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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