The risks of Artificial Intelligence

There is no doubt that AI has become a big part of our lives and plays an important role, with more and more softwares and companies relying on this technology to get their job done. Scientists and engineers from all over the world have started to use it. Even the Coronavirus’ vaccine was developed with the use of Artificial Intelligence. These are all great news, but to what extent? There are clearly some risks which we expose ourselves to, but which are these risks and are they extremely dangerous for mankind? Moreover, can and will the world become as the Matrix movies predicted?

1. Many jobs at risk

People have always been used to work and earn money, but since AI’s apparition, lots of classical jobs which used to require human attention were easily eliminated and people have been replaced with robots which are programmed to do their jobs.

Maybe the worst aspect is that robots are never tired, they do not require a home or any sort of food. With this in mind, we can’t deny that they are more performant and cheaper. Therefore, businessmen started preferring the robots in the detriment of their own race.

All of this could lead to a high unemployment rate and social inequity. As the white collars started being replaced by machines which are never tired, which can “work” for as long as they have a battery, lots of people have started to lose their jobs, as the big companies don’t need them anymore. We all know this isn’t beneficial for us, but with Artificial Intelligence, which makes our lives easier, it’s high time for us to reconsider our professions and orient ourselves towards the future. Otherwise, the ones who don’t risk being left behind.

On the other hand, AI is becoming more and more intelligent, which means that more and more jobs will be lost by humans and won by the robots. But to what degree? While it’s clear that not all the work is going to be overtaken by the machines, there’s still a question to be asked: which will be the “survivor” jobs? 

The “job war” between the machines and mankind has already started, which one is going to be the winner?

2. Security issues

In addition to the fact that many people are under the risk of losing their jobs, there are other serious issues which AI could cause, such as the violation of privacy and digital security, which are going to be threatened if this technology is not used for good purposes.

For example, criminal minds can use AI to hack whatever through machine learning and even important personalities are under threat. Robots can be trained to recognize their voice from a video and imitate it. Through continuous learning, they can reproduce the voices of their victims, distorsioning the intended message. More concrete, they could make them “speak” discourses of hate, sexism, aggressivity and racism.

People can therefore not recognize anymore what’s real and what isn’t. They will be unable to differentiate between fake and reality. It only takes one political campaign in the wrong hands to succeed and instaurate the panic among citizens, which can definitely be disastrous for our race.

3. Too intelligent platforms

Everybody knows, uses and loves the Social Media platforms and the search engines. What we weren’t aware of is that the mechanisms behind the scene are becoming too accurate in predicting what we love, making us too dependent on them. They’ve become like a drug and nobody can quit.

Television used to have such a big success before, but now it is almost dead. That’s because, even if the TV shows producers tried to focus on their audience, they weren’t specific enough. Since the search engines, everyone can search for what they want to know about or buy. What most people don’t know is that these machines learn and classify us depending on our tastes, showing us more and more relevant news feeds, making it improbable for us to ever quit our phones and/ or computers.

All of this while the corporations make lots of money thanks to us. They even “help” you make the decision of purchasing one product or not, see your friends’ posts you’re most likely to react to and the news you’re greatly interested in.

What’s the worst? About half of Earth’s population is now addicted to the Internet, Social Media and search engines, that it is impossible for us to quit them and focus on our family, life and personal matters.

4. Wars and biological weapons may arise

What if one day the machines become so intelligent that they decide to launch biological weapons and declare wars without any human intervention? Another possibility is that the enemy country could use the AI to destroy the other country. 

None of these situations is impossible and both are dangerous. A weapon developed by robots which we don’t have any control over is worse than a thousand soldiers holding a weapon. That’s because we don’t know what we can expect from robots, even if we were the ones who initially programmed them.

While there are ways in which we can use AI to protect us, it can be also used for evil purposes, which could lead to the destruction of the whole human race. It all depends on the minds of the ones who create the learning system and on their purposes. Or, better said, it all depends on the purposes of the ones who have control over them.

To sum up

Artificial Intelligence is still a taboo subject. While it has been used in a safe environment until now, it depends on mankind to continue using it for greater purposes, without trying to be God. The risks of this technology can’t be simply ignored. Instead of being scared, we should be aware of these dangers and use AI efficiently and take all the precautions we can. However, AI has made it possible for us to invent new jobs, such as Marketing expert, engineers etc. Now that you’ve understood the risks we’re exposed to, you can start learning, using and training machine learning models with Auxilio!