Trending Articles
Trending Topics
Trending
Companies are investing in AI because of FOMO – not because it brings real productivity gains. But perhaps they should show some leadership and not implement the technology, at least until any benefits are proven.
That’s the argument made by Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and the author of The AI Con alongside Emily Bender, who took the time to speak to TechFinitive on the sidelines of Mozilla Fest 2025 in Barcelona.
After years of warnings from AI ethicists such as Hanna, have people figured out that the hype is real? Hanna believes that there’s a lot of “healthy scepticism” about AI, helped by that MIT study that found 95% of companies can’t figure out how to use such tools in a useful way and work by the FT that suggested fear of missing out (FOMO) was one of the main reasons behind adoption.
It’s difficult to pin down – and Hanna questions the methodology of some of these studies – but says her own discussions suggest the hype isn’t convincing everyone. “The quantitative indicators seem to be that either business leaders or the general public really are having a hard time squaring the circle – and it really is highlighting how much the technology doesn’t live up to the hype,” she said.
Yet it’s already costing people jobs – or is it? “People are being laid off due to AI, not because it works, but because there’s an idea that it could work, and that it could actually supplant people in important processes,” said Hanna. “And that’s a very important point that people both on the right and the left have missed, managers have missed.”
In short, jobs are being lost because companies are hoping, fingers crossed, that there will be a productivity improvement – but so far it remains marginal and will stay that way, Hanna believes. “There’s not going to be this productivity explosion.”
Hanna points to the recent mass layoffs at Amazon, in which 14,000 jobs were lost – not due to AI displacement, but by cutting out middle management and red tape. “We’ve already seen some decision makers backing off from that claim,” said Hanna, namely that job losses are due to AI.
So given all that, when’s the backlash?
“These things are really culturally unpopular,” Hanna said, pointing to dislike of AI slop on social media but also in the workplace.
“There was a study [from] Harvard Business Review about work slop, the idea that… when [people] get something that they realise is by an LLM, they see their colleagues as less trustworthy, less competent, and that also has a differential impact between women and men,” she added. “So I think the backlash is already here.”
But that’s among us peons who work for a living. What about investors and those running companies?
“I’m quite worried about when there is an actual market correction, when the bubble bursts – you know, who’s going to get hurt there?” Hanna said, noting that OpenAI has already suggested – and since backed down from – an idea that the US Government should back OpenAI’s data centre spending. “I’m wondering if there’s a way out that doesn’t lead to another recession. I think the pathway’s really narrowing here, just because we decided to go down this path of FOMO.”
And that’s why the hype will continue: so many investors and tech giants have chucked a huge amount of money into AI that they need it to be a success.
“They’re really wanting those investments to pay off,” said Hanna.
But more and more industry analysts – be it financial or tech – are warning that a burst bubble may be in our futures. “It’s upsetting that analysts are kind of singing the same tune, saying the things that we knew from the beginning and we also seem to still be running headlong into this incredibly precarious financial situation.”
Forget the FOMO and show some leadership – that’s the message Hanna would like companies to hear.
“AI is not inevitable,” she said. “You can be a differentiator in the marketplace if you don’t rush headlong into these tools.” She points to Heineken advertising its beer off the back of a much-disliked campaign for AI companion Friend in the US.
And, every time a company publicly chooses to not use AI or wait on it makes it easier for another business to do the same. “It opens a space for someone else to say no,” Hanna said. “One of the insights we get from organisational sociology is that businesses do stuff because other businesses do stuff – mimetic isomorphism is the fancy term.”
She added: “If one business starts to stay, ‘I don’t need this, we’re going to take this out, we’re going to double down on other processes,’ then other businesses will as well.”
So be a leader in AI – by ditching it.
