a. AI—What is it?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that historically required human intelligence, such as recognizing speech, making decisions, and identifying patterns. AI is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of technologies, including machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP).
b. Promise for Positive Advancements
AI is not a futuristic vision, but rather something that is here today and being integrated with and deployed into a variety of sectors. This includes fields such as finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, social media, and smart cities. There are numerous examples where AI already is making an impact on the world and augmenting human capabilities in significant ways.
How artificial intelligence is transforming the world
c. Dangers and Threats of AI
AI has been hailed as revolutionary and world-changing, but it’s not without drawbacks. As AI grows more sophisticated and widespread, the voices warning against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence grow louder.
“These things could get more intelligent than us and could decide to take over, and we need to worry now about how we prevent that happening,” said Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” for his foundational work on machine learning and neural network algorithms. The renowned computer scientist isn’t alone in his concerns.
Questions about who’s developing AI and for what purposes make it all the more essential to understand its potential downsides. Some of the possible dangers of artificial intelligence are:
1) Lack of AI Transparency and Explainability
AI and deep learning models can be difficult to understand, even for those that work directly with the technology. This leads to a lack of transparency for how and why AI comes to its conclusions, creating a lack of explanation for what data AI algorithms use, or why they may make biased or unsafe decisions.
2) Job Losses Due to AI Automation
AI-powered job automation is a pressing concern as the technology is adopted in industries like marketing, manufacturing and healthcare. By 2030, tasks that account for up to 30% of hours currently being worked in the U.S. economy could be automated — with lower skilled employees left especially vulnerable to the change — according to McKinsey. Goldman Sachs even states 300 million full-time jobs could be lost to AI automation.
Even professions that require graduate degrees and additional post-college training aren’t immune to AI displacement. Fields like law and accounting are primed for an AI takeover.
3) Social Manipulation Through AI Algorithms
Online media and news have become even murkier in light of AI-generated images and videos, AI voice changers as well as deepfakes infiltrating political and social spheres. These technologies make it easy to create realistic photos, videos, audio clips or replace the image of one figure with another in an existing picture or video. As a result, bad actors have another avenue for sharing misinformation and war propaganda, creating a nightmare scenario where it can be nearly impossible to distinguish between creditable and faulty news. (A small sample of your loved one’s voice can be turned into a recording of an emergency call from him/her needing money wired or credit card number!)
No one knows what’s real and what’s not. So it really leads to a situation where you literally cannot believe your own eyes and ears; you can’t rely on what, historically, we’ve considered to be the best possible evidence… That’s going to be a huge issue.
4) Social Surveillance With AI Technology
There’s also the way AI will adversely affect privacy and security. A prime example is China’s use of facial recognition technology in offices, schools and other venues. Besides tracking a person’s movements, the Chinese government may be able to gather enough data to monitor a person’s activities, relationships and political views.
5) Lack of Data Privacy Using AI Tools
If you’ve played around with an AI chatbot or tried out an AI face filter online, your data is being collected — but where is it going and how is it being used? AI systems often collect personal data to customize user experiences or to help train the AI models you’re using (especially if the AI tool is free). Data may not even be considered secure from other users when given to an AI system, as one bug incident that occurred with ChatGPT in 2023 “allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history.”
6) Biases Due to AI
Various forms of AI bias are detrimental too. AI is developed by humans — and humans are inherently biased. A.I. researchers are primarily people who are male, who come from certain racial demographics, who grew up in high socioeconomic areas, primarily people without disabilities. The limited experiences of AI creators may explain why speech-recognition AI often fails to understand certain dialects and accents.
7) Autonomous Weapons Powered By AI
As is too often the case, technological advancements have been harnessed for the purpose of warfare. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems locate and destroy targets on their own while abiding by few regulations. Hackers have mastered various types of cyber attacks, so it’s not hard to imagine a malicious actor infiltrating autonomous weapons and instigating absolute Armageddon. Some fear that, no matter how many powerful figures point out the dangers of artificial intelligence, we’re going to keep pushing the envelope with it if there’s money to be made.
8) Financial Crises Brought About By AI Algorithms
The financial industry has become more receptive to AI technology’s involvement in everyday finance and trading processes. As a result, algorithmic trading could be responsible for our next major financial crisis in the markets. While AI algorithms aren’t clouded by human judgment or emotions, they also don’t take into account contexts, the interconnectedness of markets and factors like human trust and fear. These algorithms then make thousands of trades at a blistering pace with the goal of selling a few seconds later for small profits. Selling off thousands of trades could scare investors into doing the same thing, leading to sudden crashes and extreme market volatility.
9) Loss of Human Influence
An overreliance on AI technology could result in the loss of human influence — and a lack in human functioning — in some parts of society. Using AI in healthcare could result in reduced human empathy and reasoning, for instance. Interacting with AI systems too much could even cause reduced peer communication and social skills. So while AI can be very helpful for automating daily tasks, some question if it might hold back overall human intelligence, abilities and need for community.
10) Uncontrollable Self-Aware AI
There also comes a worry that AI will progress in intelligence so rapidly that it will become sentient, and act beyond humans’ control — possibly in a malicious manner. Alleged reports of this sentience have already been occurring, with one popular account being from a former Google engineer who stated the AI chatbot LaMDA was sentient and speaking to him just as a person would. As AI’s next big milestones involve making systems with artificial general intelligence, and eventually artificial superintelligence, cries to completely stop these developments continue to rise. This is a serious problem that’s probably going to arrive fairly soon, and politicians need to be thinking about what to do about it now. (Most of us remember the movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
12 Risks and Dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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(This is crazy! How did this happen in such a short time? See How Did We Get Here?)