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Some Reasons Not to Fear Artificial Intelligence
Fears about AI are phobic and downplay potential advantages.
Posted July 26, 2023 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Many people are concerned that AI will replace human jobs.
- However, a long history of adopting new technology has shown that such fears may be misplaced.
- AI can be a helpful tool if people learn to use it wisely.
Paranoia about artificial intelligence includes the view that it will attack our personhood by outdoing human creativity and ingenuity. Such fears may be overblown.
AI can do a passable job of mimicking complex creative products such as a Rembrandt painting and can outdo human players of chess and trivia games like Jeopardy! It can write a decent screenplay, which is why Hollywood writers are so concerned about it taking their jobs.
It Can Replace Many Jobs but Not Human Interaction.
In the end, AI may prove just another tool for improving human productivity. That is what all other major technological advances have done, whether it was the stone ax, the telephone, the personal computer, the Internet, or the smartphone.
Some occupations are admittedly in the cross-hairs, but new jobs enabled by technology often outnumber those lost. AI can take care of a lot of jobs, whether it is coding or writing a screenplay.
In the best-case scenario, AI produces a first draft of a script that the human writer corrects and embellishes so that they produce more screenplays and write better ones. The same reasoning applies to many other forms of intellectual property, from graphic art to music or electronic code.
We Fear All New Technologies Too Much
AI has many threatening aspects, including the possibility that criminals can impersonate us on social media, making our lives hell. Even more alarming is the possibility of autonomous killer robots unleashed by international terrorists. Such robots are in development by several countries around the globe, including the U.S. and Russia, and need to be outlawed just as chemical weapons were. Are our fears overblown?
Trepidation about AI falls into a pattern of fearing new technologies too much. Because they are poorly understood, we focus exclusively on the potential for harm and too little on the possible benefits.
This phobia around what is new, or neophobia, delays the adoption of new technologies and creates unfounded fears about their impact.
At the dawn of electrification, potential customers exaggerated the dangers of electricity and focused on anecdotes about people who had died of electrocution.
The introduction of television raised fears about its potential to increase violence based on the popularity of violent programming. Yet, TV did not turn children into crazed killers. Neither did video games (although they improved shooting skills), contrary to the fears of many, including some leading psychological researchers on the topic.
Parents worry about the impact of every new technology on their children, from instant messaging to cell phones, to social media, to smartphones. Generally speaking, these fears did not materialize, although the dangers of social media are hard to exaggerate, whether in politics, body image, depression, or the viral dares that inspire children to take the family car on deadly joy rides that are live-streamed to social media.
AI Is Error-Prone and May Take Decades to Perfect.
In comparison to such horror stories, the capacity of AI to write fake term papers, fabricate a resume, or write fake legal briefs, seems mild, although it could be deployed by professional criminals in threatening ways. Yet, such attacks can be detected and thwarted, just as happened with malicious computer viruses deployed by bad actors for decades already.
AI can produce convincing fakes, but most can be weeded out, whether it is college professors using software to detect papers composed by Chat GPT or judges looking up citations in a legal brief to ensure that they are real cases rather than being spoofed by AI. AI is highly error-prone, given the limitations of the Internet data used to train it, and some experts believe that it will be decades before AI is reliable enough to replace human lawyers. Meanwhile, major AI companies have agreed to “watermark” their AI products.
Technology as a Useful Tool
However much we may fear new technologies, their beneficial consequences generally outweigh their risks, although the jury is still out on social media with their capacity to stoke irrational hatred. The Internet was greatly feared but increased human productivity more than any other single technological advancement. Enthusiasts believe that AI can increase our productivity even more.
If an author uses AI to produce a first draft of a novel written in their own style, then they can complete far more projects and focus more on improving their quality. We may all work less hard but still manage to be more creative and more productive. It is hard not to like that!
