AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t
AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t
本应赢得大众青睐的 AI，为何至今仍未如愿？
Despite its technological progress, AI’s reputation out in the real world is getting worse. On Wednesday, Axios reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to top AI companies warning that U.S. data centers are hurting the party’s chances in a key Ohio election. At the same time, Pew Research released a study that found that Americans’ unease about AI is growing — 52% said they’re “more concerned than excited” about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.
尽管技术在不断进步，但 AI 在现实世界中的声誉却每况愈下。周三，Axios 报道称，美国共和党参议院全国委员会向顶级 AI 公司发送了一份备忘录，警告称美国的数据中心正在损害该党在俄亥俄州关键选举中的胜算。与此同时，皮尤研究中心发布的一项研究发现，美国人对 AI 的不安感正在加剧——52% 的受访者表示，对于 AI 在日常生活中的普及，他们感到“担忧多于兴奋”，这一比例高于 2021 年的 37%。
A recent CNBC poll of 18- to 34-year-olds found that, when given the names of nine top leaders in the AI industry, a majority of the respondents said they don’t trust those people to “act responsibly” when it comes to AI. A May Economist/YouGov poll found that over 70% of Americans think AI is advancing too quickly. The list goes on.
最近，CNBC 对 18 至 34 岁人群进行的一项民意调查发现，当列出 AI 行业九位顶级领袖的名字时，大多数受访者表示，他们不相信这些人能在 AI 问题上“负责任地行事”。5 月份的一项《经济学人》/YouGov 民调显示，超过 70% 的美国人认为 AI 的发展速度过快。此类负面反馈不胜枚举。
All that discontent is starting to show up on balance sheets. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that tech companies are facing a public relations crisis over their plans to build AI data centers across the U.S., leading them to agree to sweeten the deals — offering job guarantees, clean water investments, and other local perks. (In one case, that even included $50,000 bonuses for teachers in a Louisiana parish.) The underlying sentiment spanning these stories is that consumers don’t see how AI is making their lives better, but they’re still being asked to absorb the costs.
所有这些不满情绪正开始体现在财务报表上。本周《华尔街日报》报道称，科技公司因计划在美国各地建设 AI 数据中心而面临公关危机，这迫使他们不得不通过提供就业保障、清洁水投资和其他地方性福利来优化交易条件。（其中一个案例甚至包括为路易斯安那州某教区的教师提供 5 万美元的奖金。）贯穿这些报道的潜在情绪是：消费者并没有看到 AI 如何改善他们的生活，却仍被要求承担相应的成本。
For an industry that has raised hundreds of billions of dollars on the promise of AI’s inevitability, that souring public sentiment is becoming a business problem, not just a PR debacle, and the industry’s own leaders are starting to notice.
对于一个凭借“AI 不可避免论”筹集了数千亿美元资金的行业来说，这种恶化的公众情绪正演变成一个商业问题，而不仅仅是公关灾难，行业领袖们也开始注意到了这一点。
Today, many consumers think of AI in narrower terms, like AI chatbots or AI search experiences (like the now AI-transformed Google). They see AI features infiltrating their everyday products, from email to TVs, whether they wanted them or not. They view AI as a tool that’s helping kids cheat in school, including at the college level, raising questions about the value of a degree. They hear of AI bots training on piles of intellectual property belonging to others so AI can be used to create art, videos, music, and writing — things that have historically been the output of humans.
如今，许多消费者对 AI 的理解更为狭隘，将其视为 AI 聊天机器人或 AI 搜索体验（如现在已转型为 AI 驱动的谷歌）。他们看到 AI 功能正渗透到日常产品中，从电子邮件到电视，无论他们是否需要。他们将 AI 视为帮助学生在学校（包括大学阶段）作弊的工具，这引发了人们对学位价值的质疑。他们听说 AI 机器人利用他人的大量知识产权进行训练，从而创作出艺术、视频、音乐和文字——这些历史上本应由人类产出的成果。
It’s no shock then that AI appears to be facing more consumer backlash than other transformative technologies did, like the iPhone, the personal computer, or even the internet itself, at similar stages of adoption. Yet there are still those surprised by consumers’ reaction. They assumed AI’s adoption would lead to acceptance, and its ubiquity would ultimately have consumers feeling positively about the technology, as it became a part of the vast majority of tech products and services.
因此，AI 在普及阶段面临的消费者抵触情绪比 iPhone、个人电脑甚至互联网等其他变革性技术在同阶段时更为强烈，这并不令人震惊。然而，仍有人对消费者的反应感到惊讶。他们曾假设 AI 的普及会带来认可，随着它成为绝大多数科技产品和服务的一部分，其无处不在的特性最终会让消费者对这项技术产生好感。
Instead, consumer trends are pointing in the opposite direction. Young people, in particular, are showing interest in adopting retro technology, ranging from dumbphones to point-and-shoot cameras to tape decks and CD players. AI-free, algorithm-free classic iPods are selling for top dollar on eBay. So-called “grandma hobbies” like quilting, knitting, jigsaw puzzles, cards, and games like Mahjong are suddenly everywhere. In-person meetups and activities, like run clubs, are winning out over online dating.
然而，消费趋势却指向了相反的方向。年轻人尤其表现出对复古技术的兴趣，从功能手机（dumbphones）到卡片相机，再到磁带机和 CD 播放器。没有 AI、没有算法的经典 iPod 在 eBay 上被炒到了高价。所谓的“奶奶级爱好”，如绗缝、编织、拼图、纸牌以及麻将等游戏突然随处可见。面对面的聚会和活动（如跑步俱乐部）正逐渐胜过在线约会。
Some in Silicon Valley may think this stems from a messaging problem: that perhaps execs need to explain AI better to consumers, so people can fully understand its benefits. The reality, however, could be that consumers understand AI well enough as it is, but don’t think the trade-offs are worth it. When the upside offered isn’t automated jobs with increased pay and reduced workweeks, but instead the threat of job loss, paired with AI features consumers find far less compelling — things like summarized web pages, or chatty TVs — that skepticism hardens.
硅谷的一些人可能认为这源于信息传达问题：也许高管们需要向消费者更好地解释 AI，以便人们能充分理解其益处。然而，现实情况可能是，消费者已经足够了解 AI，只是认为这些权衡并不值得。当 AI 带来的好处不是加薪、缩短工时等自动化红利，而是失业威胁，再加上消费者认为吸引力远不如预期的 AI 功能（如网页摘要或爱唠叨的电视）时，这种怀疑态度便愈发坚定。
There are those in the industry waking up to this. On a recent podcast, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged that the AI backlash is real, and that it’s largely tied to the fact that the industry isn’t shipping products that “regular people” like. “I think part of it’s a narrative issue that we’re not talking about AI correctly,” Chesky said. “But part of it is we need to actually be developing more products that just regular people can use and say, ‘I love AI because AI allows me to have a doctor on demand and I can’t have that. I can’t afford that.’ And so I think we need more regular things.”
行业内已有人意识到这一点。在最近的一档播客中，Airbnb 首席执行官 Brian Chesky 承认，针对 AI 的抵触情绪是真实的，这在很大程度上是因为该行业没有推出“普通人”喜欢的产品。“我认为部分原因是叙事问题，我们没有正确地谈论 AI，”Chesky 说，“但另一部分原因是，我们需要开发更多普通人能用且会说‘我喜欢 AI，因为它让我能随时看医生，而以前我做不到，也负担不起’的产品。所以我认为我们需要更多贴近生活的产品。”
Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the industry’s most prominent leaders, admitted in a post on X this week that negative public perception of AI is a “big problem” that’s fundamentally a “crisis of trust.” He said people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry, as they “suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.” The solution, he said, was to deliver on AI’s promises — for example, curing cancer. “I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world. That is totally on us,” he noted.
甚至连行业内最杰出的领袖之一、Anthropic 首席执行官 Dario Amodei 本周也在 X 上发文承认，公众对 AI 的负面看法是一个“大问题”，从根本上讲是一场“信任危机”。他表示，人们不信任公司、政府或科技行业，因为他们“怀疑我们正在酝酿某种新的方式来坑害他们”。他说，解决之道在于兑现 AI 的承诺——例如治愈癌症。“我认为，对包括 Anthropic 在内的 AI 公司最准确的批评是，我们尚未兑现造福世界的宏大承诺。这完全是我们的责任，”他指出。