Global Attitudes Check: Key Cultural Differences

Enthusiasm about new-wave AI is correlated with adoption, resulting in a clear-cut divide between Asian markets and the rest of the world. Here’s the elementary cultural attitude check.

Debating the ‘Cognitive Industrial Revolution’

AI optimists, including Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, foresee a “cognitive industrial revolution” – with AI tools making individuals smarter and levelling up collective intelligence (problem-solving by harnessing multiple insights and perspectives). Others fear that AI will stunt intelligence, diminishing our faculties for critical and creative thinking. We survey both sides of the cognitive coin.

Bridging Divides: Cognitive, Sensory & Communicative

AI also has the potential to level up human abilities, from assistive tech (helping people with disabilities to navigate the world with greater ease) to even more universal gap-bridging tools, such as automatic language translators.

Fortified Filter Bubbles vs. Expanded Perspectives

Generative AI may fortify the filter bubbles created by algorithms (based on its knowledge of users, it largely reinforces existing preferences), reducing the diversity of viewpoints that consumers see. However, AI-led tools are also enhancing content discovery (see Life in AI: Culture, Creativity & Entertainment) and providing new perspectives, even including those from non-human entities.  

Trust, Authenticity, Democracy & Transparency

As the distinction between real and artificial content blurs (including an appetite for the unreal – see Life in AI: Culture, Creativity & Entertainment), many people will question the authenticity of media, brand and government comms. Endangering democracy, AI-fuelled mis- and disinformation is considered the most severe short-term global threat (WEF, 2024), but countermeasures are afoot.

Inclusivity & Bias Encoded/Avoided

AI threatens to perpetuate long-standing biases (due to training data reflecting societal biases), with troubling implications across sectors, particularly healthcare and banking. Image generation tools even amplify existing social biases. However, as Pinterest’s inclusive search filters demonstrate, AI-led personalisation can also make consumers feel more seen.

The New Precious: Creations Rich With Human Experience

With AI taking on endeavours that were until recently considered uniquely human (from creating illustrations to writing wedding vows), a perception shift is underway as to what kind of human output will be most cherished, or even sanctified. Creations rich with backstory (something wholly non-replicable by AI) are key.

The Environmental Trade-Off

New-wave AI is gobbling energy: a ChatGPT query requires about 10 times as much electricity as a Google search (Goldman Sachs, 2024). But AI advocates, including Bill Gates, believe it can solve its own energy problem, overcompensating for its footprint.

New Medical Frontiers: Diagnosis Leaps & Digital Twins

Tools helping medical providers detect disease and create more effective, personalised treatments offer potent AI-led benefits for humanity. “Digital twins” (AI-created replicas of disease or a patient’s physiology) will boom, alongside causal AI (which pinpoints cause and effect within data), accelerating advances in personal and public health.