The Alarming Development of Artificial Intelligence - Parker Hausmann
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States has brought about significant changes in various aspects of our lives. AI has made remarkable progress which has led to the automation of various diverse tasks and the emergence of sophisticated AI-powered systems. With the release of ChatGPT-3 to the public on November 22 of 2022, the public has expressed diverse outlooks on the consequences of the publics' unlimited access: some believe AI will advance society more than harm it, and others believe it will tear society apart despite the potential benefits (Zorthian). The capabilities of this technology branch from answering complex writing prompts with sophisticated, nuanced essays all the way to building complex code structures. It can answer any question it is asked all while abiding by whatever the requested word count or tone the user requested. Despite thinking AI systems, such as ChatGPT, will offer potential benefits to the lives of US citizens, it is crucial to understand its negative implications on society both today and for future generations. It took hardly a month after its release to the public before teachers began to acknowledge the widespread plagiarism that was surfacing all across the world. Today, the implications have gone far beyond school, and they will continue to damage the well-being of society if left unchecked. The rapid development of AI in the United States is harming the everyday lives of US citizens, leading to significant job loss, an increase in misinformation, and stern warnings of cognitive impairment.
With the gradual integration of AI into the workplace, the overarching negative effect it has and will continue to have in the future far outweighs any positive results. Starting in 2021, AI began to make a huge impact on the workplace in America with its AI-connected consultation services. Goliath Fortune-500 enterprises, examples being Bank of America, Nike, eBay, and Walmart, are taking full advantage of AI-powered services such as automated customer services robots (Jones). When the companies that stand at the top of several distribution industries all agree to implement these AI Chatbots, they tend to influence other smaller companies to do the same. These companies are pulling from prebuilt AI Chatbot algorithms established by various coding agencies such as AutoResponder.ai, Tiledesk, and Tessa (Galic). These robots are proving to be particularly useful in cases where workers are not available due to the time of the call or the reception the call is receiving. These Chatbots are capable of handling multiple customer service interactions simultaneously, effectively reducing wait times and increasing the efficiency of customer service operations. Whether it be the 24/7 availability, the bilingual capabilities, or the efficient response time, these AI Chatbots seem to fill any gaps that exist in the customer service workspace. Due to these factors, the addition of AI to the workplace seems like a no-brainer. However, the workings of AI-powered consultation services are quickly moving from contribution to substitution.
On May 26, 2023, the National Eating Disorder Association replaced the entire human helpline staff with AI Chatbots, releasing over 200 employees (Morris). The Chatbot, Tessa, has now taken over the entire NEDA staff at the customer service branch. This points toward the number one consequence of AI being integrated into the workplace--unemployment. As leading artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel warns, AI has the potential to replace up to “80% of jobs” by 2033 (Pimentel). The rapid growth of AI technology, coupled with its increasing capabilities, poses a significant threat to employment opportunities and thus the economic stability of America. The American ideal that citizens can go out into the workplace and find a sustainable job without a bachelor's degree or extraordinarily special skill set is quickly vanishing from the landscape of America. Jobs involving paperwork and administrative tasks, such as data entry, document processing, and record-keeping, are also at risk of being automated by AI systems. In the finance industry, robo-advisers are emerging as alternatives to traditional financial advisors, offering automated investment advice and portfolio management services (Pimentel). Owners of large corporations are seeing opportunities to replace entire careers with simple algorithms, making their life slightly easier while completely dismantling the middle class of America. All across the globe, the choice between employing AI or humans into the workforce of large-scale corporations is polarizing, and humans are not the popular option. Humans offer creative thinking at the cost of being paid tens of thousands of dollars a year, whereas AI will work for free. AI will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. AI is able to eliminate any source of human error and interpret any amount of information given to it, trumping the stamina of any human. With the choice between AI and humans being more favorable to AI, the potential of mass unemployment is growing and will continue to grow every day.
As AI becomes more adaptable to the inner workings of the internet, it simultaneously expands its capabilities of damaging society through image manipulation and synthetic voices. Everything from elections to stock prices is susceptible to cyber attacks launched by virtually anyone with a computer and mischievous intentions. Various deep-fake-imagery platforms--FakeApp, DFaker, and DeepFaceLabAI--can all be used to forge images by carefully examining different perspectives of a target person's photos and videos. Additionally, AI can create convincing counterfeits; once an initial imitation has been created, a technique called GANs--generative adversarial networks--increases its plausibility by looking for forgery errors (Gracemzshao). The ability to correct its own flaws makes these seamless imitations even more convincing, increasing the dangers of misinformation in the form of fake news. If the public is unable to interpret what news is real and fake, misinformation will have catastrophic effects on vulnerable things like the Stock market. As of May 22, 2023, an unidentified AI program was used to forge doctored photographs of the Pentagon torched with fire (Bond). These fake photos were posted on a verified (authenticated) Twitter account, allowing the hoax to exist for hours before finally being confirmed to be false 7 hours later. The S&P 500, an indicator of the instantaneous rise and fall of top 500 stocks, saw a 0.5% on this day. This small-scale dose of misinformation by means of AI led to significant losses in the stock market, briefly causing huge losses for many hedge funds as well as mutual: amounts summed to over 10 million dollars (Rogan). The colossal impact misinformation had on the financial market following the posting of one AI-doctored image illustrates the imposing threats these AI image-manipulating softwares can have on American society. If AI can be used to create a false reality of the Pentagon at the push of a button, then AI could also be used to forge fake news surrounding media-based things like political campaigns. This incident displayed how swiftly misinformation, such as digitally-altered photographs, can spread in today's digital age, leading many to wonder what other threats AI could lead to in the future.
As previously mentioned, the pressing issue of misinformation is causing people to rethink what they are able to trust anymore. The potential misuse of AI in the form of deep fakes--digitally forged or altered media--is beginning to become a more acknowledged matter in recent months. While the doctored image of the Pentagon did show a significant instance of AI being used dangerously, another event occurred less than a week later. On May 16, Senator Blumenthal opened the United States Congressional Meeting held to discuss the current position and threats of AI in the United States. He opened his speech with a deep fake AI voice recording written by AI after simply asking AI software, Dfaker, and Chat GPT, “how would Senator Blumenthal open his speech regarding AI” (Zorthian). This bold move underscored the ease with which AI can be used to fabricate and manipulate digital media. A random online recording of a president can completely be made up of AI imagery, AI voice mimicking mechanisms, and AI chat systems to completely construct fake media at the push of a button. AI’s ability to create realistic yet fabricated content raises critical questions about the authenticity and reliability of digital media in an era increasingly reliant on visual and audio information. With AI only becoming more efficient as time goes on, the threat of misinformation on a nationwide scale is becoming a more pressing issue, and can potentially erase the ability to trust any media source ever again.
The most concerning threat that AI poses through its unmonitored and unregulated expansion is the destructive effect AI is having on the cognitive capacities of all of its users. With AI having the possibility to take over many redundant and automated sectors of human employment like customer service, the service industry is becoming less intimate. Additionally, schools are seeing these kids abusing AI to get around the school without asking for help from a teacher or a classmate, effectively eliminating any social aspect typically seen in the process. In fact, Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles, leading AI researcher, and expert working for IBM, believes “every expression of daily life, whether it be civil, professional, familial, or personal, will be diminished by the suffocating grip of AI” (Anderson). The reduced social interaction on a day-to-day basis directly correlates to decreased emotional intelligence because social skills are taught and learned by repetition. This explains why parents always tell their kids to spend more time socializing. In today's modern age of technology, it is critical now more than ever to spend time with others to maintain our ability to communicate with one another. If AI continues on this path, social interactions will eventually become a thing of the past. Without the human-to-human experience that is taken for granted nowadays, people will be left feeling empty, and forget what it means to coexist as human beings.
As mentioned, students are using the most popular Chatbot, Chat GPT, to find loopholes in schooling. Kids are persistent on the idea that the assistance of AI is fantastic as it helps them go from point A to B more efficiently, regardless of what those points may entail. This is a concern for adolescents who need to do these tasks independently to develop their brains. This was proven to hinder the critical thinking skills of the youth thanks to a method called Magnetoencephalography: a brain imaging technique that tracks activity in the brain with brilliant resolution. In a study conducted by Reboot Foundation, a leading brain research center, the brains of thousands of volunteer students who claimed they used Chat GPT frequently were scanned, they found that “86% of students'' lacked development in their “Prefrontal Cortex”--the frontal lobe of the brain controlling critical thinking skills (Smith). Despite some people acting in disbelief, most of the researchers saw this coming. Students used to be asked to write essays in school in order to teach them how to read, analyze, and form their own opinions by means of complex thinking. Now, the potential for students to simply ask ChatGPT to summarize is eliminating the very purpose of school. These kids all across the nation are violently damaging their capacities for brain function by being provided instant answers and solutions to any problems. This dependence on AI systems to engage in critical thinking denies anyone the right to think outside the box which will effectively eliminate any individual’s ability to develop essential cognitive skills. This overdependence on AI erodes Americans' capacity for innovation, causing our future to be one lacking individual or creative thought, effectively devolving our minds hundreds of years despite the years moving forward.
The rapid development and integration of AI in the United States has brought forth a range of negative effects that warrant careful consideration. From the displacement of jobs and potential unemployment to the challenges in cybersecurity and the impact on cognitive capacities, AI presents a complex landscape of opportunities and risks. While AI holds the potential to enhance productivity in some sectors of the workforce, it directly raises concerns about job stability, misinformation, and the erosion of all cognitive abilities. The effect it holds on job stability lies in the threats it poses to current occupations. One of the foremost concerns is the displacement of jobs and the potential for increased unemployment. As AI technology becomes increasingly capable of automating routine tasks and repetitive jobs, there is a genuine apprehension that certain job sectors may experience significant job losses. As far as misinformation goes, AI-powered tools can be manipulated, leading to data breaches, privacy infringements, and cyber-attacks. With cognitive ability, there is an overdependence on the different AI algorithms which could limit opportunities for individuals to engage in independent thinking, struggle through challenges, and develop essential cognitive skills. The process of safeguarding against these negative effects will ensure these risks can be mitigated. As US citizens move forward, it is essential to strike a balance between these benefits and pitfalls so America can avoid a catastrophic takeover by means of AI. By doing so, Americans can ensure a future where AI serves as a powerful tool that can be used to better American society as well as the individuals in it.