As artificial intelligence moves from research laboratories into everyday life, understanding its real-world effects becomes increasingly urgent. Beyond theoretical possibilities and hypothetical risks, what is actually happening as people use AI systems for tasks ranging from the mundane to the profound? Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude, has assembled a dedicated team to study exactly these questions.
Studying AI in the Wild
Understanding AI's societal impacts requires more than analyzing the technology itself. It requires observing how people actually use AI systems, what effects those uses have, and how consequences ripple through communities and institutions. This is empirical work—careful observation and research rather than armchair speculation.
Anthropic's societal impacts team approaches these questions systematically. By studying how people interact with Claude across diverse contexts, researchers can identify patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. What tasks do people bring to AI? How do they adapt their expectations and workflows? What goes well, what goes wrong, and what surprises emerge?
This research matters because actual impacts often differ from predicted ones. Technology's effects depend not just on technical capabilities but on social contexts, economic incentives, cultural norms, and countless other factors that resist purely theoretical analysis.
From Mundane to Profound
People use AI assistants for an extraordinary range of purposes. At the mundane end, AI helps with drafting emails, organizing information, answering factual questions, and countless small productivity tasks. These uses seem unremarkable individually but collectively represent a significant shift in how knowledge work happens.
More consequentially, people bring AI into complex professional tasks—legal research, medical information seeking, financial analysis, technical problem-solving. These uses raise questions about expertise, responsibility, and the changing nature of professional work.
And at the profound end, people engage AI systems with their deepest concerns—seeking advice about relationships and life decisions, processing grief and difficulty, exploring questions of meaning and purpose. These interactions reveal something about human needs and about the unexpected ways technology comes to serve them.
Unexpected Ways AI Enters Daily Life
Research reveals that AI integration into daily life often follows unexpected paths. Uses that developers anticipated may not materialize, while unanticipated uses flourish. People adapt tools to their actual needs, which may differ from imagined ones.
Some findings challenge common assumptions. AI use doesn't always replace human interaction; sometimes it enables it by helping people prepare for difficult conversations or articulate thoughts they struggle to express. AI doesn't always reduce effort; sometimes people engage more deeply with tasks because AI helps them past initial barriers.
These findings suggest that predicting AI's impacts requires ongoing empirical attention, not one-time analysis. As uses evolve, so do impacts—and responsible development requires continuously updating understanding.
Concerns and Challenges
Research also reveals concerns. Dependency on AI tools may atrophy skills that remain valuable. Displacement of certain types of work raises economic and social questions. Privacy implications of extensive AI interaction deserve attention. And effects on vulnerable populations may differ from effects on others.
These concerns don't necessarily mean AI development should stop—but they do mean that development should be informed by careful attention to actual impacts, not just aspirational goals. Understanding problems is prerequisite to addressing them.
The Role of Research
Why does an AI company invest in studying its own technology's societal impacts? Several reasons seem relevant. Understanding actual impacts helps improve products—identifying problems that need fixing and opportunities for helpful features. It supports responsible development by surfacing concerns early. It builds knowledge that can inform broader policy and governance discussions.
And it reflects a particular understanding of responsibility. Companies that develop powerful technologies have obligations to understand their effects—not just to maximize beneficial use but to identify and mitigate harms.
Implications for Canadians
For Canadians, these research efforts matter because AI's societal impacts will increasingly affect Canadian communities, institutions, and lives. Understanding these impacts—through company research, academic study, and governmental analysis—helps inform individual decisions about AI adoption, organizational policies about AI use, and public policy about AI governance.
Canada has strong research communities studying AI's social dimensions, from ethics to economics to legal implications. Anthropic's societal impacts research complements these efforts, adding perspectives from within a leading AI developer.
Learning Together
The honest message from this research is that we're all learning. AI's societal impacts are not predetermined; they emerge from millions of individual choices, organizational decisions, and policy frameworks. Understanding what's actually happening—through careful research rather than assumption—helps everyone navigate this transition more wisely.
This forum and discussions like it contribute to collective understanding. Sharing experiences with AI, noting what works and what concerns arise, and engaging critically with both enthusiasm and skepticism helps build the knowledge needed for beneficial AI integration.