The most important issues surrounding AI have nothing to do with what theoretical things AI can do for humanity, but rather how it is used, for what purposes, at what speed, and by whom.

Currently, AI is not being built to solve important social issues or to improve society for the people living in it, at all — Indeed, AI is compounding current issues and making people’s lives profoundly worse, even as it helps with scientific insight because of its pattern recognition and extrapolation capabilities. 

In its most forward facing form, AI search summaries, it has proven an untrustworthy technology that fabricates a great deal of the information served to the public. In one personal example, I asked Google’s Gemini What I could do to treat a rash on my arm and it suggested that I put my arm in boiling water. For me that was a turning point that completely undermined my trust in the technology. Afterwards, I began investigating the sources it was pulling from and found inaccuracies or bold face lies in as many as sixty five percent of the search queries that I was doing online when using it. I have since shut it off entirely, as a result, and do not intend to ever use it again.