Without inventions, human beings are cast adrift. Without the audacious and creative discoveries of pioneers, we would have never travelled a long journey from the prehistoric to the revolutionised world of the 21st century. Undoubtedly, inventions have shaped our lives way better than we have ever thought. The best invention, however, of this century is the artificial intelligence (AI).

It is ubiquitous and has swept in almost all sectors. From autonomous cars and facial recognition kiosks to cleaning robots and chatbots, there are a ton of examples of this sophisticated technology. It is so widely spread that it is no wonder you are using it without being consciously aware of it.  

Of late, AI has been hitting the headlines. There are some AI investors, including Elon Musk, who have raised eyebrows with large-scale AI experiments. According to them, AI poses a profound risk to humanity and society. 

Although AI has made lives better to some extent, for instance, you can rely on it for competitive tasks, track accurate productivity and efficiency, and analyse big complex data; it is subject to some drawbacks as well. One of the biggest threats is that it is exterminating employment opportunities, leaving a larger number of people vulnerable to impoverishment. 

How AI is posing an existential threat

Here are some of the threats and dangers society is facing due to the embrace of AI. Experts warn that there should be extensive research and studies about AI and its implications before its implementation in any sector. A number of cases have been reported, from a robot that misunderstood the command and made an attempt to kill the owner to AI errors that cause patient harm. Here is how AI is affecting our society negatively:

• It is a risk to the health of millions

AI has the potential to improve the diagnosis of diseases and find better ways to treat patients, but at the same time, it has the potential to affect the health of people negatively. AI-driven pulse oximeter overestimated the blood oxygen levels in a patient with darker skin, resulting in undertreatment of their hypoxia. 

So many social determinants can serve as the basis for AI to discriminate and produce false results. There is no transparency and explanation when AI makes a biased and unsafe decision. There is still a long way to go to establish transparent AI systems. 

• It speeds up automation and does so unemployment

From marketing to healthcare, in almost all sectors, AI is embraced because it has the potential to perform repetitive and dangerous work. Still, the other side of the story unveils the layoffs in masses. Unemployment is strongly associated with adverse health and behaviour. 

Although tech giants say that AI is producing new work opportunities that people need to be trained at, the offsetting impact is not to a great degree. It will be impossible for AI to generate work opportunities for tens of thousands of people who are laid off. There is a strong link between unemployment, health issues, and crime. 

• Manipulation and misinformation

AI can manipulate images, videos, and audio clips. Deepfake technology is the perfect epitome to understand how dangerous it can be. During the war and communal riots, people opposing the government policy can use deepfake technology for appeasement and try for sedition. It can be a nightmare when somebody is using deepfake technology against you to defame you. Many celebrities have already fallen prey to it.

The finance sector is heavily reliant on AI. Online lending uses advanced algorithms to shortlist loan applications to decide your repaying capacity. AI cannot be smarter than a human being when it comes to assessing and making a decision. It cannot use its own mind as it relies on the data. 

Many people fall behind on payments of unsecured personal loans simply because they ende up borrowing more than their affordability. 

• Lack of data privacy

AI does not ensure data privacy at all. When you talk to an AI chatbot, your data is collected, but what happens to it then? Your personal data is collected to provide you with a more personalised experience and used to train the AI model or bot you are using, so next time, you will get a much better experience when you use this bot. 

The data saved is not safe at all. There has been an incident when one user went through the titles of another user saved in the history. Although there are some laws to protect the user’s privacy, infringement cases are on the rise. 

• Loss of human influence

The over-dependence on AI can result in a lack of human influence. Healthcare is a sector where human empathy and reasoning play a pivotal role. AI can also reduce human creativity and emotional thinking. Most of the tasks are there for which AI has taken over human beings, leading to creating an environment of less communication with people in the workplace. Though there are some benefits of using AI in the workplace, it is closing the window for human intelligence and creativity.

• It can send chills down your spine

People who develop chatbots do not even know what will be the outcome and how dangerous the bot they have produced. In an event when a tech writer asked a bot to tell him about itself, the answers took him by surprise, which clearly indicated that if humans become an obstacle to AI, it would not fight shy of killing all by itself. 

Though AI works based on the data it is taught and learnt, the interaction revealed that the bot thought itself to be smarter and revealed that it would choose its own if given a chance to choose between his and its own survival. 

The final word

Many people have already become obsessed with AI, leaving no stone unturned to invest in expensive bots. They are even using loans from a direct lender. AI is undoubtedly making lives better, but it has a lot of drawbacks, too. They cannot be avoided if the survival of human beings has to be saved.