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What Happens If ‘AI’ Becomes An Insult?

Young people lead all technology revolutions… including this AI one… right?

They are digital natives… they grew up with smartphones, social platforms, influencers, filters, gaming and streaming. They are typically the first to try new technologies (and adopt them) and the fastest to understand the social codes around them. Adults worry and feel like “the olds”, while the kids snap to it and show us how it’s done. But something interesting (and surprising) seems to be happening with artificial intelligence. Beyond the booing at graduation and convocations, some kids are starting to use “AI” as an insult, according to this article from Wired: Some Kids Will Never Think AI Is Cool. “That’s AI” can mean fake… lazy… cringe… low effort… soulless… or simply not worthy of respect. Sure… they use AI for homework, search, images, jokes, videos, shortcuts and more…

They may use it constantly… and still think it is embarrassing.

That’s a very new kind of cultural signal. A technology can be everywhere without being admired. It can be useful without being cool. It can be powerful without carrying status. And this is strange because we have spent much of the AI conversation assuming that adoption equals acceptance… that usage equals affection… and that the people who engage most deeply with a technology will naturally become its greatest champions… but maybe not. It’s complicated, as the kids say.

AI might win adoption before it wins cultural legitimacy… and it may never earn it.

Young people are often very good at spotting cultural cringe before adults recognize it. Adults tend to ask whether a technology is efficient, scalable or transformative. Kids tend to ask whether it feels lame. They notice when something feels fake, forced, overproduced or desperate to impress. They have grown up surrounded by filters, content farms, scams, influencers, deepfakes and algorithms. That sensitivity may become one of the biggest challenges for AI companies, brands and creators.

What happens when audiences interpret AI efficiency as evidence that nobody cared?

What happens when “made with AI” sounds cheap? What happens when AI output becomes a signal that very little human effort or intent was involved? In a world of infinite synthetic output will effort become a value signal? The strangest part is that young people may help normalize AI while simultaneously reducing its cultural status. They may use it because it is convenient and embedded everywhere… the same way people use stock photography, canned corporate jargon or templated social posts.

Practical does not mean loved.

Can AI generate the image, article, song, video, voice or campaign? Yep. Will people respect it?… And maybe that is what this early use of “AI” as an insult is revealing. The danger for AI companies may be that adoption happens, people depend on it… and still treat it as culturally embarrassing. On the radio this week, I described this as a much larger marketing problem. People are being told that AI may replace them, weaken how they think, disrupt entry-level work and create problems for their children’s near-future. They are not being shown how these tools might increase their agency, reveal where their human value lies and free them to spend more time on judgment and/or creativity.

The technology (like all technologies) is ambivalent.

What matters is whether people experience AI as something that adds value to human life… or extracts value from it. Because AI may become unavoidable long before it becomes aspirational…

And those are two very different cultural realities.

This (and some other topics) is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · What Happens If ‘AI’ Becomes An Insult? – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.