Artificial Intelligence is a contradiction that is defined by many smaller but related contradictions. If we consider the words artificial and intelligent, then it turns out AI is neither.

The notion of artificial suggests that this technology is not of humanity, is alien, and unnatural. This is a fallacy. Whether trained on medical records or the complete works of Shakespeare, the way contemporary AI works is to process the echoes of our lives, cultures, and personhood that are captured in data. So-called machine learning distils these data into abstract representations or models. We may call the result ‘artificial’ but it is fundamentally built from us.

The paired concept of intelligence evokes the very human ability for agile and abstract thought. Our uncanny penchant to reason, plan, and rationalise. Today’s AIs achieve things that make us feel like there is a magical intelligence at work. They interpret our prompts to conjure poems on demand or materialise images depicting any whim or desire. Alas, any evidence of what we might recognise as intelligence is conspicuously absent. While AI is good at predicting what we want and responding accordingly, the current generation never understands and cannot reason.

So, the ubiquitous and enigmatic term AI represents something that is neither ‘A’ nor ‘I’, and the contradictions don’t stop there.

Proponents promise that AI will help us navigate our climate disaster and the 21^st century’s inequalities. Yet, it is a fact that these technologies are energy-hungry and exploit the labour and mineral wealth of the global south.

Sceptics believe AI will decimate the job market and eclipse artistic professions, but optimists see that AI has the potential to turbocharge productivity and democratise creativity.

Regulators, technology corporations, and individuals alike cast the impact of AI as a problem for the future. Nonetheless, AI is having very real consequences for millions of people across the globe right now.

These contradictions are illuminating. They suggest that we should think of AI not as an isolated technology but as a moment in time, an entanglement of concerns and potentials coevolving as they manifest. We are living through seismic global shifts across dimensions of our climate and sustainability, global health and security, and politics and technology. AI’s impact colours all these matters, but hidden shadows of its many contradictions, we are starting to see how AI will help to drive a global renaissance.

In the creative industries, AI does disrupt the way the business of culture has been conducted in the post-industrial West, undermining notions of intellectual property. But, if we imagine culture as a common good and that there’s no such thing as an original idea, perhaps the model AI is disrupting was broken all along.

No one can deny the impact of the resource extraction that is necessary to make AI work, nor should we offset or ignore the energy consumption and exploitation of poorly paid workers. However, these are global problems that apply to a cornucopia of industries, technologies and other human activities. They are not reasons to renounce AI’s benefits.

It seems inevitable that AI will mean some employment is no longer necessary, a change that, if managed carefully, can free those people to bring their intelligence to bear on matters of art, care, and humanity.

Dogmatic and entrenched positions on all sides of these dichotomies give rise to the idea that AI is a gamut of otherworldly tribulations that we simply cannot handle. This is the AI delusion, and it is amplified by narrow and segmented perspectives.

If we take a global view through the lenses of the humanities and technology together, then it is eminently possible to quell the AI delusion, work through AI’s contradictions, and leverage AI as a force for planetary good.

Dr Joseph Lindley, Senior Research Fellow or UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

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