AI, jobs, and the next generation - Microsoft On the Issues

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In 1838, the invention of the camera sparked predictions that photography would make artists obsolete. When the noted French painter Paul Delaroche first saw an early photograph on a metal plate, he declared that “From today, painting is dead!” As he reasoned, why would anyone pay an artist to slowly and laboriously paint a scene when a camera could do the job more accurately, more quickly, and at a lower cost?

This question has echoed through technological shifts and has resurfaced with intensity in recent weeks as university students graduated on campuses across the United States. Today’s topic, of course, is not photography but the societal impact of artificial intelligence. And as graduates booed the mention of AI during commencement addresses, they have provided a powerful reminder of several important truths. To start, people will insist on having a say in deciding when and how AI is used.

The student message to tech leaders

The reactions of this year’s graduates are a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector. Hopefully, leaders across our industry will listen and seek to learn from this reaction. For the past half century, the youngest generation of people and workers has led the way in adopting new digital technologies. A new Microsoft study shows this trend is true with AI. Counties with large college towns and outsized populations between the ages of 18 and 24 have the highest rates of AI adoption in the United States. When people who use a new technology complain about it, we had better take notice.

It’s perhaps no surprise that college campuses are among the best places to learn about these emerging views firsthand. Over Memorial Day weekend at Princeton University, I found no shortage of discussion and even examples of student action. Graduating seniors have long donned “beer jackets” for celebrations, each class selecting its own unique design. This past year, however, a brief controversy emerged until class officers, responding to a student petition, rejected a popular design because it had been created with the help of AI. In its place, graduates wore jackets labeled both “100 percent cotton” and “100 percent human.”

The rejection of artificial fibers and artificial intelligence illustrates how human tastes shape market economics even as efficiency and productivity advance. Machines don’t buy products. People do. Students and graduates recognize AI’s benefits. But they want to keep AI in its proper place. They rightly believe in the indispensable role of human agency. They want the future to be determined by humans deciding the role of machines, not by machines deciding the role of humans. And they want these decisions to reflect input from a broad community, especially the next generation of the workforce, rather than just a narrow group of elites.

Today’s graduates are sending another powerful message as well: the American Dream has always stood for even more than a better job and greater economic opportunity, although that has been...