Don’t get Caught Napping: How AI Seduces Your Mindset! by Peter A. Arthur-Smith

“There’s no expedient that man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.” Sir Joshua Reynolds, 18th century English painter and philosopher…also attributed to Thomas Edison of light-bulb fame, too.

We’re all guilty of it: the temptation to short-cut our approach in pursuit of our desires and opportunities! And AI is willing to help. Don’t get me wrong, because, by all accounts, AI brings many considerable advantages and possibilities. But, like many other good things, there are some significant downsides and pitfalls to be avoided, too.

Take the very recent business, front page article in the New York Times headlined: “AI Copies Your Voice: Then Calls Up Your Bank.” The sub-title used by writers Emily Flitter and Sam Cowley was: ‘So-called deepfake technology offers a powerful tool for scammers to impersonate customers. And it takes just a few seconds of sampled audio to imitate a voice.’? ?The article notes a number of real example trends which have “grabbed” the attention of cyber security experts. Again, hopefully it’s not too late to prepare society for these issues, as well as provide commonsense principles and guidelines for the AI industry to introduce safeguards.

Many firms are well-positioned to profit handsomely from pursuing AI; including powerhouses within the field like Nvidia (AI GPU chipmaker), ChatGPT (AI system designer) and CoreWeave (upstart AI specialized cloud provider), as well as some other big names in Silicon Valley. At the same time, thoughtful members of society are provoking discussion and aiming to apply sensible brakes before it’s too late. Even Congress is working in a bipartisan manner to contemplate how to protect the public from AI’s unforeseen dark-sides.

The situation is somewhat reminiscent of past advances in CAD-CAM software for the architectural industry to speed up building design and construction. It aimed to provide great short-cuts within the profession. Its profession had been built upon the practice of designers using pencil drawings to calculate building structures and stresses. However, after a number of notable building structure failures, the profession was encouraged to return to its pencil drawing practice to invoke human reasoning and judgment at the table once more.

?It’s encouraging to note – don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to dampen the AI fervor – the many advances AI could bring to organization practices. However, I’m only trying to encourage enough pushback against the shrill AI tide to mitigate against likely unfortunate outcomes and minimize harm before it’s too late. Future generations shouldn’t be left scrambling to leverage everything possible out of AI before contemplating its less favorable aspects. Without doing this, they could eventually despise us for introducing something that could be horribly destructive. AI advocates and diehards will not take much time contemplating such issues.

It’s good to note some more high-profile players beginning to sound the alarm bells (Elon Musk and Congress members to name a couple). At the same time, we need to be drafting some appropriate questions to pose toward the “gold-rush” advocates out there, like:

? In what way might your AI tools undercut the legitimate reservations of people around you?

? How many people will be forced out of their jobs to make way for AI?

? Does your AI application plagiarize existing human creativity?

? Does it encourage idle-thinking and encourage people to be fooled?

? Where will it over-promise and under-deliver?

? Will it be used by criminal elements and bad-actor governments to enhance their positions?

? Will it cause future generations to fall prey to its grey-areas and create a more unreliable world?

? Will it become impossible to constrain its “dark-sides” and cause mankind to lose control of its world?

? And so on…

If there aren’t too many favorable answers to these questions, then we should loudly demand a moratorium – as we did for the issue of human-cloning – until we find the right balance to proceed!

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Author, Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Founding Principal with Leadership Solutions, Inc., is based in New York, and author of Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options. He has drafted a potential new publication about enlightened leadership that offers a slew of fresh leadership concepts and practical models. Feel free to follow author at: Linkedin.com/in/peter-arthur-smith-2115722/?

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