Ai is arguably the most trending topic right now, from chatgbt to Ai generating pictures. It is even an essential part used in programming trading bots due to their ability to adapt and learn based on real-time information and analysis. All of this points to the effectiveness of its structure. In this article, I will try to explain all the benefits of AI and how it is here to help us innovate to greater heights.

Now, what is Ai?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and act like humans. The term can also refer to any machine that exhibits human-like characteristics such as learning and problem-solving.

The ability of artificial intelligence to rationalize and take actions that have the best chance of achieving a specific goal is its ideal feature. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence that refers to the concept that computer programs can automatically learn from and adapt to new data without the assistance of humans.

So basically, AI is programmed to mimic the human mind for problem-solving.

Today, a lot of hype still surrounds AI development, which is expected of any new emerging technology in the market. As noted in Gartner’s hype cycle, product innovations like, self-driving cars and personal assistants, follow “a typical progression of innovation, from overenthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the innovation’s relevance and role in a market or domain.” Lex Fridman notes in his MIT lecture in 2019 that we are at the peak of inflated expectations, approaching the trough of disillusionment.

With this disillusionment comes the realization that there are certain dangers to the extent to which we apply AI in our daily activities, the question now stands how far should we go before we realize when to stop?

Humans are not famous for our “Good” decisions when it comes to the application of new technologies. I don’t think I need to give any examples to that statement. Let me shine a light on the dangers of AI.

5 dangers of AI

“[AI] scares the hell out of me,” Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk once said at the SXSW tech conference. “It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential.”

1. Autonomous weapons

One way AI can pose risks is when it is programmed to do something dangerous, such as autonomous weapons programmed to kill. It is even possible that the nuclear arms race will be replaced by a global autonomous weapons race.

"Artificial intelligence is the future, not just for Russia, but for all of humanity," said Russia's President Vladimir Putin. It brings with it enormous opportunities as well as unpredictable threats. Whoever becomes the leader in this domain will rule the world."

Aside from the possibility that autonomous weapons will develop a "mind of their own," a more immediate concern is the dangers that autonomous weapons may pose to an individual or government that does not value human life. They will most likely be difficult to dismantle or combat once deployed.

2. Artificial Intelligence Bias

Google Photos (An AI system) tagged two Africa-American people as ‘gorillas’ using Facial Recognition. This was a clear indication of racial bias that caused the algorithm to label humans wrongly. So the question is “How to tackle this Bias?” How to make sure that Artificial Intelligence is not racist or sexist like some humans in this world?

It is an unfortunate fact that human beings are sometimes biased against other religions, genders, nationalities, etc. And this bias may unconsciously also enter into the Artificial Intelligence Systems that are developed by human beings. The bias may also creep into the systems because of the flawed data that is generated by human beings.

Well, the only way to handle this is that AI researchers manually try to remove the bias while developing and training the AI systems and selecting the data.

3. Social manipulation through AI algorithms

One of the top dangers of artificial intelligence, according to a 2018 report on potential abuses, is social manipulation. This fear has become a reality as politicians rely on platforms to promote their views, with Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., most recently using a TikTok troll army to win the votes of younger Filipinos in the 2022 election.

TikTok is powered by an artificial intelligence algorithm that floods a user's feed with content related to previous media they've viewed on the platform. The app's critics focus on this process and the algorithm's failure to filter out harmful and inaccurate content, casting doubt on TikTok's ability to protect its users from dangerous and misleading media.

Deepfakes infiltrating political and social spheres have made online media and news even murkier. The technology makes it simple to swap out the image of one figure in a photograph or video. As a result, bad actors now have another channel for spreading misinformation and war propaganda, creating a nightmare scenario in which distinguishing between credible and faulty news can be nearly impossible.

4. Invasion of Privacy

Everyone has the right to privacy, which is a fundamental human right. However, in the future, Artificial Intelligence may result in a loss of privacy. Even today, you can easily track your movements as you go about your day. The most recent technologies, such as facial recognition, can detect you in a crowd, and all security cameras are equipped with it.

Because AI has data gathering capabilities, a timeline of your daily activities can be created by accessing your data from various social networking sites.

In fact, China is currently developing an Artificial Intelligence-powered Social Credit System. This system will assign a score to all Chinese citizens based on their behavior. This can include things like missing payments on loans, listening to loud music on trains, smoking in non-smoking areas, playing too many video games, and so on.

A low score may result in a travel ban, a lower social status, and so on. This is a prime example of how Artificial Intelligence can lead to total access and loss of privacy.

5. Loss of human jobs.

As Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more advanced, it will obviously take over jobs that were once performed by humans. According to a report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, around 800 million jobs could be lost worldwide because of automation by 2030.

But then the question arises “What about the humans that are left unemployed because of this?” Well, some people believe that many jobs will also be created because of Artificial Intelligence and that may balance the scales a bit.

People could move from physical and repetitive jobs to jobs that actually require creative and strategic thinking. And people could also get more time to spend with their friends and family with less physically demanding jobs.

But this is more likely to happen to people who are already educated and fall in the richer bracket. This might increase the gap between the rich and poor even further. If robots are employed in the workforce, this means that they don’t need to be paid like human employees.

So the owners of AI-driven companies will make all the profits and get richer while the humans who were replaced will get even poorer. So a new societal setup will have to be generated so that all human beings are able to earn money even in this scenario.

I think I have scared you enough for one day … all the threats listed above pose potential harm to our society however, innovation can’t be stopped but guided and controlled by a set of morally high standard policies that will draw a line on what is possible with AI and what’s not. So my point is that responsibility falls to us to be the last defense against the new brave world.

Now, lets the application and uses of AI

AI systems have numerous real-world applications today. Some of the most common examples are as follows:

Speech recognition: It is a capability that uses natural language processing (NLP) to convert human speech into a written format. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text. Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice searches (e.g., Siri) or to improve texting accessibility.

Computer vision: This AI technology enables computers and systems to derive meaningful information from digital images, videos and other visual inputs, and based on those inputs, it can take action. This ability to provide recommendations distinguishes it from image recognition tasks. Powered by convolutional neural networks, computer vision has applications within photo tagging in social media, radiology imaging in healthcare, and self-driving cars within the automotive industry.

Customer service: Online virtual agents are replacing human agents along the customer journey. They answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) around topics, like shipping, or provide personalized advice, cross-selling products or suggesting sizes for users, changing the way we think about customer engagement across websites and social media platforms. Examples include messaging bots on e-commerce sites with virtual agents, messaging apps, such as Slack and Facebook Messenger, and tasks usually done by virtual assistants and voice assistants.

Recommendation engines: Using past consumption behavior data, AI algorithms can help to discover data trends that can be used to develop more effective cross-selling strategies. This is used to make relevant add-on recommendations to customers during the checkout process for online retailers.

Automated stock trading: Designed to optimize stock portfolios, AI-driven high-frequency trading platforms make thousands or even millions of trades per day without human intervention.

Although we are cautious of AI technology, we are also equally excited about the potential, we just have to take things slow and also know when to stop and evaluate what we already have and the consequences of it, how it affects our interaction with other people and the collective emotional state of the world, a good and rigid measurement of what’s moral and the respect of human right.

We hope you embrace AI rather than fight it. Then use that knowledge in the fight to help draw a line.