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A Rant on AI Advertising 

Photo by Tânia Mousinho on Unsplash

Peter Tucker, 29 January 2025 

Companies are trying to convince you that you can rely on their AI to solve your problems, and that message is showing up in a number of commercials. The first advertisement that I was aware of was from Microsoft during Super Bowl LVIII (2024). The ad shows one person after another, where each person says something to the effect of “they said I couldn’t …”: “They said I couldn’t start my own business”, “They said I couldn’t get my degree”, “They said I couldn’t make my movie”, “They said I couldn’t code a video game.” Then someone looks defiantly into the camera and says, “Watch me.” The rest of the ad shows each person using Microsoft’s Copilot to accomplish  all of those things “they” said couldn’t be done. 

Apple’s recent “I am genius” ads are similar. Each ad focuses on someone in a real bind and needs to get something done. Then, simply by pressing a button on their iPhone, they accomplish the task spectacularly, with unexpected and admirable brilliance. At the end of each ad, the person looks at the camera with a sense of pride and accomplishment. 

Here are links to the commercials I’m referring to, and I’m sure there are others that I haven’t listed. I encourage you to take time to watch a few of them at least, and to think critically about the message: 

There are problems with these ads that I think need to be brought up. In Microsoft’s “Watch Me” ad, it turns out “they” were right. Each person who used AI to solve their problem didn’t do anything other than ask AI to build it for them. To smugly say “watch me”, then simply press a button and complete the work frustrates me. Where does the source of that smugness and pride come from? Apple’s ads have a similar problem. A person is unable to control their anger or forgets an important date, and with the press of a button, all is well. Again, there should be no pride in that result. Truthfully, if someone can simply press an AI button to complete a task or rectify a mistake, they’re not a genius. Anyone can do that. Anyone could “solve” those problems in the same way. They’re no different than anyone else. 

Generative AI can do a lot of things. It can create articles, images, and videos, improve how we communicate, and generate code for a computer. And maybe it’s because I’ve been in education for over 20 years, but I’m concerned that the value people place in a robust education will drop quickly, and I’ve seen articles to suggest that people are already questioning the value of education. Why should someone spend time learning how to write, draw, or program a computer, if AI can easily and quickly accomplish those tasks? People in the real world are using AI to write and to summarize documents, so why aren’t we teaching students how to use AI for those same tasks? Won’t that better prepare them for the real world? Nelson Mandela stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” (Recently I’ve seen that quote pop up in a number of places. Perhaps AI has been hearing me think about this article?) The importance of education is something we need to continue to uphold, and we need to make sure our students also see its importance. Educators need to carry that banner. 

In his paper No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, Frederick Brooks said, “​I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation. We still make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared with the conceptual errors in most systems.” Though this article is in the context of software engineering, I think the sentiment applies across disciplines. The hard part of writing an article is not the labor of putting words on paper. It’s forming the concept of the article and architecting it so that it flows well and conveys the points you want to make, then editing that article to make it flow better and convey the points more convincingly. But the thing is, in order to do those things well, one needs to build the foundational skills to know how to bring it all together. We need foundational writing skills, drawing skills, and programming skills to know what can be achieved. 

I recently attended an event for the local business community discussing AI and how it was being used. An audience member asked a panel about unintended consequences of AI that they fear most. One panelist’s response was, “brain atrophy”. He said he worries that, if we come to rely on AI too much we might get to the point where we stop exercising our brain regularly and eventually forget how to think. 

So, what can educators do to carry the banner of the importance of education? First, as has been discussed in other articles, there is much value in learning how to persist through the struggle to solve a problem. Educators must help students understand that value and see the rewards of persistence. Education must include teaching students to value that effort more than attaining a solution. Educators need to help students see how their struggle writing an article or creating art creates a finished product more valuable than a product created by AI. 

Additionally, educators need to help students evaluate responses from AI critically. When AI produces flawed products, we need to teach students to identify those flaws. When AI produces good results, we teach students how to recognize what is good and use it to improve their own work. To that end, my colleague Dr. Schepens and I are working on an upcoming article on how we’ve used AI in our classroom with these goals in mind. 

When our students say “watch me”, or when they sing “I am genius”, it should be for celebrating their persistence and their accomplishments. 

References

Brooks, Frederick P., “No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering,” Computer, Vol. 20, No. 4 (April 1987) pp. 10-19 

LaunchPad INW, Innovator Connect Event: Exploring the Potential of AI, 29 January 2025. 

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