On Our Artificial Overlords – The Bad Side!

In this week's electrifying episode of "Will's Dumb Brain," we find ourselves teetering on the precipice of a brave new world, one where our AI overlords—bless their silicon hearts—are advancing at a pace that would make Usain Bolt sweat in his spikes. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm all for progress. I mean, who wouldn't want a digital butler to sort through their emails, or a virtual Picasso to whip up a masterpiece for the living room? But as these tools evolve from being handy-dandy helpers to potential masters of our universe, one can't help but wonder: are we sprinting too eagerly towards a future where our biggest achievement could be mastering the art of asking Alexa to play Despacito? Let's dive into the humorous abyss of uncertainty and innovation, where the only thing faster than AI's advancement is the speed at which my brain jumps to conclusions.

Okay, one last time, I asked ChatGPT to start my essay, this time on the downside of AIs and this time it insulted me! I mean who can blame it? If you asked me to write an essay about all the things that are bad about Will Peterman, the human, in your written voice, I’d probably try to throw a few digs in there too (I did like the “bless their silicon hearts” bit, though).

Now back to the meat of this dish: just a few of the negative sides of advancing AI. In last week’s essay, I talked about AI as a tool and how tools aren’t inherently moralistic. You wouldn’t call a hammer good or bad, you wouldn’t call a chainsaw virtuous or evil. AI is the same way, but the ways that it could be used, and in some cases is already being used, are pretty dang bad.

With any advancement in technology, some jobs change or become obsolete. It was true of electric street lights (sorry Marry Poppins and all your lame-ass singing lamp lighter friends), it was true of the automobile, and it was true of the internet. The problem is illustrated in one of my favorite tweets of all time that roughly reads, “Do all the AIs have to write screenplays or can some of them pick the trash out of the ocean?” Instead of replacing the jobs nobody wants, we’re replacing the jobs that people work their whole lives to master: writers, graphic designers, painters, and photographers.

Art is one of the few things that definitively makes humans, humans. And it’s also one of the first things people with no artistic talent are trying to take away from those who work to develop it. I’m all for AI’s sequencing proteins to solve medical mysteries, I’m all for it doing the drudgery that nobody wants to spend their day doing… but I’m much less in favor of AI’s consuming all of the blood, sweat, and tears people have put into their work, and regurgitating cheap knock-offs in 30-seconds…but hey, that’s just my opinion as someone who has put almost 175 essays out there for free!

I haven’t even mentioned the economic inequality it creates, the privacy and surveillance concerns, the creation of imperceptibly fake photos, videos, and audio clips, the possible psychological impact on humans (I mean have you even seen “Her?”), and the environmental impact of the resources used to train and operate these systems…but hey, I only have ~500 words to work with here and I’m already way over!

So what do you think? Is AI a positive or a negative for our society?