The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public

Summary

A few months ago, I needed to send an email. But when I opened Microsoft Outlook, something had changed. Microsoft asked me to use Copilot to write my email. Copilot is my AI companion. (That’s the cute word they use.) Hey I don’t want a companion—especially not a fake AI buddy. I never asked for this. And what about the people receiving my emails? They don’t want this either. They want to hear from me, not a bot. How do I turn my companion off?After some trial-and-error, I found a way to disable Copilot. Phew!But a few days later, Microsoft surprised me again. It wouldn’t let me save an Excel file until I had agreed to new terms for my software account. Guess what? AI is now bundled into all of my Microsoft software. Even worse, Microsoft recently raised the price of its subscriptions by $3 per month to cover the additional AI benefits. I get to use my AI companion 60 times per month as part of the deal.But I don’t want to use it. I want to kill it.As you can see, I’ve never used this service. I still have all 60 credits unused. But I’m paying for it—because it’s now embedded into Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. This is how AI gets introduced to the marketplace—by force-feeding the public. And they’re doing this for a very good reason.Most people won’t pay for AI voluntarily—just 8% according to a recent survey. So they need to bundle it with some other essential product. You never get to decide.Before proceeding let me ask a simple question: 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,...