Overcoming the Fear of AI

QUESTION 

This is not an easy question for me to ask. I have a prominent position in my company and community. The company originates mortgage loans in almost all the states. Our employees have written a petition requesting a slowdown in our plans to implement artificial intelligence. The petition has been leaked to the local news outlet, and it is causing a stir among our customers – and not in a good way. 

I can't say I disagree with the staff. I'm also worried. But we also have to keep pace with industry standards, which are moving toward AI. There are many known-knowns, but even more unknown-unknowns. People are losing their jobs to AI bots. It seems to me we are in the early stages of a full-blown unemployment crisis caused by AI. 

So, I will admit. I am afraid of what is happening and what is going to come. You have written a lot about AI in our mortgage industry. I want your advice on overcoming my fear of AI. I believe I speak for many people when I admit that I am worried about where we are heading. I know you're not a psychologist. I've been reading you for many years, and you've always offered sober counsel. I want to distribute your response to our staff. 

How can we overcome the fear of AI? 

SOLUTION

We recommend:

AI POLICY PROGRAM FOR MORTGAGE BANKING

AI FOR MORTGAGE LOAN ORIGINATION

RESPONSE 

Thank you for your question. Too often we push away our fears, denying them rather than admitting them. AI represents far more than an economic revolution. It poses challenges in many areas of human activity. That suggests there is not just a single fear of AI but many. 

You may want to read some of the articles I have written about AI. Click Here. 

I am going to offer a few antidotes to address some of those AI-related fears. 

FIRST: Name the exact fear 

The first thing to do is name the exact fear. When you bunch together conceptual categories like known-knowns and unknown-unknowns, you create a colossal stressor that embeds itself in your mindset. 

To make it easier for you to contemplate, I am going to provide an outline of certain types of fears. One or more of them may resonate with you. I will return to the importance of naming the fear later on. 

"Fear of AI" is really an umbrella for several distinct fears, and they call for different responses:

 

• Economic fear — "it'll take my job or devalue my skills" 

• Control fear — "it'll make decisions about me I can't see or challenge" (hiring algorithms, insurance pricing, content moderation) 

• Epistemic fear — "I won't be able to tell what's real" (deepfakes, AI-written text, and misinformation) 

• Existential fear — "it could become powerful enough to act against human interests" 

• Identity fear — "if a machine can write/paint/code, what's special about me doing it?" 

• Pace fear — not about AI specifically, but about how fast everything is changing and feeling like you can't keep up 

Once you know which one (or more) you're actually carrying, you can look for information and actions that speak to that fear specifically, instead of feeling generally unsettled by "AI" as a monolith. 

SECOND: Get direct experience 

Fear feeds on abstraction. The fastest way to shrink it is contact with the actual thing:

 

• Use a tool for something trivial and watch it get things right and wrong. 

• Deliberately try to make it fail. Ask it something it can't know, or something tricky, and see it hedge, get confused, or make an error. This is clarifying: it shows you're dealing with a fallible tool, not an omniscient force. 

• If your fear is job-related, look at how people in your actual field use these tools day to day, rather than trend pieces about "AI replacing X industry." 

Concrete, small-scale experience tends to replace catastrophic imagination with a more boring, accurate picture. 

THIRD: Understand the basic mechanics 

You don't need to code anything, just enough of a mental model to demystify it: