We grumble about political polarization, but there’s even less agreement about artificial intelligence (AI).
Zoomers believe AI will bring big benefits to humanity, downplaying the risks and problems.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman wrote in a January New York Times Op-Ed that AI in the hands of regular users will boost human creativity and control and democratize knowledge and innovation by giving billions of people access to reasoning tools once reserved for experts.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is also bullish on the technology. On “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” in February, he said AI would make “excellent medical guidance and top-notch tutoring” universally available at no cost within a decade, giving everyone access to high-quality expertise. Gates framed this as a massive equalizer for global education and healthcare, saying AI-driven personalization and virtual help would improve billions of lives by breaking down knowledge barriers.
Earlier this month, Nare Khachatryan published a long post — “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Society in 2025” — on the PrometAI blog. The article described AI as “a catalyst of human progress,” saying that one technology is reshaping every layer of human life. It said AI touched 3.5 billion lives daily in 2025 and compared its effect to the Industrial Revolution. Khachatryan listed positive changes in healthcare, education, and creativity.
Among Khachatryan’s claims: AI will improve cancer detection accuracy by nearly 40%, reduce global healthcare costs by $100 billion annually, shrink drug development timelines from 15 to five years, and enable 90% fewer traffic accidents through the use of autonomous vehicles. The piece concluded that AI “is quietly reshaping what it means to live, work, and dream,” envisioning it as a democratizing and human-empowering force if guided with fairness and conscience.
On social networks like Reddit, it’s easy to find a large number of overly optimistic AI fans who attack critics as clueless Chicken Little types.
All is lost — already?
Then there are the doomers.
Earlier this week, the Emory Wheel editorial board published an opinion column claiming that without regulation, AI will soon outpace humanity’s ability to control it. The post said AI’s uncontrolled evolution threatens human autonomy, free expression, and democracy, stressing that the technical development is faster than what lawmakers can handle.
The New York Times published a March opinion piece by Tressie McMillan Cottom called “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes,” saying the technology makes a post-truth culture worse by rewarding prediction over real understanding. The piece said AI systems promote lazy thinking, strengthen false information, and replace real reasoning with fake thinking, lowering our ability to seek truth and have open discussions.
Scientific American published a January piece claiming that AI companies hide behind exaggerated claims while ignoring the fact that AI already causes real harm. The column mentioned examples like wrongful arrests from facial recognition, deepfake pornography, wage suppression by algorithmic management, and systemic bias in health care and housing.
Super-doomers are everywhere. Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares wrote a book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” arguing that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will likely escape human control, consume Earth’s resources to sustain itself, and lead to the extinction of all organic life.
In short, experts say AI will either bring about an age of peace, prosperity, health, and leisure — or it will take all the jobs and destroy humanity.
Don’t forget AGI
Both zoomers and doomers agree that humanity’s fate will be decided when the industry releases AGI or superintelligent AI. But there’s strong disagreement on when that will happen.
From OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, Masayoshi Son, Jensen Huang, Ray Kurzweil, Louis Rosenberg, Geoffrey Hinton, Mark Zuckerberg, Ajeya Cotra, and Jürgen Schmidhuber — all predict AGI by later this year to later this decade.
Others don’t agree.
AGI or superintelligent AI won’t happen for decades, if ever, according to Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun, Stuart Russell, Arvind Narayanan, Helen Toner, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, AIMultiple Research, and others.
At least it will do all our software coding for us, right?
The coding tool of the future?
Dario Amodei thinks AI will write almost all code within a year and replace human developers completely. Altman believes it will become the world’s best programmer by late 2025. Marc Benioff thinks AI will automate almost all software engineering jobs. Zuckerberg believes AI will perform mid-level engineers’ work and make coding automatic. Andy Jassy thinks it will cut down the need for most corporate software jobs. Arvind Krishna thinks AI-driven automation will save billions and take over IBM’s engineering. And Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers believe machines will automatically write most code by 2040.
Not true at all, say other experts. Yann LeCun, Stephen Wolfram, Boris Cherny, Simon Willison, Alex Gu, and Marselena Sequoia believe that despite progress in AI-assisted coding, current systems lack the reasoning, understanding, and reliability to autonomously perform most software development work anytime soon. They believe skilled human programmers will remain indispensable for complex, large-scale projects.
Almost every strong public opinion about AI is extreme.
Flip a coin
Some say we need strict global rules, maybe like those for nuclear weapons. Others say strong laws would slow progress, stop new ideas, and give the benefits of AI to China.
There’s no agreement on open-versus-closed systems. Some think open AI makes the world safer because everyone can check how it works. Others think giving powerful tools to anyone is too risky and could help criminals or hostile nations.
No one agrees who should be in charge: companies, governments, or international groups.
Experts debate whether we can make AI truly safe. Some believe science will solve it with better design and testing. Others say safety is about values and ethics, which humans don’t agree on.
Supporters of Universal Basic Income think everyone should get a share of the wealth AI creates. Critics call that unrealistic and dangerous.
Artists and writers disagree on whether AI inspires more creative work or replaces and destroys human creativity.
People debate whether AI makes us smarter or dumber. Many scientists say AI can speed up research and give everyone access to expert help. But others think it will fill the world with falsehoods and make people lazy about thinking.
AI excels at recognizing patterns, not understanding ideas, leading to doubts about its “knowledge.” Some say chatbots show true intelligence; others say they just copy what they’ve seen before without any real thought at all.
People disagree on what AI is. Some think it already shows reasoning, problem-solving, and consciousness. Others argue it only copies understanding and lacks thinking, awareness, or even a consistent “self.”
Just say no to extreme views
One thing is clear about AI: We don’t agree on what it is, how it works, and what its impact on people will be in the future.
When it doubt remain clear-headed
This leads me to the following advice: Reject AI dogma. Reject certainty. Be suspicious of motives (like when those who can make money from AI tell us to relax and accept it).
And reject the extremes. AI is most likely neither all good or all bad.
AI is already causing harms. It contributes to privacy invasion, disinformation and deepfakes, surveillance overreach, job displacement, cybersecurity threats, child and psychological harms, environmental damage, erosion of human creativity and autonomy, economic and political instability, manipulation and loss of trust in media, unjust criminal justice outcomes, and other problems.
But it’s also already helping people by improving healthcare and medical discovery, driving scientific and climate research, enhancing productivity and economic growth through automation, minimizing human error and increasing safety, improving transportation and urban infrastructure management, strengthening cybersecurity and data privacy, and boosting creativity, culture, and problem-solving for some.
One thing is certain: Anyone who says AI is all good or all bad is wrong. We should be humble and open-minded about AI’s future, neither zoomer nor doomer. We should explore and exploit AI’s benefits while advocating for protections from potential or actual harms.
AI has both good and bad impacts on people. It’s the mixed bag of the century.
