Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years. You've probably heard a thing or two about artificial intelligence, and if you have been living under a rock, maybe it's best if you stay there. If it isn't obvious, I'm not a fan of AI.
Do I think AI will destroy humanity? No. Do I think AI will have a negative impact on society? Yes.
One of the arguments in favour of AI is that it's efficient, makes life easier, and a lot of things in society have become automated anyway. I'm not against improvements in technology, there's a reason why we have power tools (e.g., Chainsaw) instead of doing everything with hand tools.
However, there's a difference between a tool and a crutch. A tool makes work easier, a crutch eliminates the need for you to do any work. A tool can create jobs because there's a demand for people who are qualified to use them (e.g., plant machinery like excavators, cranes, and forklifts in the case of the construction industry). In contrast, a crutch can take jobs and AI has the potential to replace human labour.
The reality is your company doesn't care about you. You may get on well with your boss, coworkers, and customers, but your employment is conditional on the basis that you're useful. If a computer program could do your job faster, without needing a rest, and without being paid, why would an employer keep you?
It's worth noting that I'm not an artist. I made crappy animations when I was a kid, but I failed GCSE Art and I can barely draw stickmen. That said, I get why real artists are pissed off. "AI Artists" argue that AI art is just another medium, that it's no different to artists moving from a sketchbook to a graphics tablet. However, this goes back to the concept of tool vs crutch.
A graphics tablet has advantages over drawing on paper (e.g., you can completely remove mistakes, whereas erasing pencil leaves smudge marks), but you still need to know how to draw, you still have to understand proportions, lighting, colour etc. AI Art is just giving a prompt like "a violin in the style of Leonardo da Vinci".
Instead of starting a meaningless pissing contest of "who's a real artist?", I'm gonna provide some links that should highlight problems with AI art:
For context, Hayao Miyazaki is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli (a popular Japanese animation studio).
I use "art" broadly here. This doesn't just apply to art in the sense of pretty pictures. It also applies to mediums like music and voice acting. An example is Gayanne Potter, whose voice was used for ScotRail (Scotland's nationalised rail operator) without her prior consent or knowledge (original report).
You could even include software development as an art and boom, some soydev with a MacBook and a ChatGPT Plus subscription takes your job because he can *vibe code!*.
Have you ever seen a very uncanny video? A goofy MrBeast thumbnail? Ballerina Cappuccina? A kid on Facebook who built a car out of bottles? Jesus morphed into a shrimp? (kinda blasphemous ngl)
Well my friend, that is AI slop. It's hard to describe exactly what it is, but you'll know it when you see it. It's like the digital equivalent of a migraine.
This is where AI gets very risky. While AI art is bad and AI slop makes you wanna drive into oncoming traffic. At least it's obviously fiction (unless you're like a boomer on Facebook).
However, people are producing videos that are increasingly more realistic with just AI, which is problematic as it becomes easier for malicious actors to deceive victims into thinking they're in a position of authority to scam them or push an agenda.
The UK recently passed the Online Safety Act. I could do a whole article about this law and how the government doesn't truly have the children's best interests in mind. But that's for another time.
A lot of websites (e.g., the hub) have introduced age verification by either providing a government ID (e.g., driving licence, passport) or doing an AI face scan. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't look any different on my 18th birthday compared to the day before.
Personally, I think people shouldn't watch p0rn anyway and if the state actually cared about protecting the children, they would ban it.
Are you lonely? Well, who needs friends and family when you have apps like muh heckin character.ai?! /s
I think this one speaks for itself...
The reason this article is under the miscellaneous section rather than the technology section is because AI is fundamentally a human problem. Some people believe that AI is conscious/sentient and will take over the world. I do not believe this is the case, AI itself has no will, beliefs, or feelings, it's ultimately just a computer program.
The problem isn't actual consciousness, it's the illusion of consciousness that draws people into having parasocial relations with a chatbot. With great power comes great responsibility and the problems we see with AI are down to humans leveraging it to pursue their own interests (be that good or bad).
Some people have argued that AI is good because it's unbiased, but AI is trained on data that was created by humans and said data is likely to have problems. There's the notorious example of Google Gemini suggesting glue to pizza.
