I have designed web sites, added RAM, do emails, even wrote a little code, etc., so I know enough about computers to get in trouble, but I don't understand the fear I hear on the TV news regarding AI. It's like a computer with AI will suddenly attack you, or spend all your money, or take over your house. Can anyone explain in simple terms how AI can harm us?
misuse by people is the biggest fear AI is a tool, it allows dumb people\countries to do things that could be dangerous design better weapons of war, etc.... there will be those that use it for good, and those that use it for bad
the other fear is deep fakes, you can make a world leader or CEO appear to say anything could cause havoc on the stock market, cause wars, civil unrest, etc... what happens when you can no longer trust what you see and hear what happens when groups of people believe these deep fakes
The extreme media reaction doesn't really have any rational basis. It's largely built on fear of the unknown, given this is something that has some very public examples and yet is something the vast majority of people don't understand. On top of that, there are enough people across the media who are more than happy to feed that fear for a profitable headline. AI doesn't really pose a significantly greater threat than existing forms of technology, software and automation (and has as been pointed out, the actual threats come from the people using it). It certainly poses some different forms of threat though it also offers different forms of protection and general benefit, but that's no different from every form of technological development since man discovered fire and pointy rocks.
Don't we have that now. So why should I fear AI. I don't understand. Don't we have that now. So why should I fear AI. I don't understand. You make sense, and yes, the media without explaining or investigating is happy to just repeat the hysteria. And some folks are saying AI could take over the world and make us slaves. So I would like to know how.
do we, show me an example of what you think is us already having that it's like saying we had social media in the past too, not the same as today's social media - times change, for the better or worse AI is in its infancy, it will grow exponentially the things AI will allow us to do is both amazing and scary
I think the immediate threat is that it could upend the job market. AI seems to represent a real threat against the "creative" class, journalism, and admin type jobs.
It seems to me we always adjust to the job market. No more buggy whips, robots painting cars at the factory, no more firemen on trains, no more linotype operators, and robots performing surgery. I could use a little AI.
Historically, the impact and pain was felt by the lower, working classes. "Learn to code" journalists used to mockingly tell the newly unemployed. Well now, Journalists could find themselves out of a job, with no coding jobs available for them since AI can code better and faster than any human. This time I think, it's different because the impact will be felt by the upper classes; the white collar jobs. Entire generations have come up thinking they could sit in a cubicle or office without much physical exertion. Now those jobs will be going away. Do you think a 40 year old, fat assed "administrative assistant" or marketer is going to learn a trade like electrician or plumbing? Unless you have a government job, I suspect that most of the white collar class job positions will vanish over the next 20 years. So this "adjustment" may be quite different.
People have dominated the planet because of how we can think, pass on knowledge, and mold the world to our liking more than other creatures. People who had a lot more technology also dominated and often destroyed people with less. Now there's a technology emerging that threatens to overshadow our mental dominance. AI is clearly faster, but if it can also be inventive, then we could all become obsolete with full development of this technology. So, some are afraid their livelihoods will be replaced, much like less sophisticated robots replaced repetitive factory work but worse. Others are afraid that if somebody develops it, they will be able to use their major advantage to dominate others who haven't... and then there is the fear of the terminator/battlestar galactica scenarios where the AI decides it is superior and that humans are a threat and must be eliminated or controlled. I think that's the crux of it. Part of it is what is unknown. If it can think in ways we can't, it's hard to predict what its conclusions will be, or if it will be negatively influenced by the opinions of its creators. Or perhaps, it could become a hybrid with humans, and imbue certain people with superhuman abilities. But really, unless something catastrophic happens first, AI is going to be developed further and we will see what happens.
Remember the Y2 scare (did I remember that right). We were bombarded by the media that when the year 2000 rolled around at midnight planes would no longer fly, payrolls would no longer be met, law enforcement would be handcuffed, hospitals would lose their records, and the military would become incompetent. This was because all computers were programed for dates of only the 1900's. So what happened? Nothing!!! I can only hope the government gets a little intelligence, artificial or otherwise.
Yeah, I spent a couple of years and earned lots of paychecks along with plenty of other software developers, fixing computer systems to accommodate the Y2K change. THAT is why nothing happened on Jan 1, 2000. Trust me: systems would have crashed or processed incorrectly with expensive results if we had not corrected them. You could see that by reading and understanding the code we changed.
Do you understand the nature of the date problem businesses were panicking about in the 1990s? If you don't understand it I can give you a clear example of the kind of coding problem I was fixing for Y2K.
