Artificial Intelligence is a part of our daily lives now. It’s everywhere from noticeable areas like our phones and websites/apps we use every day, to videos on YouTube or news networks using deepfakes for their audience. But AI doesn’t just stop there, it’s quietly shaping our lives in countless other ways. While AI opens up incredible possibilities like helping with cancer research, which will help make cancer treatment easier and prevent it in the future, it also brings many challenges including stealing jobs from others, which could leave millions homeless and affect the working class.
Starting with the positives, AI is used for many good things. In some schools in the United Kingdom, there’s a robot called the AV1 robot which allows kids who are sick to attend school virtually and learn, despite not being there. The company making these robots (Salisbury) has stated that there are over 3000 active AV1 robots in schools (mostly in countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom).
There have also been some statements saying that AI can help find treatments for cancer and help detect it early on in some cases. According to the National Library of Medicine’s article; “Artificial Intelligence Applications for Biomedical Cancer Research: A Review,” some studies show that AI is now playing a huge role in surgery by offering real-time navigation and support. AI has also been used to enhance the accuracy of medical imaging, making it a valuable tool for clinicians to detect and assess cancer. Additionally, The World Bee Project is using Artificial Intelligence to gather data on how bees survive. Data is uploaded to the cloud and analyzed by the AI then identifies patterns or trends to take early action on anything that appears out of the ordinary for the bees. By doing this, they are helping the bees survive and stay healthy for longer.
Now with the negatives, many jobs will be lost if we all switch to using AI for everyday things. According to the National Library of Medicine’s article; “Future of Artificial Intelligence in Surgery: A Narrative Review,” AI is being combined with robotics and has been implemented for surgeries and aiding the surgeon during the operation. If AI is implemented in all hospitals, many surgeons will be replaced and will lose their jobs. The same could happen for many other jobs in the medical field such as doctors, nurses, gynecologists, and so many more medical professionals in the workplace.
Artificial intelligence is also being used for many illegal purposes. One very popular way of using AI is generating images. Usually, when we use these programs, we generate images of innocent things such as a school or work presentation or a funny image of our friend to show them later. Most of these programs have a list of words that you can’t say in the generator to avoid the AI bot generating inappropriate or illegal images. But, some programs that don’t have this system have been discovered by people with bad intentions. From 2018 to 2020 in South Korea on the popular messaging app Telegram, there were some illegal groups where people used AI bots without the system and generated images of children in a very inappropriate way. The people in these groups would pay the AI bot and give the bot an image of the person’s face. Then the AI bot would generate these illegal images for the people. This went on for two years until finally the police caught the leader of the groups and he was arrested on the 16th of March, 2020. This has also occurred in many countries like Japan, China, the United States, and so many more.
In conclusion, AI has huge potential to address some global challenges, improve healthcare, and add value to nearly all aspects of human life. At the same time, giving AI too much power or the AI getting into the wrong hands holds great risks. Such risks involve privacy violations and job losses. AI is still becoming more and more powerful and learning new skills every day; if we manage to impose limits or boundaries on AI, it may end up benefiting us and not getting too powerful or making any controversial/inappropriate items.
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