Is AI really worth it? We must investigate further.

Efficiency and Productivity

Benefits

  • Excels with repetitive and continuous tasks.
  • Programming and analysis can be automated to instant requirements.
  • Automated power grids and cleaner solutions.

Threats

  • Vulnerable to data corruption or ‘hallucinations’.
  • Without a human-in-the loop mistakes could be critical. Greater cyber security risks and reliance.
  • Overuse of electricity at data centres handling AI systems (Baraniuk, 2024).

Healthcare and Security

Benefits

  • Accelerated research with simulated clinical trials, optimising diagnosis and treatments.
  • Biometrics: visual systems to control crowds, predict criminal activity and monitor border crossings.

Threats

  • Misuse or errors could lead to unsafe results and possible deaths (Arora and Arora, 2022).
  • Surveys could be swayed to falsely inflate the insurance sector.
  • Privacy concerns and risk of false match leading due to lack of nuanced reasoning powers.

Economics and Innovation

Benefits

  • Optimise product designs enhancing manufacturing quality and growth.
  • AI could hybridise to create better models of itself.
  • Automated drones might lead to greater security and policing.

Threats

  • May lead to mass unemployment by automating service industries, production or deliveries.
  • According to Critical Will (2014), it could lead to misuse in weaponisation with unforeseen consequences such as ‘killer robots’.

Education and Entertainment

Benefits

  • Craft personalised learning programmes. Automated administration to improve teacher-student time.
  • Movie and music creation by users on a whim.

Threats

  • Early years students may wonder why they have to learn at all if AI always provides instant answers.
  • The arts industry may crash. Copyright breaches may lead to large lawsuits and affect existing services.

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References

Arora, A. and Arora, A. (2022) ‘Generative adversarial networks and synthetic patient data: current challenges and future perspectives’, Future healthcare journal, 9(2), pp. 190–193. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2022-0013.

Baraniuk, C. (2024) Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar, BBC News. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj5ll89dy2mo (Accessed: 2 June 2024).

Critical Will (2014) Critical issues, Reachingcriticalwill.org. Available at: https://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/7972-fully-autonomous-weapons (Accessed: 1 June 2024).

Further Research

Miles, R. (2024) ‘AI Ruined My Year’, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ziuPUeewK0 (Accessed: 2 June 2024).