Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you have most likely heard of AI (Artificial Intelligence). What was once a technology few people had actually come into contact with, it’s expanded quite rapidly over the last couple of years with the use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT and companies integrating AI feature into everyday smartphones like the Google Pixel 8 and Samsung Galaxy S24 range. You’ve probably heard the concerns about it too, “AI is going to take over the world”, “Everyone’s jobs will be lost to AI”, “The robots are taking over”. News headlines are usually dramatic and over the top, so in this latest blog we are going to take a look into these concerns and see if there is anything to worry about when it comes to using AI.
Copyright
One of the first questions is who actually owns content that is created by AI. For example, if you asked it to write a poem in the style of Shakespeare, who owns it? It’s fairly conclusive that we need something in place to tell AI that it can’t create an image to look like another brands content, colour scheme or copyrighted material like logo. This is something that Samsung and Google have already implemented with the AI editor on their smartphones, if you edit a photo using the AI editing features the new version will have a watermark on it to tell people viewing the content online that it might not all be as it seems. You also have to consider music copyright, as we have already seen some AI is pretty convincing at creating a song to sound like it was sung by a particular artist, so what can be done to protect artists? The same goes for films, if an AI generated version of Robert Downey Jr. can be created and used in films, will he be out of a job? This is one of the main reasons for the recent Hollywood strikes and eventually proposing a deal to protect actors from being replaced by AI.
Fake news
Another big concern is how to control AI so that it doesn’t make up stories and distribute on social media making people think it’s real. It also has the potential to make social media and websites repetitive; if all of the content on them is written by AI rather than humans, will the content on the web actually be interesting anymore? The way AI works at the moment is by reading existing content written by humans on the internet then creates its own version. So there will come a time when most of the content on the internet is AI generated, so what will happen then, will it just copy itself?
Jobs
Some people have also expressed concerns about AI taking over jobs. It’s estimated that AI could replace 85 million jobs by 2025, and these are mainly computer based roles and things like customer support where it can be automated. Would we all need to re-train in other professions that can’t be carried out by AI, like teaching and manual labour. Don’t be too concerned, as it is also predicted that millions of jobs could be created by AI. There still needs to be someone who codes the algorithm and trains it.
Some of the solutions
Some companies are looking into setting up another AI to monitor the main AI to make sure it’s not doing anything it shouldn’t be, effectively keeping a check on what it is doing and correcting any mistakes. For example, to make sure that AI to be used as a chatbot to assist customers with online shopping orders doesn’t start explaining the recipe to make chocolate cake to customers who are simply asking for a refund. This also coincides with how AI is trained making sure that the data being inputted is accurate and has a broad range of data with the same ethics, morals, and goals as humans. Also making sure it knows not to use offensive language and the main goal that you want it to achieve. This might sound strange but anyone who’s seen Avengers age of Ultron will see how potentially dangerous it could become if AI is allowed to “think” by itself. One thing for sure is that there is a lot of work ahead to make sure that AI is reliable and improves technology instead of making it worse. It’s going to be exciting to see how it evolves over the coming years considering how quickly it has done already.
