Every medicine comes with a warning label. Before a new drug reaches the public, it must pass years of testing. Researchers examine not only whether it works but also whether it causes harm. Regulators demand evidence. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to prove that their products are reasonably safe before people use them.
Technology, by contrast, has no such step-by-step testing procedure. A social media platform can decide how billions of people communicate. A smartphone can alter daily habits across entire societies. An artificial intelligence system can influence education, employment and creativity like few inventions before.
Yet these technologies are frequently released into the world first and studied later. Only after the harm or damage becomes visible do behavioral scientists begin asking questions. The ongoing backlash against AI offers a striking example.
Across universities in the US, graduating students have begun openly protesting against the growing presence of AI in education. Commencement speeches praising AI have been met with jeers. Many students feel that technology companies are transforming learning without fully understanding the consequences.
Their concerns may or may not prove to be justified. History teaches us that every major technological advance generates anxiety. But the reaction itself is noteworthy, reflecting as it does a growing sense that society is being inveigled into a colossal experiment without having given informed consent.
There is a growing sense that society is being inveigled into a colossal experiment without having given informed consent
Arnab Neil Sengupta
At the same time, smartphones are increasingly being blamed for a litany of social problems. Researchers and commentators have linked excessive smartphone use to declining attention spans, rising loneliness, worsening mental health and even falling birth rates in some countries.
The evidence is often contentious and the wheat difficult to separate from the chaff. Nevertheless, the fact that serious scholars are asking these questions should warrant caution.
For nearly two decades, smartphones have been veritable extensions of human beings. They accompany people to the dinner table, the classroom, the workplace and the bedroom. They influence how people meet friends, form relationships, consume information and spend their free time. But only now is humanity beginning to understand their long-term effects.
Imagine if a pharmaceutical company had introduced a drug to billions of people and then spent the next 20 years discovering what it actually did. Such a scenario would be considered irresponsible, even punishable. Yet something very similar has happened in the technology sector.
This is not because technology companies are malicious. Indeed, most innovations genuinely solve problems and create value. Smartphones provide access to information, navigation, communication and other services that previous generations could scarcely imagine. AI promises breakthroughs in medicine, science, education and productivity.
The benefits are real and manifold. But, alas, so are the risks.
The problem lies in the incentives that drive the technology industry. Success is measured primarily by speed, scale and market dominance. Companies race to release products before their competitors. Investors reward rapid growth. Regulators often arrive years later, struggling to catch up with technologies that have already become deeply embedded in daily life.
The result is a system that encourages risk-taking and innovation but pays inadequate attention to unintended consequences.
Societies, especially those of advanced countries, have learned this lesson before. Industrialization created enormous prosperity but also pollution, dangerous working conditions and child labor. The automobile transformed mobility but required traffic laws and safety standards such as seat belts.
New technologies often arrive as double-edged swords. The challenge is to recognize that innovation carries costs as well as benefits.
Take AI. AI web tools are advancing at remarkable speed: they can write essays, generate images, analyze data and perform tasks that previously required highly skilled professionals. Moreover, their capabilities improve every few months.
Yet humans still know surprisingly little about how growing reliance on AI will affect learning, creativity, critical thinking or human relationships. If students increasingly use AI to write, will their writing skills improve or atrophy? If workers depend on AI assistants, will productivity rise without reducing expertise? If AI companions become common, how might they affect male-female interaction, courtship and marriage?
These questions deserve serious study before, not after, society becomes thoroughly dependent on the technology.
Not every innovation is beneficial simply because it is new. Progress requires both curiosity and caution
Arnab Neil Sengupta
A more considered approach would look something like this: First, technology companies should be expected to produce independent impact assessments before releasing products on a large scale. Just as environmental impact studies are required for major infrastructure projects, large-scale digital technologies should undergo rigorous evaluation of their potential effects on society.
Second, regulators should establish stronger requirements for transparency. Companies should disclose what risks they have identified, what research they have conducted and what uncertainties remain. Consumers deserve to know not only what a technology can do but also what it might do.
Third, governments, universities and independent researchers should receive greater support for long-term studies of the technology’s societal effects. Much of the current debate relies on incomplete evidence because comprehensive research often lags way behind adoption.
Finally, societies must recognize that not every innovation is beneficial simply because it is new. In other words, progress requires curiosity and caution in equal measure. The goal is not to spark fear or revive a Luddite mentality, but to create responsibility and put purpose before profit.
To be sure, technology has improved human life in countless ways. Few people would willingly return to a world without smartphones, the internet or modern digital tools. AI may ultimately prove equally transformative and beneficial. But acknowledging a technology’s benefits should not prevent us from objectively examining its side effects.
When a new medicine enters the market, society demands evidence that it is safe because it understands that human well-being is too important to leave to the day after. It is high time to apply the same principle to technology.
After all, if humans insist on testing what enters their bodies, should they not also test what enters their minds, shapes their behavior and increasingly influences their societies?
The answer may determine whether the next wave of innovation becomes a force that truly benefits humanity or one whose hidden costs are discovered only when it is too late.
BY: Arnab Neil Sengupta
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect The Times Union ‘ point of view
