Invisible AI
Social DynamicsProvisional
The recognition that AI has long been embedded in everyday services and infrastructure without users' awareness, and that public perception of AI is distorted by conflating 'AI' with recent generative/consumer tools while ignoring the foundational AI that already underpins critical systems
Evidence
“I don't know if I actually put a finger on the fact that what I was using is AI, but I know that it has been underneath a lot of services and things that I used probably before I moved into an AI-forward area of my career.”
“Something that is a major pain point to me is that at a consumer level, we don't necessarily have any insight into how this works for us and how it's a necessary thing. It streamlines logistics. It streamlines fraud detection on down the line. We're not looking at that. We see all of the scam attempts of garbage AI scam attempts where it's just wash, rinse, repeat, and they're contacting a gajillion people to see who will bite. We see what it's doing as far as the bad parts of AI, especially with social media.”
“What they don't realize is that you kind of have to. It's already underneath so much that we rely very heavily on.”