Is Artificial Intelligence Dangerous?

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 Everything that is created always, through time, evolves; every time being more efficient than the last. Humans are perfect examples, through time our body has change, eliminating everything we don’t need anymore and adding new things we didn’t have before. We evolve so that we can survive new circumstances because Earth two thousand years ago is not the same as Earth today. But not only living things have evolve, also human creations.  Technology has evolved very rapidly in the last century. From the first cars invented in 1920, to the smartphones and electric cars in 2019. Every day man is looking to invent something new and now that is AI.  Many people think Artificial Intelligence will be our future but there are also the ones who think they would be our doom. I think AI will help us in ways we can’t imagine, because humans have limits but robots don’t, but obviously in wrong hands it could be catastrophic.

There are many theories on how AI will help us in the future. One of the most interesting says that after we develop AI, we will implant it in our brains so that we can be better. This idea is suggested by Dainius Runkevicius in his article “AI is the Next Phase of Human Evolution”. I love this theory so much because it is the perfect example on how AI can help us us be better ourselves; but we do not need to implant chips in our heads so that AI help us. As I mention before; us, humans have limits and we can’t do whatever we want. If someone tells you anything is possible his lying because unless god wants, humans will never fly. Also, we can’t breathe outside of Earth and there are many other things we can’t do, but we can set what the robots limits will be.  Imagine if we had robots, we could solve the unsolvable and who know maybe pie, the numerical term, does have a last number and we don’t know about it. Or also there could be living creatures in other planets. All this could be discovered if we had robots with AI because they could be so sophisticated that they could solve in their heads if pie has a last number or go in a quest in space to see if there is life outside of Earth, technically  they could do whatever we want them to do without any limits.

 One of the reasons why society thinks that AI will be bad for us is because it will create unemployment, and that is totally true. This kind of unemployment it’s called structural unemployment, which means that people loose jobs because they cease to exist, and this is studied in macroeconomics. Macroeconomics also tells us that the economy will always reach its natural rate of unemployment in the long run, which means that after a while people will adapt and they will not be unemployed anymore. Plus, AI will also create new jobs since they would need to be monitored and get maintenance. As the article “The evolution of Artificial Intelligence” mentions, AI will bring significant business opportunities.  Also, we can learn from macroeconomics that one of the ways to increase real GDP in the long run, which means that the economy will have a higher ceiling, is to invest in technology, and AI is technology. So, all of those rumors that AI will create higher unemployment are true, but this is only in the short run; we need to think about our far future, not only the near one, because if we only think of the near future we will never advance and sometimes the ends justify the means.

 Before I continue with how AI could be catastrophic if it used the wrong way, you need to understand this will only happen if humans use the technology the wrong way. Robots don’t have feelings like us, which means they will not go and kill you because they feel bad or go join terrorist groups because of their believes; they are program to follow directions and won’t do anything if you don’t tell them to. So that theory that robots will rebel against us and kill us all is pure science fiction and that things will only happen in movies but not in real life.

 As I also mention if AI felt in the wrong hands it could be catastrophic. Imagine if terrorist, who have wrong intentions, had a robot with artificial intelligence; they could do more damage that the damage they do now. With just a simple software programming a robot could go to a public area and kill innocent people; and since they don’t have life, it will more difficult to stop them, almost impossible. This concern is mention by Kenneth Stanley, a professor at University of Central Florida, Senior Engineer Manager and Staff Scientist at Uber AI labs; and other experts in the article by Dan Robitzski “Five Experts Share what scares them the Most about AI”. That’s why I think that AI should have regulations and not everyone should be able to get a robot. Also, we need to be worried about the inventors of this robots spying on us and recollecting information. Just recently an article written by Natasha Singer called  “Amazon Flunks Children’s Privacy, Advocacy Groups Charge” mentioned that Amazon could be breaking the law by recollecting information of kids who have less than thirteen years. But this just a crime because they have less than thirteen years, many people speculate that smartphones record everything we say and all this information is recollected, even if the cellphone is turned off. This is so big that the US banned Huawei because they thought all the information that the smartphone recollected went to the Chinese government. So, if a cellphone can record you, imagine what a robot could do. Maybe a robot will record everything it sees in a video and this data could be recollected, and if the robot saw you naked, this image could be seen by everyone if it was released. This is also mention by Bernard Marr in his article “Is Artificial Intelligence Dangerous? 6 risks everyone should know about”. So yes, AI could be good if it is used in a good way.

In the article by Bernard Marr “Is Artificial Intelligence Dangerous? 6 risks everyone should know about” and in the article by Dan Robitzski “Five Experts Share what scares them the most about AI” they mention many other risks that don’t have anything to do with human utility of AI and AI being in the wrong hands. For example, Bernard Marr mentions discrimination, that machines will use your information against you. This could be true, as it could also be not true; the tittle of the articles says everything we need to, risks for one and scares them for the other. In other words, this are some things that could happen but they aren’t necessarily going to happen. For all I know the possibility of discrimination by robots is 0.01 percent, which is nothing from what we are going to be gaining. We need to understand that everything has risks but they are so small that we still do it. For example, there is a risk that you can die from a car accident, but because the risk is so small you still do it because it helps you a lot. So, if we get in the car, which just transports us from one place to another, why can’t we take a minimal risk that robots will discriminate, which again maybe it will not happen, or other risks for the benefit that we can get; the huge benefit.

 In conclusion we should not be scared about artificial intelligence and its evolution, instead we should be embracing it because who knows what we are going to be able to do when AI reaches its peak. Also remember all those things that happen in the movies about a robot doing a revolution against humans and killing us, are just things that happen in the movies that are made to entertain. Remember, not all things that happen in movies are true. Also, it is true that AI in the wrong hands could be catastrophic; but we already have things, like nuclear bombs; which have not use for humanity only to destroy and we did that knowing that in the wrong hands it could destroy the world. If we created nuclear bombs why can’t we develop AI, which is something that will have use to humanity and that if it is controlled it will never make any type of harm to us. And finally remember jobs will be lost in the short run; but in the long run, AI could be the best thing for the economy shifting our production possibilities curve and our real GDP in the right way. And I will leave you with this, we are scared of AI because it is the unknown, but if in the past we had listen to all the risks of the unknown, who knows how we be living today. Because believe me their were people who thought that cellphones where our doom but who today doesn’t carry one. AI could be the best thing ever but if we don’t continue to develop its technology because we are scare who knows what we are going to be missing, AI could very well be the things that saves this Earth from us, the humans who are destroying it.

Work Cited

• “AI’s Coming of Age.” Artificial-Intelligence,
•  www.ubs.com/microsites/artificial-intelligence/en/ai-coming-age.html.
• Marr, Bernard. “Is Artificial Intelligence Dangerous? 6 AI Risks Everyone Should Know About.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 14 Mar. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/11/19/is-artificial-intelligence-dangerous-6-ai-risks-everyone-should-know-about/#69db4b624040.
• Robitzski, Dan. “Five Experts Share What Scares Them the Most about AI.” Futurism, Futurism, 5 Sept. 2018,futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-experts-fear.
• Runkevicius, Dainius. “AI Is the next Phase of Human Evolution.” The Next Web, 26 Nov. 2017, thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/11/24/ai-next-phase-human-evolution/.
• Singer, Natasha. “Amazon Flunks Children’s Privacy, Advocacy Groups Charge.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/technology/amazon-childrens-privacy-echo-dot-kids.html?searchResultPosition=1.