As the AI grows, the concern about its taking over humans rises with it too.
You don’t have to take our word for it, but the founder of AI.
“These things could get more intelligent than us and could decide to take over, and we need to worry now about how we prevent that happening,” said Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” for his foundational work on machine learning and neural network algorithms.
So, if the godfather of AI is stating it, then Elon Musk also wanted in 2023 to put a pause on experiments, then this can really be risky.
Now, the question remains: what are the top risks AI is posing to us?
Top 6 Risks and Dangers of AI You Must Know
Every business, or even government, is making its way to incorporate AI systems and solutions. Do they know the risks? And if they know what they can do it prevent dangers?
Well, before addressing the solutions, we need to talk about the potential risks that are:
- Job Displacement Because of Automation
When AI came into mainstream business, one of the many panicked employees was “Will AI take my job”? The threat is real. When AI automates most of the mundane tasks and also provides services with better efficiency, why would any company hire extra manpower?
Jobs like customer service, content creation, and even delivery can be automated.
- Biases
If you have used ChatGPT, you might have noticed a pattern. Answer in your style. So, just like social media algorithms were trained to confirm our biases, AI learn from us and does the same.
Does it mean AI is a people pleaser? Well, it’s a machine designed to make your work easy.
So, yes, it has a job to make you happy.
Usually, these biases produce results that fall under the traditional societal biases of race, gender, biological sex, nationality, or age. For instance, in 2022, a study revealed that LinkedIn’s requirement AI-powered tool favoured male candidates more despite having equally qualified women counterparts.
- Privacy Breaches
AI usually requires a lot of data to process, make decisions, and also give you better and accurate results. However, it concerns business owners that their confidential information might be used or AI may reveal it to others.
And their concern is true. Since one ChatGPT bug incident in 2023 “allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history,”.
Despite having laws in the US, this was a huge scandal, and outrage was noticed by people. It makes it a hige concern for the users of AI.
- Misinformation and Identity Misuse
We recently had a few scandals of deepfakes. Too many audio leaks in video worldwide made AI more distrustful.
It could compromise national security, lead to corporate espionage, and disrupt the stock market and political elections. A deepfake audio recording was used in 2019 to defraud a CEO out of $243,000.
When someone decides to steal your voice or your video and use it for a deepfake, it isn’t just a threat; it’s an identity misuse. Besides, it poses a question: what is true anymore?
- The lack of Transparency
According to a October 2024 Forbes article, many AI systems function as “black boxes,” making it challenging to comprehend how they make particular decisions. Understand it from a pov where someone takes your critical thinking and brain away from you.
What is left, and how are you deemed the best person to make any significant decision? Well, not.
In business, when you don’t understand why of the decision, troubleshooting is a nightmare.
- Effects on the Environment
Production of Carbon dioxide and the use of excessive water are major concerns for AI usage.
According to one study, the carbon dioxide emissions from training a single natural language processing model exceed 626,000 pounds, which is almost five times the average emissions of an automobile over its lifetime.
With ongoing genocide in Gaza and also the war threat on the planet, this doesn’t sound good for the environment. So, next time when you completely depend on AI for your small tasks, maybe think about it.
So, What Can We Do About It?
Honestly, it cannot be just prevented with a huge document of laws. But it needs moral and ethical training alongside the balance of both AI and human working together.
AI doesn’t pose a threat until it does. As of right now, it is a tool, and like any other powerful tool, it can be used for good or bad. What’s crucial is to:
- Build a transparent, equitable, and inclusive ethical AI.
- Make companies answerable for the actions of their AI.
- Learn so that we can understand and question AI’s conclusions.
- Remain human by keeping in mind what makes us different from machines.
Conclusion
AI is here to stay. We cannot completely predict how it will influence our future, but it is already a part of our lives. However, excitement shouldn’t make us unaware of the dangers.
We can influence a future in which AI benefits humanity rather than the other way around by being conscious, considerate, and accountable.
Think about the cost of this convenience the next time you are impressed by an AI feature. Our future may be determined by the answer to that question.
