The Growing AI Backlash: Is The Revolution Over Before It’s Even Begun?

McDonald’s thought an AI-made festive ad would spread cheer, but instead it sparked outrage.

It’s another example of big businesses, including Coca-Cola and Google, jumping on the generative AI bandwagon, leading to an increase in the momentum of the “AI backlash” that’s been brewing recently.

The term refers to a growing number of voices who make it clear that, rather than a force for great good, they believe AI is an overall net-negative for humanity, simply causing more problems and pain than it solves.

From its environmental impact to the threat to human jobs, creativity and intellectual property rights, even the most optimistic advocate can’t deny that while it has the potential to solve the world’s biggest challenges, there are also problematic aspects to AI.

So what’s prompted this backlash? Is it justified? And could it outweigh or derail the huge opportunities for doing good that AI could unlock?

Generative AI And Human Creativity

The McDonald's ad may have been quickly pulled following the outraged response it drew. But it still exists in the form of hundreds of teardown videos and blog posts condemning it as a crime against human creativity. A common complaint is that it’s clearly an example of a big corporation choosing to invest its marketing budget in AI-generated assets rather than commissioning human creatives, as it would have done in the past. Another is that it represents a further rise in the tide of “AI slop” that threatens to drown out authentic, human-made artistic content online.

The AI Bubble And Economic Collapse

With tech companies forecast to spend around $400 billion on AI infrastructure over the coming year, while U.S. consumers are expected to spend only $12 billion on AI services, some feel the math simply doesn’t add up. Critical voices point to what appear to be circularinvestment deals, creating the impression of economic activity but no real growth. This creates fear of a bubble, similar to the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, and the subsequent economic chaos that could be caused when it eventually bursts.

IP Rights

The creators of the McDonald’s ad have defended their work by saying, “AI didn’t make it, we did”. However, millions of human creatives are likely to disagree, believing strongly that their work is often used to train AI, without them receiving any payment or credit. Authors, artists and musicians are currently engaged in numerous lawsuits against AI companies that they claim are unfairly profiting from their work. Again, the end result would seem to be that the work of human creatives is undervalued. So not only are they less likely to find paid work, but they’re also not being paid when their existing bodies of work are used to train algorithms and generate profits from AI.

Hallucinations

Or, to be blunt, AI sometimes simply isn't any good! You only need to use it for anything but the most basic task to realize it often gets things wrong, makes stuff up, or just generally acts in a way that seems anything other than intelligent.

Put bluntly, AI still gets things wrong. Ask it to go beyond basic tasks, and it may invent facts, distort information, or present confident nonsense as truth. These failures, known as hallucinations, continue to undermine trust in AI where accuracy really matters. This has led some to saythat AI, particularly language-based generative AI, will simply never be accurate enough for really important jobs that we’re often told it will do in fields like science, medicine, finance and law.

Environmental Impact

AI algorithms require huge amounts of compute power, consuming vast quantities of energy and resulting in emissions and environmental impact. Googe, one of the leading providers of AI-as-a-service, has seen its energy usage increase exponentially since the arrival of generative AI, and global demand is only expected to increase. All of this has put dampeners on tech giants’ plans to move towards net-zero emissions while also adding considerably to the cost of residential energy bills — up to an additional $37 per month, according to one study.

The End Of The Road For The AI Revolution?

All of these criticisms point to genuine fears and serious issues that need to be addressed. AI is likely to transform almost every aspect of life, industry, and society, and the scale of that change is still hard to grasp. Change of this magnitude is unsettling by nature.

Concerns about job losses, threats to human creativity, economic disruption, and a growing flood of low-quality AI content are real and legitimate, and they deserve to be taken seriously.

So yes, many of the fears are absolutely justified. But does it mean the AI revolution is over before it’s even begun? Absolutely not.

The deciding factor will be how we, as users, developers and regulators, adapt to these threats. What safeguards will we put in place to mitigate the dangers? And how will we hold those who stand to profit from AI to their obligation to act responsibly and ethically?

The backlash we’re experiencing today is not only natural and predictable, but it’s also necessary to ensure we proceed with caution.

Those of us who genuinely believe AI has the potential to bring about lasting and wide-reaching positive change must listen carefully, and certainly not dismiss concerns as Luddite or technophobic.