In one of many opening pictures of Un Chien Andalou, a 1929 French movie co-written by Salvador Dalí usually cited as one of many first surrealist movies, a younger lady stares immediately on the digital camera as a razor blade slices throughout her eye.
OK, she did not even have her eye slit open, because of film magic and all. However the film makes use of surrealism as a robust new manner of seeing, of deciphering the world. It is alleged to shock us out of passive viewing and spectatorship, and take us past conventional notion.
Final Thursday, as I sat in a lecture corridor on the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, listening to a discuss rising expertise and innovation in 2026, I hoped for a dialogue about equally revolutionary trendy improvements.
However far too usually, after we discuss AI, we do not confront this doubtlessly revolutionary expertise with our eyes large open, seeing the entire fact. As an alternative, whether or not it is in small lectures, social media posts or Tremendous Bowl commercials, we get one-sided advertising and marketing that masks the true dangers and considerations surrounding AI.
Based mostly on the viewers’s questions through the Q&A, this was probably the primary actual introduction to generative and physical AI for a lot of of them. The group absorbed every part uncritically, nodding alongside and blooming with pleasure because the lecture painted an image of a future reworked completely for the higher.
In a single significantly grating occasion, we had been proven a video of LG’s laundry-folding robot that debuted final month on the CES 2026 commerce present in Las Vegas. Having seen the robotic for myself, I knew how sluggish it was at folding only one uniform-sized T-shirt. A robotic that may really help with house chores is years away.
“Who needs this robotic?” the speaker shouted, and fingers raised everywhere in the room.
Was there any point out of the expertise’s limitations, like the truth that it wants human assist to achieve into the hamper? Was there any point out of the prohibitive value? In fact not. The group left that room with their understanding of AI formed by somebody who had rigorously averted mentioning any of the expertise’s downsides.
This can be a drawback.
The individuals with platforms — whether or not they’re tech consultants, museum lecturers or influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers — have a accountability to inform the reality about AI. Not simply the thrilling elements. Not simply the elements that make for good advertising and marketing. All of it.
When public figures spotlight AI’s capabilities, they gloss over its dangers — the devastating environmental impact, the proclivity for chatbots to hallucinate and make things up, the regarding manner AI use impacts memory skills and the rising incidents of AI-induced psychosis and suicide. These essential risks are conveniently unnoticed of the dialog; conversations that form public notion in a manner that serves a choose few’s pursuits, not the world’s.
We have seen this harmful sample earlier than.
Since a 2018 US Supreme Court docket resolution allowed states to legalize sports activities betting, celebrities and influencers have lined as much as promote betting apps, pocketing large checks whereas their followers face rising charges of playing dependancy and monetary smash. The 2021 crypto growth additionally introduced a parade of celebrities hawking digital cash, a lot of which later crashed, leaving common individuals holding nugatory belongings. Kim Kardashian settled with the SEC for $1.26 million in penalties for selling a crypto token with out disclosing that she was paid to take action. Matt Damon advised us “fortune favors the courageous” in a February 2022 Crypto.com Tremendous Bowl advert that aged terribly within the wake of that yr’s crypto crash.
We’re watching the identical story unfold with AI. We’re seeing household-name actors soar to be in Super Bowl commercials championing AI corporations to 100 million individuals. Influencers are taking cash from AI corporations to advertise instruments they most likely do not even use and certain do not even perceive, to audiences who’ve grown to belief them. The distinction is that AI’s dangers transcend monetary loss. We’re speaking about job displacement, the erosion of inventive industries, the unfold of misinformation at scale, deepfakes that may destroy reputations and, as talked about earlier, the environmental value of working these large fashions.
Because of this I admire artists like Guillermo del Toro, who speaks realistically about AI. When fashions that referenced his distinctive visual style went viral, he did not mince phrases about generative AI educated on artists’ work with out their permission, compensation or respect for copyright laws. He known as it theft.
Other artists and public figures have been equally direct concerning the menace AI poses to their livelihoods and craft. In the meantime, tech executives and builders dismiss these considerations as the newest wave of Luddism.
Whereas I typically consider that well-known individuals are not function fashions to observe or belief, many individuals do. They assume that if somebody with credentials or superstar is enthusiastically selling one thing, then it have to be secure, helpful and inevitable. That public belief comes with accountability.
If you are going to insist on speaking about AI in public, taking $600,000 to advertise Microsoft Copilot to hundreds of thousands on social media or, when you’re the NFL, partnering with an AI company in a business airing through the largest sporting occasion in America, you might have an obligation to current the total image — particularly to audiences who’re simply studying about it. Converse concerning the limitations. Speak concerning the jobs which can be being eradicated. Point out the artists whose work is being scraped with out consent to coach these fashions. Acknowledge the staggering vitality consumption. Clarify how simple it’s to generate convincing misinformation. Disclose while you’re paid by an AI firm to say what you are saying.
This does not imply you’ll be able to’t talk about the chances and advantages of AI. It has actual potential to speed up drug discovery, enhance the results of illness and resolve complicated issues. However framing it as pure progress and innovation — as an unalloyed good — is ignorant or misleading.
Just like the surrealist work that emerged after World Warfare I, AI is revolutionary, provocative and disruptive. They each problem the methods we see the world. However surrealism was intentional and deeply human, rooted in our minds and expressions and feelings. Generative AI is machine-driven sample recognition. Surrealism was created to defy conventions and attain the last word fact and authenticity.
We nonetheless deserve the reality now. The dialog round AI is going on, whether or not we prefer it or not, and it is taking place quick. The least we will ask is that the individuals main that dialog inform us the info of the matter.
