AI Breakthrough: A Double-Edged Sword
I wonder, is anyone else as concerned about how the future is going to look with the increasing power of AI systems and the impact they will have on our societies? Of course, there are many other topics that we should be concerned about, like climate change, but I won't touch on those and will only focus on the AI breakthrough. One of the reasons is that it is the field that I have studied and I am working on, but mainly because if AI is used correctly I believe it will help us resolve the majority of the existential issues we face.
So let me ask Is humanity prepared for what's going to happen? I am not talking about Skynet-level scenarios and science fiction, my concerns are different. Are countries, governments, taxation systems, and economies ready for the level of automation that's coming? We don’t have to look far into the future, as jobs like copywriters, white-collar jobs, and even modeling are already becoming obsolete. It's estimated that 300 million jobs will be disrupted [1], but I argue that this number won’t be accurate in the end as we can not really predict how this breakthrough will continue, as we could not predict the AI models that were published in the last few years. The thing is, that I am not against this automation, especially towards repetitive jobs. That’s why we want AI to free humanity from labor that does not offer anything fulfilling. But the question remains, are we ready for this?
I believe we are far from ready for what's going to follow, and the scary part is that we are not even discussing it in that regard. Many people are just celebrating progress and trying to take advantage of it without considering the potential negative outcomes. As humanity we have a clear example of similar behavior, this is social media that was never regulated, and we never cared about the side effects. Now, people are dopamine junkies stuck on a screen, getting dopamine hits from the algorithm.
On the other hand, there are people at high levels of society who are asking for an AI break (pausing of releasing powerful AI models) right now, so society can think about what's going to happen [2]. I am referring to the letter signed by many powerful individuals, including Elon Musk. This letter has gotten criticism though because it doesn’t appear to address how society can excel by using AI, rather than it asks for more time and centralization of AI power, to already powerful people [3]. This might be true and their reasons for asking to freeze AI progression might be wrong and directed toward increasing their wealth, but I very strongly believe that something needs to happen. Humanity has to start thinking about the bigger picture before we suffer. We don't pay attention to climate change, we don’t pay attention to the harm of social media and we don't pay attention to AI breakthroughs. What are we doing? Maybe we're just waiting to see what's going to crack society first.
I am writing this article because I truly believe that AI is the future, and if it is used for the benefit of humanity It can improve our lives, but also it can lead to a more extreme and unjust future, where the rich become richer and the poor suffer. To avoid that we need to change societies and economies. Would people on top want that? In the age of AI and progression, why are we increasing the retirement age? Is that why we're progressing? To have billionaires racing to see who will go to Mars first or who will become a trillionaire first? I understand I'm in a comfortable place in the world, and I can't even imagine what people are going through in other poor places around the world. We just let them suffer. Later, we may suffer too. Who will help us?
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I'm not offering a solution right now. I just want to say that we should acknowledge some realities and try to act upon them rather than wait to see how the future is going to be. Let's try to control it for once, for the benefit of us, our children, and our planet.
Manager, CRO & Insights @ Youwe
1 年AI progress and development depend on people. People create algorithms, provide data, and refine systems. In exchange, AI will help people become more productive and mentally healthy, which will indirectly contribute to further AI advancements.
Analytics consultant at DEPT?
1 年Is humanity prepared for what is coming? Probably not. But then again this says more about a general distrust towards our institutions (educational, governmental, media and so on) and how they don’t hold the moral high ground to fairly regulate this - or in my view any - technology.
DevOps Engineer
1 年I strongly agree with you and believe we are not ready for it at all. I mean, we are not even ready for digitalisation, there's still a huge gap, mostly educational, between available technology and the average level of knowledge people currently have. Still governments and companies invest in not so beneficial for society technologies because helping healthcare and societal sectors dont generate as as much profit as Social media for example..
Physics Teacher at Eykleidis
1 年First of all we need to change our education system! The focus of education should shift from memorizing information to developing critical thinking skills and adaptability, as technology advances exponentially. We don't live in an era where the information is limited as it was some centuries ago-in contrary, yet the education system remains the same.. Students should learn how to discriminate the useful and truth information among the useless and fake, and then we can support the use of AI tools in education so that they will learn how to use them properly.
Azure Data Engineer at Heroes | Data Analytics Mentor at Masterschool
1 年Good post Nikos! In my view - with the letters written or not, this is unstoppable and we will see the models / breakthrough releases faster than before (which obviously goes in pair with the overall tech development). Now, in terms of the long-term effects of the revolution that we are observing, I am just hoping that it won't be too much different from the industrial revolutions we have seen so far - be it the steam engine, electrification, introduction of cars, Internet and so on - every one of them came with immense benefits for the society, but it also came with jobs being redundant. I believe all of these were always preceeded with fear and hesitation, maybe even the will to stop them from happening altogether - looks quite similar to where we are now with AI. On the optimistic note, we still exist as humankind, and I'll risk saying that the average quality of life is as high as it has never been in the last ~200 years (just to mark the beginning of the revolutions I mentioned) - so in the long-run, it seems we indeed managed to use these for our own good. We will probably see many of our current trades diminishing, but they will probably be replaced with jobs in other sectors, that simply do not exist yet.