The Danger Looming Over Us
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has a heavy presence in most of our lives. From the Amazon Alexa on your counter to facial recognition technology used to open your phone, AI is everywhere. It has brought ease into peoples’ lives and aided in tedious tasks, but the convenience AI provides comes at a large cost that, in the end, won’t be worth it. Artificial Intelligence presents both short and long-term dangers to our daily lives and humanity itself.
At first glance, AI appears to simply be a popular technology that takes on many human tasks, relieving people of some responsibilities. Being an algorithm-based technology that performs intelligence-based tasks, it helps decrease the amount of work humans have to do. In doing so, AI has earned praise for the way it increases efficiency, accuracy, and profitability for some companies’ processes. Outside of the workplace, AI also aids in completing household tasks and making our everyday actions convenient. All of this simplicity seems ideal, but the ethical drawbacks and danger of AI pose a dangerous future for the human race. As AI increases and gains intelligence, we will not only become lazier but also be presented with severe security and privacy threats. The potential of AI becoming uncontrollable is not just a dystopian fear, but a real possibility
AI may provide immediate convenience but in the long term won’t help us. With more jobs able to be done by AI, millions will lose their jobs. According to a 2019 Brookings Institution study, 36 million people work in jobs with “high exposure” to automation. These jobs range from retail sales to hospitality to factory workers to white-collar workers and as AI grows, they will all vanish. John C. Havens, author of Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Humanity and Maximizing Machines, has found that while switching to AI could save companies such as law firms hundreds of thousands of dollars, it simultaneously strips many humans of precious jobs. When it comes to preserving jobs or saving money, most businesspeople would choose to save money even if it hurts the human race. Everyday tasks will also be taken over, causing the use of our brains less and less and presenting issues for future generations. The malicious use of AI will only increase and when incorporated with weapons or people’s private information serious safety issues will arise. Even Elon Musk is leary of AI, saying that it is “far more dangerous than nukes”. AI is capable of more than what we know, and that fact alone should warn us of its danger.
AI’s true potential is unknown just tells us how uncontrollable it is. We all need to be conscious of the products we use, ideas we support, and changes we let occur if we want to preserve our humanity. If AI is going to be supported, it needs to be dealt with safely and with its implications heavily understood. The immediate ease presented by AI is not worth the loss of privacy, security, and safety it entails. Providing a potential sci-fi future, AI is not a long-term positive technology.
Sources:
https://www.simplilearn.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-artificial-intelligence-article
https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/risks-of-artificial-intelligence
https://www.cser.ac.uk/research/risks-from-artificial-intelligence/
Emily Detwiler, Grade 12. Interests/hobbies include dancing, reading, Key Club, NHS, hanging out with friends, going to the beach, and traveling wherever...
