Have you noticed that Microsoft Word, the world’s most popular word processing program, will now do your writing for you?
Microsoft has installed the AI program it calls “Copilot” on Word, as well as its other platforms. Copilot on Outlook will write your emails for you.
If you write enough to use Word, how do you feel about the writing program now being able to cut you out of the writing process? How do you feel about paying $3 more per month for your Microsoft subscription to cover the additional cost of AI?
Did you ask for that? It doesn’t matter. You can’t opt out of Copilot. Even if you never use it, you still have to pay for it.
Ted Gioia, whose insights about the collapse of our “knowledge system” we blogged about, has a good rant about this on his Honest Broker substack entitled The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public.
Gioia cites a study that found that only 8% of the public wants to pay for AI. He then asks,
Has there ever been a major innovation that helped society, but only 8% of the public would pay for it?
That’s never happened before in human history. Everybody wanted electricity in their homes. Everybody wanted a radio. Everybody wanted a phone. Everybody wanted a refrigerator. Everybody wanted a TV set. Everybody wanted the Internet.
They wanted it. They paid for it. They enjoyed it.
AI isn’t like that. People distrust it or even hate it—and more so with each passing month. So the purveyors must bundle it into current offerings, and force usage that way.
This sounds like a breakdown of supply and demand. So the tech companies are trying to work around the lack of demand.
Gioia points out that AI takes a huge amount of investment. If the public doesn’t want to buy it, companies can’t recover their expenses, much less make a profit. So by bundling it with needed products without consumers’ input, then charging for it without giving consumers’ an option, they can hide their losses. “So these huge digital platforms can pretend that users have totally embraced the new tech.”
Microsoft isn’t the only corporation doing this. Gioia gives a litany of complaints:
- I don’t want AI customer service—but I don’t get a choice.
- I don’t want AI responses to my Google searches—but I don’t get a choice.
- I don’t want AI integrated into my software—but I don’t get a choice.
- I don’t want AI sending me emails—but I don’t get a choice.
- I don’t want AI music on Spotify—but I don’t get a choice.
- I don’t want AI books on Amazon—but I don’t get a choice.
“If they gave people a choice,” Gioia concludes, “they would reject this tyranny masquerading as innovation.”
We have seen how a government can thwart a free economy. Well, corporations can also thwart a free economy. And both government and corporations can control us and be tyrannical.
Illustration: KK IN HK, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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