Secrets About AI
AI Controversies
AI, otherwise known as Artificial Intelligence, is one of the newest pieces of technology as more and more people use it for their purposes. Some people, including musicians both older and younger, use AI to help them in their music careers and homework with the use of chatGPT and other similar AI chatbots helping students out with their homework, and even in the world of computer science, people are using AI to help them code certain features.
Of course, though, with this rising technology trend comes opposing opinions against AI, as one of the more common arguments against AI is that it can lead to people losing their jobs. A great example is Voice Actors as many, if not all, are pretty much against AI as it pretty much is stealing their voice for free as anybody can use AI to fake somebody else’s voice, which we pretty much have already with some people, even to this day, using AI to fake the voices of some of the former presidents themselves. Of course, this is just one controversy among many others, as AI raises several problems.
Job Displacement
Our first controversy deals with the ongoing problem of job displacement, where people worldwide are losing their jobs to AI in various job fields ranging from voice acting to tech jobs like cybersecurity, coders, computer programmers, software engineers, and data scientists. All over the world, people are losing their jobs to AI primarily because of how efficient it is both cost-wise and workload, which shows that replacing people with AIs isn’t good as even with AI, it will still be shown to make the same type of mistakes that any human being would’ve made.
In addition to how AI makes mistakes, AI has shown itself to be biased in specific ways. For example, a physician and researcher named
As for how AI can make mistakes, it now goes over to the next issue: self-driving cars.
Self-driving cars
Self-driving cars and the multiple issues it brings, from technological failures to liability and legal matters. While this issue isn’t exactly as massive as other issues, it should still be something that is taken into consideration given that it is still a new kind of transportation that is still being tested in certain areas, though with how many problems the car brings with how it’s powered using AI and how it sometimes malfunctions in terms of coordination and its autopilot system.
For example, in 2022, automakers reported approximately 400 crashes involving vehicles with partially automated driver-assist systems, of which 273 involved Teslas, as 70% used the autopilot feature. Of course, this topic can also be related to misusing AI, given that it shouldn’t be relied upon too much, like with the next topic.
Misusing AI
The third topic revolves around people misusing AI for their gain, ranging from creating weapons using AI to massive privacy breaches, such as identity theft and invasive profiling. Arguably, one of the most significant issues with AI being constantly misused is that from time to time, we hear people say the primary purpose of using AI is to support those who use it for their projects in terms of brainstorming on what to write.
As an example, in March of 2023, a group of researchers had developed an AI tool that was able to invent new potential chemical weapons as it was able to come up with 40000 of them in just 6 hours while at least showing how easy it was for AI to be used by any lousy actor regardless of who they are like rogue states, criminal organizations, and any lone wolves. This is just one part of how people can misuse AI, however, as it also leads to the topic of misinformation and deep fakes.
Misinformation and deep fakes
Next comes the issue of misinformation, as people have shown that AI can be used to manipulate people with AI with deep fakes, which are synthetically generated images or videos in which a person is replaced with someone else. How this can be dangerous is simple: someone can easily make themselves look like anybody, even someone currently in power like any president, prime minister, or leader of an entire country.
For example, someone could become Tom Cruise and say horrendous things about anything! Comedian Jordan Peele has made a deepfake where he mimicked Barack Obama’s voice and gestures, posing the video as a “public service announcement” and to many posed it as a compelling deepfake example, which people still believe is one of the more convincing examples of deepfakes.
There are many other examples of people using deepfakes, as some have gone public, and for some people, it has cost their reputation. To add to the problem of deepfakes, there is currently no law protesting against the usage of deepfakes, which has already proved problematic as it robs the image of various people. It’s pretty much taking their face and putting words in their mouths that they otherwise wouldn’t say for many reasons, including personal beliefs.
Copyright
Another tie-in to the misuse of deep fakes is that it is of the tricky nature of copyright infringement, given the popularity of AI, as it is being used in many pieces of work, including music, journalism, and even in many fields involving computer science. The tricky part comes into play when you realize that it would still be free of copyright infringement, given that it wasn’t a human who wrote said piece of work. What this would mean for anyone is that any musician can use AI to help create lyrics and notes for their songs, but the problem would quickly arise when the lyrics and notes would be free of being copyrighted since they weren’t written by that same musician making them.
Of course, some states, including Spain and Germany, have set jurisdictions to counter these in recent years, where only works created by humans can be protected. This also leads to some people filing lawsuits against the usage.
Lawsuits against the usage of AI
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, while not including monetary demand, does say the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” as it is considered to be unlawful copying and use of the New York Times’ works, and in the complaint also mentions that the times said they approached the two to raise concerns but to no avail. However, within the lawsuit, some say it would be able to test some of the emerging legal contours of the AI technologies, considering all of the text and other content that would also hold some implications for the news industry.
Banning or outlawing the use of AI
Some countries have even taken it a step further by having to outright ban AI in countries such as Italy, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Cuba. These countries have banned AI for various reasons involving privacy issues. Italy was the first country to ban AI for that reason alone, with censorship regulations and concerns over potential misuse of AI, including spreading misinformation. While some people might consider this a little extreme, it shows that some people are concerned about what power AI can hold, given the progress of how much knowledge it gains over time. Even though some countries are showing concern, it should also mean that other countries and people should also be concerned about AI as it grows in power and knowledge over time.
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed rules banning the use of artificial intelligence tools for impersonation of individuals. The FTC said Thursday it was proposing a change to a rule that already bans impersonation of businesses or government agencies, which would extend the protections to all individuals.
Why you should be concerned about AI
With all the main issues, or at least some of them being fully addressed, it also brings the main reasons why people should be concerned about AI, as it will eventually affect you somehow. Of course, there were the already mentioned issues with people losing their jobs being one of the more concerning issues as even to this day, people are still losing their jobs, but one that gets overlooked the most is that it is being over-relied on too much in nearly anything ranging from people’s jobs, school students homework, and even personal projects which people have caught on to. The problem then arises that if we rely on AI too much, people will soon forget how they will be able to do what they learned, and when they’re in a situation where they can’t use AI, how will they solve their problem without using AI?
Final Thoughts
Currently, the amount of AI being used is growing, with some saying that AI is bound to keep growing continuously. There are some ways we can misuse AI; one is not to use it as you don’t want to rely on it, but you should be learning for yourself. There are also limits to what AI can do and won’t always be able to help you.
It would be wise to also set limitations on when you should use AI for some help.
