On Sunday, February 8, around 125 million people tuned in to watch Super Bowl LX. The Super Bowl is a national phenomenon, and besides the actual football being played and halftime show, it’s also known for its multitude of ridiculous and entertaining advertisements.
For non-football fans, or even fans whose teams haven’t made it to the big game, the ads can be a rather anticipated event. This year, however, the ads definitely seemed to fall short of expectations, particularly due to the overload of AI-based advertisements. 23 percent of advertisers in this year’s Super Bowl, about 15 out of 66 ads, promoted AI and/or AI companies, according to iSpot.
Most of the time, Super Bowl ads are designed to grab attention, capitalize on nostalgia, and whet the appetite of the consumer. They also often contain highly anticipated movie or TV show trailers. This year, there were about 8 trailers shown, with double that number promoting AI. That distinction alone shows the loss of human creativity and connection that we are witnessing in real time, as we rely more and more on AI.
That distinction alone shows the loss of human creativity and connection that we are witnessing in real time, as we rely more and more on AI.
Another issue with these commercials are the blatant lies of omission that many of them seem to be committing. Dario Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic, an AI company that made an appearance during the Super Bowl, and when he spoke at the World Economic Forum, he claimed that “AI progress is going too fast.” He also pushed for stronger regulations on developing AI models.
However, this negative sentiment and caution was in no way displayed during his, or anyone else’s ad. In fact, each company managed to portray such a positive display of AI that Kris Marszalek, owner and creator of AI.com, reported that his site temporarily crashed from overuse.
The negative effects of AI cannot be understated. These include, but aren’t limited to, environmental concerns and the real world loss of jobs. AI-focused ads showed purely the supposed “positive” effects of the technology. In reality, it’s costing people their jobs, as seen in a recent news story by CNBC where Heineken’s CEO revealed AI is “partly” behind the plan to cut up to 7% of its workforce.
AI is also a huge danger to our environment. The Harvard Business Review estimated that the global AI energy demand is going to exceed the entire annual electricity consumption of a small country by late 2026. AI is using our electricity and power to replace our jobs.
In the past, it used to be such an exciting time to see what ads would come on during the Super Bowl, but now, it feels like we can just expect the same narrative pushing AI in our faces over and over again. These kinds of ads aren’t inspirational; they don’t get people excited to see a new movie or connect with others. They don’t show us the best of humanity. Instead they show us how we can delegate our creativity and our talents to an unthinking, unfeeling machine.
One just can’t help but wonder what would happen if we didn’t focus on encouraging people to have a robot do their work for them, but instead, aired ads motivating people to create things of their own, pushing the limits of human potential and bringing all of us together, without the use of a machine.
Lila Zink is a freshman Ancient Studies and Anthropology double major, and an opinion writer for The Retriever. Contact Lila at z83@umbc.edu
