the other that they have to use them if they don’t want to fall behind. They’re
the first new generation of adults to navigate a world flooded with chatbots
and generative AI slop, after having already lost years of their youth to the
covid-19 pandemic. And all the while, Silicon Valley’s multitrillion-dollar
push for AI adoption is clashing with their fears of its well-documented
impacts — on the environment, disinformation, academic integrity, and our
social fabric and emotional well-being, to name just a few.
“The part that feels scariest to me is the human impact, because it impacts
people on an individual level and how they relate to other people, whether that
be their ability to have relationships or just basic communication,” said
Aubuchon."
Via Joyce Donahue.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
