Wingman

I watched Microsoft's Super Bowl commercial for Copilot. It's a good spot, well put together with a clear message. But I'm not sure that the message conveyed is really the one that Microsoft wants to send.

The basic format of the spot is this: it shows a number of individuals, recounting the doubts that other have about them. It focuses on one person, and her succinct response: "Watch me." Cue the inspirational music as we're shown how Copilot can empower people to achieve more.

For the people who dream of doing big things that are hard to achieve by oneself, Copilot positions itself as something that can help. But it does that, not by making the people in the spot better at what they're already doing, but by allowing them to do things that they'd otherwise ask of others. Commercials operate by showing a need, and offering a solution, and this one is no exception. But the need it appears to be solving is that of human collaboration. At no point in the ad does the viewer see two or more people collaborating on anything. In the world that the commercial shows, there are no teams... only individuals and Copilot. I can see the appeal to people who enjoy working alone, but I suspect it will heighten anxiety for others. If one's fear is that technology will drive isolation, or that AI will render one's skills obsolete, the message of this commercial is not reassuring.

It's the difference between speaking to the target audience and the total audience.

In one scene, a young man asks for sign ideas for his classic truck repair shop. Copilot takes on the role of graphic designer. That scene would have been just as powerful showing Copilot helping a graphic designer to create even more ideas. Or helping "Mike" source specific information on a model of truck that he's repairing. It's A.I. as complement, rather than competitor. By showing Copilot as helping people be productive with the skills they already have, a commercial can avoid the appearance of pitting people against one another, or devaluing the knowledge and talents that they bring to the table. It speaks to the total audience.

The primary fear that many people have of A.I. technology is that it's going to obsolesce their skills and damage their employment and/or income prospects. And, to be sure, it's going to take more than well-crafted commercials to assuage those concerns. Be that as it may, there's value in not feeding those concerns. Creating an advertisement that implies that Copilot can replace people, and expecting those people not to notice, was a misstep, if for no other reason than it implies that destroying people's livelihoods will be a known side effect of rolling out the technology.

The disruption to labor markets of Generative A.I. systems, and possibly Artificial General Intelligence is not a matter of "if," but of "when" and "how intensely." If A.I. companies don't position the technology as something that benefits broad sections of society, as opposed to further concentrating wealth at the top of the income distribution, people will push back against the threat they perceive it to pose. Messaging that speaks to a target audience, but leaves out others, plays into that sense of threat,