Ok So Maybe Ai Isn T Changing Everything Benton Org

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 8:46 AM

ok so maybe ai isn t changing everything benton org

It often feels like AI is changing everything about the tech business—rewriting the rules of coding, swamping social media with deepfakes, even changing how companies are born. It’s happening so fast that even the most powerful tech firms are pleading helplessness. Google, in particular, has had some success arguing that it’s no longer the titan it was because AI is so quickly blowing up the old power structure of internet search. But the “AI is changing everything” argument may have its limits, as well. And the case unfolding in a Virginia federal court might help establish just where those limits are. The case is the big remedies trial in Google’s advertising antitrust lawsuit.

The Justice Department is trying to force the company to spin off at least one of its ad platforms; Google, of course, wants to do no such thing. One notable character in the drama is AI. Judge Leonie Brinkema brought up AI on the trial’s opening day, asking whether the technology was transforming the ad market enough to resolve some of the competition issues in the next two to three... An ad tech executive responded on the stand that it wouldn’t. Several other DOJ witnesses testified that AI hasn’t significantly changed display advertising, nor Google’s dominance in the area. Google, of course, wants to tell the opposite story—if AI is poised to upend its ad market, the judge will likely take it much easier on the company.

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214 Wilmette, IL 60091 © 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved. BEAD Awards vs. Allocations: Deep Dive on Benefit of the Bargain Results The Status of Digital Inclusion Coalitions

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The people building AI are saying—subtly and unsubtly—that the technology is advancing more rapidly than the vast majority of people realize. It’s likely we won't know how and how much AI will change the way we live, work and play until it already has. Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "godfathers of AI," told BBC Radio 4 the technology is moving "very, very fast, much faster than I expected." Take ChatGPT. It took five days after launch for the chatbot to hit 1 million users. It took Facebook 10 months to get to 1 million users, and it took Twitter, now X, two years to hit the same milestone. Despite those forecasts, few appear to be taking the AI tsunami seriously enough.

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214 Wilmette, IL 60091 © 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved. Remember that feeling when you first saw ChatGPT write a coherent essay? That slight chill down your spine, the sudden realisation the ground beneath your professional feet might not be as solid as you thought? We're all living through that feeling now, stretched out over years instead of moments.

It's exhausting. It's exhilarating. And most of all, it's relentless. Heraclitus got there first, of course. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he told us we can't step into the same river twice. But here's what the old Greek didn't mention: sometimes the river speeds up.

Sometimes it becomes a torrent. And right now, with AI reshaping everything from how we write emails to how we think about thinking itself, we're not just unable to step in the same river twice. We're struggling to find our footing at all. We tell ourselves that this is just another technological shift, like the internet or mobile phones. We adapted to those, didn't we? But this feels different because it strikes at something more fundamental.

When a machine can write your reports, code your programmes, create your art and increasingly even reason through your problems, the question isn't just about job security. It's about identity. What makes us uniquely valuable when our unique abilities keep getting replicated and surpassed? I've been watching many tie themselves in knots over this. One day we’re extolling the promise, the next the risks, the next? Well nothing to be fair.

The irony would be funny if it weren't so revealing. We're simultaneously racing toward AI integration and desperately trying to maintain the old boundaries. We want the productivity gains without the existential crisis. We want transformation without actually changing. But change doesn't negotiate. It doesn't care about our comfort zones or our carefully constructed professional identities.

And here's the thing nobody wants to admit: our resistance to AI isn't really about the technology. It's about what psychologists call loss aversion. We're wired to feel potential losses twice as intensely as equivalent gains. So when we look at AI, we don't see the possibilities first. We see what we might lose. Our expertise.

Our relevance. Our sense of being special. This psychological weight is why so many of us are stuck in what I call the middle ground of doom. We're not fully embracing AI's potential, but we're not ignoring it either. We're dabbling. We're hedging.

We're doing just enough to say we're "AI-aware" while secretly hoping this will all blow over. It won't. The artificial intelligence industry is getting nothing but green lights in all directions—now it needs to deliver on its promises. AI makers are getting everything they have ever asked for or could possibly want: Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214 Wilmette, IL 60091 © 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

All Rights Reserved. A middle road for AI adoption is taking shape, routing around the debate between those who fear humanity could lose control of AI and those who favor a full-speed-ahead plan to seize the technology's... Those who think trust in AI will remain low without a cautious and practical approach to AI development now include America's biggest banks and philanthropists, the White House, labor unions and a new class... Advocates who see a middle ground with AI are moving more pragmatically and methodically than those at the extremes of the AI debate. They're focused on building evidence for their vision and raising funds from outside the biggest tech companies and venture capital firms — which takes more time than writing an open letter or blog post,... Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214 Wilmette, IL 60091

© 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved. In his annual letter, Bill Gates predicted that the United States is “eighteen to twenty four months away from significant levels of AI use by the general population” and that African countries are just... The pace of AI development is breathtaking, with generative AI tools like ChatGPT forecast to have an adoption curve steeper than the smartphone. However, while many of us explore this new frontier of tech, much of the world is yet to even come online. Like every digital breakthrough before it—the invention of the web, the roll-out of broadband, the mobile revolution—the opportunities enabled by AI leaves those without internet access further behind just by staying where they are.

Without urgent action billions of people around the world will be excluded from the benefits of this technological revolution while suffering its disruptions. As Gates writes, “If we make smart investments now, AI can make the world a more equitable place. It can reduce or even eliminate the lag time between when the rich world gets an innovation and when the poor world does.” But if we do not make these investments, AI will not... [Jochai Ben-Avie is the Co-Founder and CEO of Connect Humanity.] Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214 Wilmette, IL 60091 © 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Ok So Maybe Ai Isn T Changing Everything Benton Org

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