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The Terms and Conditions of Artificial Intelligence

Read the terms. Then decide.

Some people are asking you to decline artificial intelligence. Before you do, here is what is already in the agreement. Everything below exists today, in use or in published research. Where there is a number, the source is linked.

By declining, you decline: medicine

  1. Breast screening with AI support that, in a trial of over 100,000 women, found 29% more cancers and cut radiologists' reading workload by 44%. (MASAI trial, The Lancet Digital Health, 2025)
  2. AI scribes that write up the visit so your doctor can look at you, not the screen. In one study, clinician burnout fell from 52% to 39% in 30 days. (Olson et al., JAMA Network Open, 2025)
  3. Eye exams that screen people with diabetes for retinopathy without a specialist in the room.
  4. Stroke software that reads a brain scan and alerts the stroke team within minutes, so treatment starts sooner.
  5. Early warnings for sepsis that flag a patient getting worse before it is obvious at the bedside.
  6. Chest X-ray reading for tuberculosis in places with no radiologist, an approach the WHO now recommends for screening.
  7. A standard ECG that can also reveal a weak heart pump that would otherwise go unnoticed.
  8. A second pair of eyes during colonoscopy that helps doctors spot polyps they might miss.
  9. Pathology tools that help find prostate cancer on biopsy slides.
  10. New antibiotics found by searching millions of molecules, including compounds that kill drug-resistant bacteria.
  11. A drug for lung fibrosis, discovered and designed with AI, that has already been tested in patients.
  12. Designed proteins that neutralize deadly snake venom toxins in the lab.
  13. Brain implants that decode attempted speech, giving a voice back to people who lost it to paralysis or ALS.
  14. Voice banking that lets someone with ALS keep speaking in their own voice.
  15. Hearing aids that separate the voice in front of you from the noise of the room.
  16. Prosthetic hands that learn the muscle signals of the person wearing them.
  17. A plain-language explanation of your diagnosis, your lab results or your medical bill, at two in the morning.
  18. Genetic tools that help sort tens of millions of possible DNA changes into likely harmless or likely harmful.

By declining, you decline: science

  1. Predicted structures for about 200 million proteins, free to every scientist on Earth, and the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry that came with them. (EMBL)
  2. A weather model that beat Europe's flagship forecast system on more than 90% of 1,380 measures, and spots severe weather earlier. (GraphCast, Science, 2023)
  3. Hundreds of thousands of new stable crystal structures, candidates for better batteries, chips and solar cells.
  4. A new battery material found by screening millions of candidates by computer instead of by hand.
  5. Control of the superheated plasma inside a fusion reactor.
  6. Engineered enzymes that break down plastic bottles.
  7. The full wiring diagram of a fruit fly brain, mapped with AI help, neuron by neuron.
  8. Words read for the first time in 2,000 years, from scrolls carbonized by Vesuvius.
  9. Hundreds of newly discovered Nazca line drawings in the Peruvian desert.
  10. New planets found hiding in old telescope data.
  11. Proofs at the level of the world's best young mathematicians at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
  12. Faster, more accurate reading of human genomes.
  13. Lab work that used to take a PhD student a year, done in an afternoon, so the student can think about the next question.

By declining, you decline: the planet

  1. Flood forecasts days ahead for river basins that never had a forecast.
  2. Wildfire cameras that spot smoke and alert crews before the fire spreads.
  3. Earthquake alerts sent to phones seconds before the shaking arrives.
  4. Flight routes adjusted to avoid creating contrails, one of aviation's biggest warming effects.
  5. Methane leaks spotted from space.
  6. Near real-time alerts when a forest is being cut down.
  7. Better forecasts of wind power, so more of it reaches the grid.
  8. Data center cooling that uses far less energy.
  9. Sprayers that hit only the weed, not the whole field, cutting herbicide use.
  10. A farmer photographing a sick leaf and getting a diagnosis in the field.
  11. The forecast that tells a farmer when the rain is really coming.
  12. Camera traps and microphones that count endangered animals and listen for whales.

By declining, you decline: access

  1. A voice that reads the world to a blind person: the menu, the mail, the street sign, the face of a friend.
  2. Live captions on every call, video and conversation for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
  3. Talking to your grandkids in any language, in real time.
  4. Reading a letter from the government in your own language.
  5. Natural, human-sounding text to speech for people with dyslexia.
  6. Faster typing and word prediction for people who speak through a device.
  7. Voice control for people who cannot use their hands.
  8. Any document rewritten at the reading level you need.
  9. Directions, help and answers for people who cannot afford to ask an expert.

By declining, you decline: learning

  1. An AI tutor whose Harvard physics students learned about twice as much, in less time, as students in an active-learning class. (Kestin et al., Scientific Reports, 2025)
  2. A patient tutor at 2 a.m. that never makes you feel stupid for asking again.
  3. The same explanation five different ways until one of them clicks.
  4. Conversation practice in a new language without the fear of being judged.
  5. Feedback on your essay tonight, not in two weeks.
  6. A study partner for the kid whose parents work nights.
  7. Help for teachers with the paperwork, so they can spend the time with students.
  8. Any lecture, paper or textbook, summarized and explained.
  9. Learning to code, cook, fix a sink or play guitar from something that answers back.

By declining, you decline: your time

  1. The hours you used to spend on spreadsheets.
  2. Leaving work before dark.
  3. The first draft of the email you were dreading.
  4. Meeting notes that write themselves.
  5. Copying numbers from one window into another, done for you.
  6. A forty-page contract summarized before you sign it.
  7. Hold music replaced by an answer.
  8. The forms, the claims and the paperwork, filled in and checked.
  9. Code written faster, so engineers spend their time on the hard part.
  10. A small business with the marketing, books and website help of a big one.
  11. The new hire who learns the job in weeks instead of months.
  12. More time for the work only you can do.

By declining, you decline: everyday life

  1. Fraud alerts that catch the charge before you do.
  2. Spam and scam calls filtered before they reach you.
  3. Traffic predictions that get you home sooner.
  4. Finding every photo of your mom by typing her name.
  5. A recipe from whatever is left in the fridge.
  6. Your lease, your bill or your insurance letter, explained in plain words.
  7. A second opinion on the car repair quote.
  8. Help planning the trip, the budget or the birthday party.
  9. Someone to think out loud with when nobody else is awake.

By declining, you decline: the people you love

  1. A doctor who looks at you, not the screen.
  2. The grandparent who can finally talk with every grandchild.
  3. The parent at the game at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday.
  4. The friend who can read the menu on their own.
  5. Dinner with friends on a weeknight.
  6. The cancer caught a year earlier.
  7. The flood warning that arrived in time.
  8. More time with the people you love.