The effects of AI
AI has been characterized in many different ways throughout past and modern media, from the killer robots of Terminator to the helpful and big-hearted robots of The Iron Giant. While these works are purely fiction the reality of how advanced AI has already become and how it advanced it may become leads many experts to speculate about what AI could look like in our future. Whether it be world ending extinction causing robots or helpful robots with the best interest of mankind in the heart. There are many pros and cons to AI already, as it is a relatively new and growing field.
Some of the cons you may see with AI relate to a type of technology called “deepfakes” these deepfakes can be videos, audio recording, or picture that are not true and ai generated. The problem with these deepfakes is that as AI advances and becomes better at making these they may become indistinguishable from real and genuine videos of people. According to an article by the Los Angeles Times “Yisroel Mirsky, an AI researcher and deepfake expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said the technology has advanced to the point where it’s possible to do a deepfake video from a single photo of a person, and a “decent” clone of a voice from only three or four seconds of audio. But Gardner said the tools widely available to make deepfakes lag behind the state of the art; they require about five minutes of audio and one to two hours of video.” (Healey, 2023). The fact that people can so readily make deepfakes on so little information to feed the AI is extremely concerning, not only does it violate privacy it also can be used to scare or scam people into doing what whoever made the deepfake wants. This concern has already been brought up in Virginia law condemning those using deepfakes to make “revenge porn” to jailtime.
AI isn’t all bad though, it is currently implemented by the US government using AI in order to detect welfare fraud, this is important as it allows for a task that could be riddled with human error to be done by an unbiased and calculated AI. It is also implemented by some companies to check through things such as statement on return statements, balance sheets, and income statements, the AI may not be perfect but it can check through and see what the errors their human counterparts had made in order to fix it. According to the University of Cincinnati “There’s been much fear about AI replacing jobs or damaging economic stability. But the stats tell a different story. Indeed, one study found that AI could contribute a whopping $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This is partly thanks to the fact that AI, rather than replacing or removing jobs, is opening up countless new working opportunities in diverse fields, from finance to tech. It’s also driving huge productivity growth for many organizations.” The fact that AI could even possibly help the economy is extremely important, the creation of AI adds more jobs to many organizations which already stimulates the economy by making more jobs meaning more people are working.
I have never used ChatGPT in any of my classes but from all the teachers I have talked to they agree that it writes around a D or C average, this is due to the style being bland and generalized. The reason for this is because it is more generalized than specialized, this is due to it consuming a lot of information on the web and using said information to write about every thing you ask rather than looking for specific sources. Chatgpt is considered by most schools and universities to be cheating or disingenuous, which is true as it doesn’t foster the writing skills students will need in the future. So instead of using chat gpt in any of my classes I wrote every paper by hand in order to learn more about the issue at hand and to write at a higher level.
AI is an important issue to discuss as the basis of what it is and how it is regulated will shape our future generation and the future earth we inhabit, instead of having the general fear media instills into us through movies, songs, and pictures I believe we should embrace it. This is because AI can be an amazing tool that can be used in high risk or low risk scenarios, such as in the medical field that it has already been implemented into to help diagnose problems and streamline tasks that medical care providers have to do. But on the flip side AI is such a powerful tool that if it is developed in the wrong way it could spell destruction for us, AI is linked to the web and has an infinite database of information that can be used in many different ways, from the lore of someone’s favorite videogames to the instruction to build a pipe bomb, anything that is on the internet is free use to the AI. So, AI should be restricted in some aspects but allowed to flourish and grow to help with humanities tasks and day to day lives but never allowed to be used for war or violent purposes.
Work Cited
Healey, J. (2023a, May 11). Real-time deepfakes are a dangerous new threat. how to protect yourself. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-05-11/realtime-ai-deepfakes-how-to-protect-yourself
Fawley, Sabrina. “9 Benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2024.” University of Cincinnati, 27 Aug. 2024, online.uc.edu/blog/artificial-intelligence-ai-benefits.