My kids and I have been thrilled to watch the Olympics, from Simone Biles’s unbelievable GOAT-worthy performances to equestrian cross-country on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. We’ve learned about handball, judo, and water polo and discuss, animatedly, if we could even dare to dive from a 10m flatform, let alone contort our bodies into flips, somersaults, and twists before hitting the water. For my two kids, of course, they want to leap off a platform 32.8 feet into the air or launch their bodies off the vault, spinning so fast, before landing upright. Me? I’d rather be like Snoop Dog, attending all the events in style, appreciating the wonders of human athleticism from the safety of my seat.
While my family and I watched the XXXIII Games in Paris we couldn’t help but notice a glaring discrepancy between what we see when athletes from all over the world come together in a time-honored tradition of sport and achievement and the commercials interrupting the events, promoting the antithesis of the Olympics: artificial intelligence. The biggest technology companies are disappointedly connecting the possibilities of AI to the endeavors of athletes and what their achievements mean across the globe while competing on the world’s great stage.
The commercial features a father using a chatbot to help his daughter write a fan letter to U.S. track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Charlie’s response to the ad by Google was dismay. “Why the heck do you need AI to write a letter? AI is dumb,” he declared. I agreed, and so have many others as Google recently pulled the ad from their Olympic advertising campaign because it sparked backlash. Throughout the Games, we’ve seen the major tech giants tout AI as a new, inspiring, and informed resource to help regular folks become Olympians by trusting it to create training programs. Yet this campaign seems even more tone-deaf than ever. I’m relieved my kiddos can see through the false and dangerous promise of AI.
AI may provide benefits, but, so far, we haven’t seen tech companies provide a framework to ensure that AI won’t quickly tread into dangerous territory or offer ways to proceed with caution and regulations, especially with technology that has pirated intellectual and creative property. Social media has shown us that tech companies can’t be trusted and won’t act in the public’s best interest, so it’s imperative to hold AI technologies to an even greater standard and require firm regulations for operations. Generative AI also uses an incredible amount of energy—what Wired recently called an arrival “of the internet’s hyper-consumption era”— and this kind of computing requires excessive amounts of water and electricity. In a time of addressing our planet in the climate crisis, AI shouldn’t be contributing to an exacerbation of energy resources, let alone decimating some of the most basic aspects of humanity: our strong and innate desire for connection, whether that’s when a young girl pens a letter to her idol or a grandchild paints a picture for her grandmother. Like the Olympic Games themselves, a celebration of the human body and the almost-mythical abilities to soar through the air, blaze across the track, or dive without making a splash.
We don’t need AI to write our letters, books, music, or create art. This summer’s Games are that inspiring reminder of the power of humanity and well, frankly, the inanity of artificial intelligence. Or more direct in the words of Charlie: “Olympics, awesome. AI? Dumb.”
Maggie Doherty is a writer and book reviewer who lives in Kalispell with her family.