Is There Any Good Path for Everyday Communities in the Age of AI?

Whether taking in the news, one’s social media feed, using a software or just holding a conversation, artificial intelligence is now nigh on inescapable. At a social event I recently attended, someone even casually offered me use of their Meta Glasses, its integrated AI feature able to translate the foreign language being spoken at the event. 

Like most people in the UK, I am suspicious of the promises of AI, particularly of the large US firms driving the so-called AI bubble and most of their leaders. I reluctantly and broadly agree with clichéd phrases like “Artificial Intelligence should be assistive, not replacive” and “We may not like it, but AI is the future”. 

That is in spite of the numerous, anxiety-inducing, harmful consequences of AI. Corporations have thus far failed to adequately implement safeguards on AI products, or left them too easily circumvented. Governments struggle to draft and enforce regulations on those same products due to lack of knowledge or cooperation with large AI firms. 

AI’s discontents – though they may seem peripheral if one only uses ChatGPT or Gemini to search for basic information – cannot be ignored, whether the community and environmental harm caused by datacentres or the widespread discussion of labour market disruption via structural unemployment and complexified hiring. 

The effects aren’t being addressed, because as we know investors have staked a lot on the success of AI. The “AI arms race” between states to gain strategic advantage or achieve “AI Sovereignty” and avoid supply chain weaponisation doesn’t exactly help either. 

Such a panicked state of affairs is hardly concordant with the stated purposes of AI, to automate tasks, reduce human error and human repetition, and accelerate research and development efforts – in short, work productivity gains. 

Productivity gains are not inherently bad in and of themselves, but they may well be when distributed, or rather inflicted, unevenly. In one vision, AI is the cornerstone of “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism”. Closer to reality is the Bezosian Dystopia, where workers are turfed out of their roles, but remain to assist the AI to do the jobs. 

It has not yet been made clear that AI actually improves work productivity; instead, AI puts the cart before the horse. There are other drivers which do clearly improve productivity; “human capital”, strong logistical and communicatory organisation, innovation, goal orientated leadership, fair pay, and a worker wellbeing-focus.

These are much harder to get right – they require attention to detail, perseverance, good coordination, time, money, and adaptive management. It can seem much easier when the AI product promises to do all of the hard work of improving firm productivity for a sizeable subscription fee, and firm budgets are constrained by cost-push inflation. 

We might also wonder whether everyday communities need this level of productivity focus. Communities may be made from smaller firms such as corner-shops, pharmacies, pubs, and restaurants; charities dealing with domestic violence, social care, homelessness, and regeneration; local state bodies providing housing, archives, libraries, and cultural events. AI-led automation seems unnecessarily impractical – a reduction in costs would be more helpful. 

Instead, households, firms, councils and governments are only finding budget shortfalls and have to introduce automation in some way or another to cut corners; pubs might have customers use QR codes to order drinks, while charities must prove usage of AI to attract funds in increasingly competitive fundraising spaces. Local state bodies must meet targets, and automation may be the only way to meet them. 

The best path forward for everyday communities is a world in which we have neither a fully automated utopia, nor a fully automated Bezosian dystopia. Instead, it is a world where AI technology access is heavily restricted to segments of the economy that require speed-led productivity – typically those areas directly related to national security and tempered with genuine oversight by the central government. 

This approach requires a change in direction by the government. Rather than encouraging AI-driven products, as some ministries have done, they can administratively strangle the usage of AI by state bodies, by people who live in everyday communities, and ensure that large corporations with national security consequences are incentivised to swap any critical AI usage to British-made AI products. Everyday communities require more genuine interaction – not more artificial crutches.

Image: Flickr/Sandia Labs (Randy Montoya)

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