"The AI Backlash": Ismael Kherroubi García in conversation with Alexis Papazoglou

If you are about to give a commencement speech at a university this summer, don’t mention AI. Or at least don’t say nice things about it, or that it’s going to change the world whether people like it or not, or that it’s the next industrial revolution. If you do, graduating students – who are notoriously heavy AI users - will boo you. Who can blame them? LLMs have turned expensive university education into a charade and students are graduating into a less-than-ideal job market. And it’s not just students who aren’t so hot on the future our AI overlords are predicting.

So how can people resist the onslaught of AI, and the narratives of inevitability that are being pushed by Silicon Valley’s AI leaders. Obama’s famous quip “don’t boo, vote!” comes to mind. Indeed, influential AI researcher and author Garry Markus has predicted that anti-AI sentiment will be a major driving force of the 2028 US Presidential election. But so far, most political Parties seem to have drunk the cool aid of inevitable technological progress, it might be too late by the time they catch on to how voters think. Is there anything ordinary citizens can do in the meantime? Are narratives of AI inevitability thinly disguised self-fulfilling and self-serving prophecies? And is there a way of reimagining what AI can mean for us all?

Ismael Kherroubi García has been working in the AI ethics space since 2020, when he worked on establishing the Alan Turing Institute’s research ethics committee. Since 2022, Ismael has been offering AI ethics and research governance consulting at Kairoi, helping organisations identify crucial tech decisions, anticipate their consequences and implement safeguards to guide decision-making processes. Since 2023, Ismael also leads the Fellow-led AI Interest Group at the RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). He is also an associate director of We and AI, a diverse community of volunteers working at the intersection of social justice and AI. He is the co-author of “Resisting, Refusing, Reclaiming, Reimagining: Charting Challenges to Narratives of AI Inevitability”.

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. He is also host of the podcast, “The Philosopher and the News”.

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