The widespread use of AI amongst the young
Setting the agenda: an eight-part weekly series by Jayden Singh Nandhra exploring the issues that matter to young people like him.
AI has become a routine part of many aspects of everyone’s lives; from using it to send emails, to writing extended bodies of work, there are even those who use AI as a sounding board for therapy and seeking genuine advice from AI chatbots in order to combat issues in their personal lives. Employers are increasingly reliant on AI integration in systems that do the jobs once undertaken by a young intern, any surprise given new technology like phones and laptops now come with AI integration as standard? This all leads to the question, why has reliance on AI become the norm so fast, and what can we do to become more independent?
When we become reliant on AI, we effectively strip ourselves of independence in a quite unique way. With the large portfolio of tasks AI can now manage, the danger is that people, especially the inexperienced younger people, will simply let AI do the hard work. They do this without ever gaining the skills involved in completing a task, for example creating posters, writing and signing off emails and doing research. This impacts their independence in situations where access to AI is limited and they must do tasks themselves. For a whole generation to grow reliant on a service, means that that service becomes essential, and that it cannot ever go away. The rapid growth in the AI market, and how quickly it has embedded itself in everyone’s lives, to me, is a clear demonstration of commercial power, and the ability for elites in society to make us believe we need what they have, even if it is at the cost of our independence.
The growing concern with AI, as someone who is relatively young, is that it becomes harder to discern what is made by AI from what is not; how can one tell where a real human effort has been made to make something? When that something has been made by a real human effort, as long as it exists online, it can always be replicated (not always well) by AI, so does this make their effort redundant? I have heard critiques of the younger generation, that they are too impatient, and that with so much information available to them so readily they become lazy, and they don’t care as much as generations before them. To people of this opinion, I would like to assert that it is impossible to grow an appreciation for patience, for effort and care when everything can be done instantly by AI. Roles that previously took a young person years of training to grow into, through their own hard work, skills that took time to accumulate, are all being done by AI now, and it is deemed as commercially profitable.
Since 2023, the self-reported use of AI in businesses with more than ten employees has jumped to 35%, with 87% of companies insisting that AI will change entry level jobs, and two-thirds of employers are integrating AI into their routine daily tasks. These are tasks that generations prior would have taken time to get good at, and transferable skills gained that they would carry forth into their professional careers. A study by MIT Media Lab showcases that a heavy reliance on AI, particularly generative AI tools, for writing and problem solving can result in lower brain connectivity and a lack of ownership over the final result. The lack of ownership is particularly concerning; how is a generation to grow passionate about anything, their work or their hobbies, without having that sense of pride, to feel as though they have done something? As a writer, this is particularly troublesome, as there are many examples of AI being used to write extended bodies of work, which is perhaps all the more reason to practice these things without the use of AI.
Read, write and create for yourself, without AI, in order to develop key skills, and also appreciate the fact that you have created something, from your own mind, that contains an imprint that is uniquely your own. Through doing this, you will garner experience and be able to not only better discern when AI has been used to make something, but also appreciate deeply when a human has put in genuine effort to create. It may even aide you in identifying when AI has made a mistake, in a professional context, which you can then correct. This is all easier said than done, so how do we do it?
Well, there is the obvious: write for yourself, create and learn how to create using tools like editing software and other legacy mediums. But also, learn to appreciate the boring stuff; writing emails, having to actually read those monotonous articles for that university deadline, perhaps even ask your employer to allow you to do a few tasks without using AI where it would normally be implemented. Yes, there is the argument that we are beyond such tasks and should focus on what is actually important, to remain efficient. However, this can still be achieved, at a greater scale, when we are not bound to the framework given to us by some mess of code that is imitating real human thought.
By freeing ourselves from reliance on AI, we protect the individuality that colours our soul which is all that is left when stripping away all the other layers of life. To figure out who we are, what meaning and purpose we have, is one of the most difficult questions to ask. Until we allow ourselves to find passion, through work and creation, that question will remain unanswerable. The hope here is that by allowing yourself the tools to create and work authentically, as yourself, that you may find some sort of repose, an answer to a question that AI will never really be able to answer. Who are you?