Hold the
wonder. Hold the
worry.
The risks and the possibilities of AI, side by side, with every number traced to its source.Move across the picture and the light follows.
Most plants require both light and dark to meet their furthest growth potential.
So it is with us.
Some people look at AI and feel dread. Some feel hope. Most of us feel both on the same day. Here the evidence for each sits next to the other, so you can carry them together.
Why I made this
I use AI in my work and in my art. I also see the anger and the fear around it, and how it has split people who make things into camps. That division has weighed on me.
I do not see AI as good or bad in itself. There are serious concerns... for our livelihoods, for the planet, for the artists whose work was used without asking, for where all of this is heading. There is also real good already growing. I wanted one place where the two could sit together.
So I gathered the evidence with AI's help and had every number checked against its source. Where the evidence is thin, the page says so. The site itself was built with AI, and How this was made names every tool and who did what.
I do not have this figured out. My hope is that if we keep people first, share what we make with love and kindness, and keep learning our craft, some of the fear can soften and we can find each other again.
Michael Hummel
Nine areas of life that AI touches
Think of a tree cut across. Each ring is a year the tree lived through, good and hard alike. These nine rings are the places AI reaches into a human life.
Every area holds a wonder and a worry. Each one has many more aspects than the few shown here.
- Ethical AI, consent and likeness
- Economic AI, jobs and pay
- Environmental AI, energy, water and climate
- Educational AI, learning and skill
- Emotional AI companions and mental health
- Epistemic AI, deepfakes and trust
- Equity AI, bias and access
- Expressive AI in art and music
- Existential AI safety, power and the long view
How to read the evidence
Every figure on this site names its source and its kind. A survey tells us what people believe. It cannot tell us how likely an event is. So each number carries one of five labels:
- Measured counted or experimental data
- Survey what people report or believe
- Estimate a judgment or model, often a company's own
- Forecast a projection of the future
- Reported a company's, agency's or journalist's own account
Press a small number like this one to see where a figure comes from.
The nine areas, each lit two ways
Ethical
Wonder
consent that works
30,000+
artists take part in one opt-in licensing program that now shares 25% of net revenue with them. Reported
Worry
consent, honesty, likeness
73%
of adults in an 8-country survey say it is unethical for AI firms to use copyrighted music without the artist's approval. Survey
Economic
Wonder
shared prosperity
11 more hours
a week of creative work reported by artists in Ireland's basic income pilot than by a lottery control group. Measured
Worry
livelihoods
26% and 36%
of illustrators and translators who answered a UK survey said they had already lost work to generative AI. Survey
Environmental
Wonder
a better-watched planet
97.2%
of 1,320 forecast targets on which an AI weather model beat the leading conventional ensemble forecast. Measured
Worry
energy and water
1.5%
of the world's electricity went to data centers in 2024. Use is projected to more than double by 2030. Estimate and forecast
Educational
Wonder
a patient teacher for all
Over double
the median test gains with a well-designed AI tutor, against an active-learning class, in a randomized trial of 194 Harvard physics students. Measured
Worry
learning and skill
+48%, then 17% worse
Students using plain GPT-4 for math practice scored 48% better in practice, then 17% worse than classmates on an exam without AI. A tutor with guardrails largely avoided the harm. Measured
Emotional
Wonder
connection and care
19.6%
higher on an automated empathy measure: peer supporters' replies written with AI feedback. It was 38.9% for those who said support was hard. Measured
Worry
relationships and mental health
72%
of US teens have tried an AI companion, and 52% use one at least a few times a month. Survey
Epistemic
Wonder
truth and common ground
About 20%
drop in belief in a chosen conspiracy theory after a conversation with an AI, among 2,190 believers. It lasted at least two months. Measured
Worry
truth and trust
55.5%
is how often people correctly identify deepfakes, which is not reliably better than chance (50%). Measured
Equity
Wonder
access for everyone
200 languages
translated by one model released free for non-commercial use, many with few written resources. Measured
Worry
who bears the cost
27.5% vs 15.4%
of working-age people used generative AI in the Global North vs the Global South in early 2026, and the gap is widening. Estimate
Expressive
Wonder
more voices, new forms
10.7%
more novel: stories by less-creative writers who were offered up to five AI ideas. Measured
Worry
sameness and flooding
Up to 8%
more novel is how stories were rated when writers were given AI ideas. The stories also became measurably more alike. Measured
Existential
Wonder
longer lives, a wiser hand
29% more
cancers found by AI-supported mammography (6.4 vs 5.0 per 1,000) in a randomized trial of 105,934 women, with no rise in false positives and 44% less reading work. Measured
Worry
control, power, meaning
5%
is AI researchers' median guess at the chance that AI causes human extinction or severe disempowerment (2023, 15% response rate). Survey
You do not have to choose.
You can be worried about where this is going and still be moved by what it can do. Carrying both is harder than picking a side... and it leaves more room for other people.
A Shared Ethic for AI in art and music
Eight commitments that an artist who refuses AI and an artist who uses it could both sign.
- Human first
- Consent
- Credit and pay
- Say how it was made
- Keep the craft alive
- Purpose before profit
- Use energy with intention
- Respect
Where each of us can start
- Choose tools and makers that ask, credit and pay.
- Say how your work was made.
- Keep practicing your craft, and teach it.
- Share what you can, and support pay and security for those who cannot yet.
- Ask of every new use whether it brings people closer together.