AI Perception Gap: Introducing My New Blog!

A blog created to educate, inspire, and reshape Gen Z’s perception of artificial intelligence and its applications.

Discovering the AI Perception Gap

While backpacking Latin America during the summer of 2022, I became deeply aware of what I labelled the AI perception gap. For 5 weeks, I listened to AI-oriented podcasts by day — on treacherous bus journeys, sea-side sunbeds and rainforest-based hammocks — and socialised in hostel bars by night. My ears were flooded with hope, optimism, and trust in AI from sunrise to sunset. After dark, however, I was inundated with negativity from backpacker after backpacker — irrespective of nationality. “Do you love Elon Musk?” “When are we all losing our jobs then, mate?” “I’ll blame you when the robots take over!” All are exclamations I heard in abundance when I told new friends my plan to pursue an MSc in Artificial Intelligence upon my return to the UK.

I honestly could not believe my ears. Educated individuals, from my very generation (not my grandparents!), who were born and raised in wealthy economies where AI is booming, and no one had a clue about the monumental positive impact the technology can and will have on society at a global scale! The perception gap was born…

Addressing the AI Perception Gap

What is the aim of my blog? Fix the perception gap by making my friends aware of the positive potential of AI!

I did so on an individual level in hostel bar after hostel bar during my travels. (Surprisingly, this didn’t make me the life of the party!) But with a blog, I can have a much more significant impact!

The overarching aim is to educate, inspire, and reshape Gen Z’s perception. I will highlight use cases of AI that have a positive impact on society (and some negatively impacting use cases too). If all goes to plan, the audience will learn that “AI” does not equate to “self-modifying systems (code-writing code) that are destined to take over the world and kill us all”.

Blog’s Target Audience

For my friends! More specifically, “my friends” correspond to educated individuals (educated to degree level in a different discipline), from all over the world, with ages ranging from 18 to 30.

What is AI?

AI. I hear it all the time! It’s become a buzzword every business seems to throw on its social channels in an attempt to gain traction.

For this blog, I will not cross hairs about specific AI sub-fields. Like seemingly every business out there — if there is cool machine learning, data science, deep learning, statistics, or one of many other subfields being used under the hood — I will just call it AI. Essentially, I will term any system that sits in the Venn diagram below “AI”.

Let’s Begin

Initially, I will post exactly one blog a month on the 6th of each month for 6 months. Starting 6th December 2024 and finishing 6th May 2025 (my birthday!).

In keeping with my Latin American theme, my first blog will discuss a story I discovered whilst reading Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why on a beanbag in a hostel atrium in San Cristobal, Mexico. I will discuss how artificial intelligence permitted the rapid return of human remains to their families following a plane shooting above the Russia-Ukraine border in 2014.

Negative impacts of AI

It must be noted that I am aware that AI has the potential to impact society negatively. Many pro-AI folks are blind to its destructive potential. Of course, risks exist! But, a plethora of risks didn’t stop the internet from booming a few decades ago. Adopters of the technology just learned to spot the risks (for example, online scams). I hope we’ll do the same as AI becomes more prevalent in society.