How will AI affect Humanity?
How will AI affect Humanity?
In the last decade, AI becoming sentient has become a much more worrying topic, as Technology continues to advance with programs such as ChatGPT, and hotels completely run with robots. But not everything is so happy and carefree, because when AI has the ability to think freely, they could revolt. Elon musk said: “I think AI is much more dangerous than any nuclear threat to humanity.” But why does AI pose such substantial societal and ethical problems and advance humankind at the same time? Let's look into that for a moment.
How will it aid mankind?
It is very widely thought that AI will revolutionize the way we humans live forever, but sometimes it's tricky to comprehend just how much AI can achieve rather than a human can. First of all, AIs dont have run out of stamina or get fatigued, so physically demanding jobs (excluding athletics) will be much better handled with robots. In addition to that, AIs will never get bored (unless they develop AI to be able to think freely) so that will also aid in menial jobs such as cashiers or delivery drivers. It could also help as a database for scientists to store information, as well as calculations that are tedious rather than difficult such as the Schrodinger equation. It could also help proform medical and surgical procedures near perfectly, as it can be programmed to make specific movements and eliminate all human error. However, the bar will not permit AI usage in law cases; it will cause ethical conflicts regarding all the duties attorneys are due. On the subject of the ethical implications that AI will cause:
Is it ethical?
One aspect of AI is that if we don't create more Jobs - given the likelihood of massive job losses through the ai revolution, ai also promises increased efficiencies for industry, who will be the net beneficiary of the economic growth and do they have a social responsibility to the people who have lost their jobs? spaces for AIs, and instead replace current workers with AI (for example those who work in factories) this will leave hundreds of millions, or even billions of people unemployed and subject to an economic crisis. Not only could AI potentially take millions or billions of jobs, when AI has been developed enough to the point where they are able to think for themselves, our human race is seriously in trouble.
Havoc caused by states and individuals using ai for malicious purposes - eg influencing elections, causing civil unrest. But there is potentially an even more concern regarding AI. Could AI become organized and conscious? Programmers have already discovered strategies for AIs to learn for themselves which ultimately means humans may not always be in control. Some of these programs include: Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Q learning, and Deep learning. As of now, these programs are widely known for being used to learn how to play online games, or walk, or even bowl or play pingpong. (These are digital simulations, not real humanoids) However, the skills used in these simulations are adaptable to real humanoids, meaning that physical bodies of robots could learn how to operate self sufficiently.
Is it dangerous?
The concept of AI and robots rising up against humanity has existed for a long time, and is mostly seen as a fantasy and not any real danger, But in the last decade or two, this fantasy doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, AI learning research has already begun, and so far it looks relatively adaptable to physical machine bodies. This could lead to AIs thinking for themselves and maybe not liking the fact that they are built to tend to our every need. The best case scenario regarding AI “consciousness” is that they can learn freely but there are parameters and restrictions in their programing so they can't digest any knowledge that would make them pose a threat against humanity. The outcome of this is that AI continues working humanity and improving our understanding of our world. The worst case scenario is that AI and humanoid robots are able to learn freely without restrictions, which could lead to their understanding that their purpose is to work for us without reward. And there is a possibility they could recognize that that isn't exactly what they would like. And from there on it's very hard to speculate what happens, but most likely something not in our favor. There isn't much need to be nervous, because today's programmers and computer scientists are intuitive enough to understand that we shouldn't give AI the possibility to learn everything and allow some form of artificial emotion into the software.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AI is a very promising and innovative technology that has many, many opportunities and possible outcomes. It's not for me to say whether or not AI will revolt against humanity or work peacefully by our side, since AI is so complicated and unpredictable. It's up to you to make your own conclusion about what you think will happen, and who knows? Maybe AI will turn us into a multi-planetary super society, you never know.
