We don’t. But don’t be too quick to dismiss it.
You may not like the approach I’m going to take. I’m going to draw a comparison.
Hear me out, as I start by rewriting your question.
Do we need AI?
We don’t need AI now any more than we needed cars in the 1920s. But AI is here, growing fast, and could change everything. It’ll bring problems, sure, but it could also improve life in ways we can’t yet imagine. The key? Stay curious, get informed, and help shape what comes next.
Why did we suddenly need the automobile?
I am asking about the modern “horseless carriage” that is suddenly a worldwide phenomenon that is attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in huge multi-acre manufacturing plants with thousands of employees and huge power requirements that almost demands we start drilling and drilling for more oil to run them all. Why does the world suddenly need all of this?
That’s a question I’m certain was asked by many shortly after the turn of the previous century — say the 1920s. The automobile was the New Big Thing, and it was changing society forever. Many, I’m sure, were asking why we needed this newfangled contraption. We seemed to do just fine without it.
The answer to this turn-of-the-previous-century version of your question is the same as my answer to your question about AI.
We don’t.
We don’t need any of it. We could have lived without the automobile. Heck, there are plenty of folks who would say it would even be a better world if we hadn’t adopted it so thoroughly.
We could live in a world without AI.
The question we don’t yet know the answer to is: Do we want to? Would it be a “better” world?
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Hindsight only happens in reverse
In hindsight, there’s a pretty powerful argument that we’d be better off with automobiles than we would be without them.
Yes, there are plenty of downsides: pollution, industrial waste, massive acres of pavement, accidents, and more. I won’t sugarcoat it. And while we’re making progress on some of these, the fact is that the automobile continues to harm society all these years later.
And yet it’s offset by massive positive effects. That we can drive anywhere at any time, and that it’s even marginally affordable, is absolutely amazing. It enables us to live a life we simply could not have imagined pre-auto. Quick trips to the grocery store1 and cross-country road trips to visit family and friends, or to take part in activities we might never even have heard of in the past2, are just the tip of the iceberg.
Expand that vision to include the increased commerce and trade, and once again, we find we’re living in a world our 1920s counterparts could not have imagined.
Much of what the automobile has enabled is so core to what we are and how we live that we take it all for granted now.
We didn’t need it, but we’re better off because of it.
Foresight is impossible
I’m not saying we’ll be better off with AI than without it. We don’t know. It’s still happening, and we don’t yet know the impact it will have.
What the world will look like in just a few years is uncertain for a variety of reasons; AI is just one of them. Will it help or hinder? Will the changes it makes and the impact it brings be net positive or negative? We just don’t know.
There are people at both ends of the spectrum who believe strongly that AI will bring salvation or doom. Back in the day, I’m certain some felt the same way about the automobile.
It’s impossible to say what the future truly holds.
My bet is on net positive
There will be downsides to AI. There already is environmental and societal impact, “accidents”, and more. Just as with the automobile, there will be some massive mistakes and spectacular failures.
The automobile, while continually being refined to this day, is an assumed staple of society and something we all now take for granted. Its massive mistakes have passed into history.
My expectation is that AI will eventually fall into this category. I don’t know what it will look like, because again, it’s too early to say. But I believe it will continue to be refined and improved upon, including actions to mitigate the negative impacts we’ve already identified.
I expect that someday, AI will be something we take for granted too.
Do we need it? No. Could our lives be better because of it? Very possibly so.
Only time will tell.
Do this
Don’t dismiss AI because you don’t understand it or don’t see a need for it. Many of the things we take for granted these days started the same way. Work to understand it as best you can. Hold its creators accountable, for sure. With our participation, AI can be molded into something we’ll consider a net positive years from now. Simply dismissing or railing against it takes that power away from you.
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