From the Editor’s Desk: AI Level Set (Premium)

Like many of you, I’m shocked by the sudden rise of AI-generated content and by the news that this will soon be commonplace virtually everywhere that work gets done. But I’m even more shocked by the gullibility of those around me who are supposed to be more objective about this advance. Have we learned nothing over the years?

AI has dominated the news cycle for the past two weeks. It’s inescapable. On the last episode of Windows Weekly, Leo presented his usual fair take on both sides of the AI argument, leading to some interesting conversation. But it was a throwaway aside, that one doesn’t realize it when they’re living through history, that kept my mind racing. And a few days later, it suddenly dawned on me that, actually, sometimes you do realize it. Of course you do: ask anyone who lived through 9/11, the violence of the 1960s, or the start of World War II and they’ll tell you. What’s not understood at the time is how things will resolve, and the resulting fear and uncertainty is perhaps what we remember most of all.

Whatever your take on the AI revolution that’s now sweeping the world---whether you’re a bright-eyed Pollyanna or a sandwich board-wearing doomsayer---we should at least agree on this: there is the pre-AI world that we used to live in and, after we get through the current period of uncertainty and fear, there will be the AI era that we will be living in. Beyond that is just details.

Looking past the emotional aspects of AI---mostly worries about the industries and jobs it will destroy---I feel that AI is in many ways the ultimate expression of personal technology, something that will give so much but also take away so much. And I worry that we won’t consider both sides of this horrible truth in our rush to embrace this new technology. Because we’ve never done so.

As a long-time Microsoft reporter, I’m also a little freaked out by the overly-positive press that Microsoft is getting now for Bing AI in particular. There are a few salient points worth remembering here. First, Microsoft didn’t invent any of this technology; it’s licensing it from OpenAI and mixing it with the dubious search history of Bing, a lackluster product no one was at all interested in as recently as just a few days ago. And secondly, counting out Google is a mistake, and one that betrays a lack of understanding of how entrenched dominant products and services work: being as good as or just a bit better than Google isn’t going to earn Bing an appreciable part of the market. (On the flip side, even small usage share gains for Bing will be a positive development revenue-wise.)

Let me be blunt. All the AI in the world can’t save the Oldsmobile of personal technology from itself. The question is whether this problem can even be fixed.

Actually, I’m not...