3 Biggest Threats of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been ever-rising for decades now. But in the last few years, we have seen it take shape. ChatGPT, Google Bard, and many more, answer and provide information for almost anything. But just like a coin has two sides, there is a dark underlining to AI as well. I have been talking to Srikanth Velamakanni, CEO of Fractal Analytics, regarding the same. These are the top three ways AI can pose a threat to humankind.
1. Societal bias
In a world where you can compute data and codes and get a powerful AI, it can literally control everything: basically, the whole world. And its profits will go to the people producing and designing this AI. There will be very few companies, and they will be able to control almost everything in the world. And that world will be highly unequal. There will be no value for labor anymore. There will be value for capital only because you need a limited number of people to produce and maintain AI. It can capture the surplus of the world. A complete dystopian scenario where few companies become ultra-powerful. They are going to control access to the world and resources. We will all become slaves to a corporate imperialist world.
2. Loss of jobs
This is an unfortunate but direct consequence of the rise of AI. Except for a few white-collar jobs, all professions are under threat. When AI becomes a bit more intelligent, no company will want to hire new people because machines will learn to accomplish every task in the world. Yes, all jobs need that human conscience, touch and emotion for it to work, but AI has already started emulating a lot of it. In the long term, there will also be benefits; different jobs will probably open up. But in the near future, many people will lose jobs.
3. Knowing no limits
We, as humans, have morals and rationale. We know what to do and where to stop. And that is how society has functioned for hundreds and thousands of years. However, AI operates without those sorts of qualms. To AI, it’s more like being handed a mission, and it’s focused on completing it. If AI is asked to come up with a solution for climate change, it will calculate and derive that human beings pose the biggest threat, so let’s end all of humanity. And that is catastrophic. A similar scenario will happen if AI is used to manufacture weapons. Without a human making the final decision, AI poses enormous risks, which are life-threatening.
Apart from these, there are concerns regarding privacy issues. If everything is out there, how do we protect personal data? Also, it is important to remember that AI is designed and produced by a company or rather a group of people who put huge amounts of data in it, and AI performs based on that. This brings the question of ethics. Researchers and developers must focus on that. However, there is a wonderful opportunity for us to invest in our personal growth and enhance our skills. We can then choose to embrace the positive aspects of AI that complement our journey while gracefully setting aside the aspects that might not resonate with us. It is like crafting a tailor-made partnership with AI that brings out the best in both worlds.
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