How Far Does AI Go Today And Do We Need To Feel Threatened

However, the future trend of AI is to develop general AI that may outperform humans at almost every cognitive task, which is a concern.

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Therefore, the development of AI today poses a need to feel threatened in the following ways.

Artificial Intelligence Weapons

The development of autonomous weapons, which are Artificial Intelligence weapons designed to kill, is a major threat to human life. The military develops these weapons, and it is quite disturbing to think what would happen if they fall into the enemy's hands. As much as the military seems confident in controlling them, what happens if AI starts thinking and making decisions of their own? Only one thing - mass destruction. If the weapons fall into the wrong hands, it can result in mass killings.

AI has the Potential to Become More Intelligent than any Human

There are new models of AI developed by Open AI, such as language intelligence, which allows its application on any English Language task through its general-purpose ''text in-text" out interface. One Open AI development is the gpt-3 (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Its capacity is ten times larger than that of Microsoft. However, there is a risk factor of generating fake news or misinformation, phishing, spam, abuse of governmental processes such as sending automated false political campaigns and committing academic essay frauds. Thus, the threats above call for risk management.

Humans are at Risk of Job losses

Many people generally view job loss as a significant threat coming from AI today. With the development of human-like robots, some tasks will require fewer humans. The primary concern is no longer which tasks or jobs AI will replace but to what extent the replacement will occur. It is unfortunate because no one is immune to the AI technology displacement, not even professionals or graduates. Therefore, in terms of job automation, there is a need to feel threatened.

Privacy Violations

Malicious use of AI may threaten digital security, physical security, and political security. It threatens digital security in that criminals train hacking systems or social engineering victims at human performance levels. Political security threats occur through sending disinformation campaigns. Additionally, AI will affect privacy and security, primarily through social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, where you require your personal information to sign in to social media. Through AI, there has been creating fake accounts to no longer differentiate fake people from real ones. As a result, no one knows what is real or what is not, making situations where one does not believe his/her eyes, which is becoming a significant issue today.

Socioeconomic Inequality

The significant socio-economic gap is growing wider because of AI-job automation. With more people losing jobs to Artificial Intelligent robots and applications, the socio-economic gap will widen. AI researchers are people from high socio-economic classes, highly educated people, and specific racial backgrounds.

There have also been cases of Colour-Blind Artificial Intelligence, such as in digital watches using facial recognition not recognizing people of color. This Colour-Blind Artificial Intelligence produces racism, a potential threat that will blow up at some point.

Additionally, research shows that most AI experts are men. It brings another negative aspect of AI, creating a socio-economic gap and AI bias regarding gender, race, educational background, and socio-economic classes. The mentioned bias is detrimental and therefore causes a need to worry by humans.

Although AI is programmed to Benefit Humans, there can Be Destructive Outcomes

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An example of a destructive outcome coming from AI is asking an intelligent car to drive you to school as fast as possible. You will get there on time but probably followed by traffic officers, helicopters, covered with vomit and feeling nauseous. The car did what you asked for, but not how you wanted or expected. The main reason is that it is challenging to align our goals with those of AI. The destruction that comes with AI, therefore, raises a threat to human life.

Today, artificial intelligence continues to grow with things that we could only imagine before becoming a reality. Although it has enabled advancements in some fields and has made tasks more manageable and straightforward for humans, there is a rising concern. It may pose threats to human capacity, intelligence, and jobs performed by humans. Sometimes, there are threats to human lives, like in the use of autonomous weapons.

Kareem Winters

Update 28 April 2021