Artificial intelligence will become the downfall of humans, financially, ethically and socially.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a very powerful tool that can be used for numerous things including voice imitation, AI generated images, self driven vehicles, AI written pieces, and even one on one conversations to mirror that of a real person. However, with this power, there is a deeper threat that has already started to sink in society.
Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist often referred to as a ¨godfather of AI¨ has shared that even he believes that AI is a dangerous weapon. In a talk where he explained why he left AI research at Google, Hinton said, ¨That’s a serious worry, right? So, one of the ways in which these systems might escape control is by writing their own computer code to modify themselves. And that’s something we need to seriously worry about.¨ If even the godfather of AI himself has fears about AI, there is a definite concern that people are overlooking.
With that being said, AI definitely has its own benefits that I can understand why people would defend. Some arguments used to defend the tool that I’ve heard were its positive contributions to the medical field, it´s ability to assist in research, and the fact that every decision is being made under an unbiased opinion. However, while it’s been helpful, the positive uses in this industry doesn’t outweigh the negatives for society as a whole.
Take ChatGPT for example, students are now depending on the software to write their essays. Which inherently leads to not only a lack of skills being instilled in a student, but overall just leads to students becoming lazy, especially if they rely on ChatGPT too heavily. It completely destroys a student’s work ethics. According to a Bestcollege survey reported by Forbes, ¨A majority, 51%, still thought the results can at least pass as ´human.´¨ This goes to show that a large number of students’ relationships with technology are being altered if they believe AI writings can be passed off as their own.
AI is also contributing to financial harm by taking over human jobs. In the Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum written in 2020, AI is predicted to take over 85 million jobs in the next 4 years as of 2024. This does create room for 69 million more jobs however. Regardless, this is still a 14 million job elimination total. This goes to show that AI will start to take over human jobs, leading to the financial loss from tons of people.
Aside from ethically and financially, AI is also notably destroying people socially. Despite it being called ¨Social Media,¨ AI bots being added to these platforms is the exact opposite of ¨social¨. Take SnapChat´s AI bot, MyAI, an OpenAI’s GPT technology addition added to the app for users to engage in as of February of 2023. I have personally used the feature just to experiment with it, and while it did mimic an actual human-like conversation, my thoughts still stand. The Bot is just simply not a real person no matter how you view it. And constantly interacting with it as if it was a real person, is going to deprive you of an actual social conversation in person.
As a consequence of these technological developments, humans are harming our future.
Ethically, there is a concern for people becoming too dependent on technology to complete tasks that help improve their skills such as writing essays. Along with these worries for human skills, comes a social concern as well. Not only these alarming concerns, but financially, society will suffer from job loss. It’s crucial to consider AI in the long run, and even the damage it has already caused.
