We’ve all done it, trying to summarise a current issue, political controversy, or historical event, and dipped into one of the free AI (Artificial Intelligence) online services like Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini, to do the work for us.

AI – computer systems supposedly capable of performing tasks previously requiring human intelligence including reasoning, content creation, problem-solving, and language processing – is one of those futuristic developments that we were warned about in movies like “The Matrix”, “Bladerunner”, and “Terminator”.

But will they prove to be, as many commentators fear, the great job and society destroyer of the future? Or are they just another computer tool being hyped by tech companies seeking to inflate the bubble of their share prices?

The new technology is already playing havoc with our universities and other higher education institutions, where some students are even now reportedly graduating with degrees and qualifications gained for work they did not personally produce.

While individuals allegedly graduating with fraudulent qualifications in Arts subjects like English, history, languages, philosophy, sociology, psychology, political science, and media studies is worrying enough, what if it’s a scientist, engineer, or doctor who is doing the same?

The current head-in-the-sand approach by our tertiary institutions won’t be sustainable forever, though. Many believe our giant degree factories will unwillingly – though eventually – have to go back to the tutorial system of the traditional British colleges of the 18th century. In that model, students had to (and still do) take part in impromptu in-person question-and-answer sessions with their teachers – “Jones, tell me the foundational causes of the Peloponnesian War...”

On the work front, AI is said to already be impacting a number of job areas with a worrying decline in positions vacant for vulnerable industries. Those (according to AI) that are most vulnerable, include “routine, data-heavy, or language-based tasks” for such jobs as interpreters, writers/authors, data entry, customer service, and bookkeeping... as well as journalists.

With the music, television, and movie industry already using as much AI as they can, content creators such as scriptwriters, editors, and even actors and singers, could all be on the chopping block.

More traditional businesses that have also dived deep into the use of AI to replace human authors and experts for their professional report writing, summaries of projects, prospectuses, and even engineering reports, have slowly begun to notice some shortcomings in the technology, however.

While much of these literary, artistic, visual, musical, or professional report efforts, largely using the absorbed and refined – some would say “stolen” – works of centuries of human performers, authors, thinkers, inventors, artists, and creators, are scarily competent, they seem to have their limits.

While being concise, well-written, and logical, many critics also say they lack insight, intuition, and discernment, just as one might expect from a robot! This trend has led to the creation of the concept of “workslop”, meaningless verbiage with little real content or use.

In fact “slop” was the 2025 Word of the Year for both the Macquarie and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, referring to “low-quality images, essays, and other content, generated by artificial intelligence”.

So, is AI the monster that will destroy millions of jobs, livelihoods and ultimately society worldwide, or, like the microwave ovens and video players in the 1980s, will it eventually prove to be just another overrated piece of technology, that we all take for granted?