Using fear to sell Al is a bad idea

Constant warnings about the technology's power prime early users for disappointment.

- Elaine Moore

Eighteen months ago, I went to a party in San Francisco that was thrown to celebrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) as the next industrial revolution. The mood was cheerfully nihilistic. AI was about to demolish our way of life, said one partygoer. We were like farmers tending to our crops, unaware of the machinery that was on its way to chew us all up.

Safe to say, generative AI hasn't chewed up much of anything yet.

Accountants, designers, software engineers, film-makers, interpreters and all the other professions told to expect carnage are still in employment. Elections have not been stymied. The world is still turning. Those early warnings are starting to sound like a weird form of marketing.

Silicon Valley tends to be associated with optimism. The indefatigable sense that the world is on an upward trajectory is one of the tech sector's more loveable qualities. When starry-eyed plans don't pan out - Mr Elon Musk's claim that manned craft would be flying to Mars by 2024, say - the world can extend grace. There is an understanding that optimistic ambition is a good thing.

But optimism is not the only mindset that California breeds.

Across the tech sector, there is also a contingent that is driven by fear.