Only things less popular than AI are Iran, Democrats

OPINION:

A recent NBC poll measuring the favorability of 14 line items found that the only things less popular than artificial intelligence among registered voters (a negative 20) are Iran (negative 53) and the Democratic Party (negative 22).

AI had worse poll numbers than U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement, sanctuary cities, Stephen Colbert, Kamala Harris and President Trump.

As politicians look to sell the American public on the AI revolution, casting data centers as a path to growth, investment and future prosperity, voters are rightly skeptical of the technology, having lived through the internet revolution.

When the World Wide Web became accessible to the public through browsers in the early 1990s, users were promised an information superhighway at home. The internet was a way to talk with friends instantly, connect with like-minded chat groups and access books, encyclopedias and newspapers that had previously been available only through libraries with card catalogs and microfilm readers.

Boy, did the internet deliver. As of 2020, it contributed about $2.45 trillion (more than 10% of gross domestic product) to U.S. economic growth, creating more than 17 million jobs through digital adoption and e-commerce.

A McKinsey & Co. study found that high broadband adoption in communities across America could increase business growth rates by more than 200% and per capita income by 18%. Efficiency across education, health care and business management improved as connectivity increased. U.S. businesses gained access to international markets through e-commerce, thereby expanding domestic manufacturing and agricultural competitiveness.

Now, nearly every American has a supercomputer in the palm of their hand. Goods can be ordered online and delivered to your home in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Work can be done remotely, allowing people to live and travel where they choose.

Yet this technology has had negative consequences that no one anticipated at the time of its advent. As social media usage exploded, so did depression and anxiety, especially among our youths. So much so that the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory in 2023 that it “cannot conclude that social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”

The advisory read: “Children and adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems.” This is especially concerning, given that recent studies indicate that youths ages 13 to 17 spend an average of 3½ hours a day.

In California, a young woman is suing Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Google’s YouTube, saying the apps led to her social isolation and mental health issues, including anxiety, body dysmorphia and depression. It is the first of more than 3,000 social media cases to go to trial.

The 20-year-old woman, described in court as Kaley G.M., testified that she uploaded more than 200 YouTube videos before she turned 10 and hand-created 15 Instagram accounts before she turned 15, spending more than 16 hours on Instagram in a single day.

“I wanted to be on it all the time,” she said. “If I wasn’t on it, I felt like I was going to miss out on something.”

Kayley noted that she easily bypassed screen-time limits and, after her mother took away her phone, would sneak out of her bedroom at night to steal it back.

Being without it, she said, “would just send me into a panic.”

Now, as AI is being touted as the future, politicians must address its potential pitfalls along with touting its economic benefits, because the American public has grown weary of its potential applications, for good reason.

A lawsuit alleges that Google’s chatbot Gemini sent a Florida man on a mission to secure a body for the AI illusion he called his wife. When the plan failed, the lawsuit alleges, Gemini convinced him that the only way to be with his lover was to end his life and start a digital one.

Two months after discussing the matter with Gemini, the man committed suicide.

Seven lawsuits filed in California allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT encouraged suicide and harmful delusions after interactions with the bot. Just this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI delayed the launch of its erotica “adult mode” for ChatGPT because advisers warned it could “foster unhealthy emotional dependence on ChatGPT for users” and that children could find ways to access its sex talks.

This is all in addition to worries about how AI will wipe out millions of jobs, erode classical education, such as the ability to read, write and compose art and music, and make it impossible to discern reality from fiction.

Yet neither Democratic nor Republican politicians are debating these issues with any sense of urgency or seriousness. Yes, AI will bring economic prosperity to some, but there will also be momentous downsides.

The NBC polls demonstrate that the American people are smart enough to recognize this. It’s now time for Washington politicians to address it.

• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.