The growth of AI has been moving at an unheard of pace. It’s so extreme, society is uncertain of how technology will look in five years. The unpredictability of the tech industry creates an uncomfortability of what technology could grow into. Should this unpredictability be interpreted as good or bad?
I am a twenty-year-old college student who devotes a lot of time to physical media. As I’m witnessing AI write books, produce music and create art, it provokes an unsettling feeling.
Being a student, I directly see the use of AI in educational settings. AI is used directly in the classroom to help teach children at an impressionable age. This includes using AI as a shortcut to spend less time on assignments and AI doing the work. I worry if students are getting the same amount of value in their education as they may have in the past.
I want to know what this technology means for me and my future. Not only myself, but do others share the same worries as me?
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The issues of AI aren’t necessarily new. We’ve had similar worries but in different contexts. I talked to Andrew Koch, who is a software engineer based from Silicon Valley, California. He has been working in the industry for 20 to 25 years.
Asked whether his opinions on AI are negative or positive, he replied: “The answer is yes. Yeah. Just to say, it’s much like any technology that humans come out with…There’s been amazing conveyance of knowledge and information, you know, entertainment…but there’s also really horrible things because people come up with really horrible ideas and spread those ideas and it leads to wars and people doing horrible things to each other and to our planet.”
AI has been moving at a rate that can only be described as “unheard of.” A part of human nature is discovering technological advancements. The new advancements have always provoked some form of concern. Like Koch mentioned, the printing press, arguably one of most proficient technological advancements in history. When the printing press first came to be, society was fearful of this new found technology corrupting society and impressionating them with false narratives. Today we see reading as a valuable way to expand the mind and use critical thinking skills.
This pattern may sound familiar … Have we heard of social media corrupting society with false news?
The main difference with AI is it’s spreading faster. Koch noted: “I kind of think of it as humans, we build tools. We love building tools and then we look at all the amazing things we can do with it. But what’s profoundly different, and this is the first time in human history, the tool can actually make itself better.”
Dan Bashara is a Teaching Fellow in DePaul’s College of Communication. He studied film and media studies at Northwestern University and vocalized what he sees wrong about AI. “My concerns are more that the AI complex will … First, we collapse under the weight of all the shady venture-capital funding that is propping it up and take our global economic system down with it,” he said. “Second, and more likely, remain in function as a part of life forever and render future culture and human achievement derivative, hollow and sterile. Either way, the no-question negatives are that it dramatically exacerbates climate change and co-opts human thought and individuality.”
Over the past two decades, the main technological concern has been social media. A lot of the concern comes from the youth being exposed to harmful expectations and unrealistic realities. What makes the issue of AI different and arguably more intense than social media is that real humans are no longer sending these messages; it’s a machine.
Bashara describes it well: “I would describe AI as some unholy combination of techno-corporate speculative investment scam, corrosive and idiotic social contagion, and big-data weapon to eradicate everything that can’t be made to fit within its limited remit.”
Emilee Theofanopoulos is a double major in mechanical engineering and environmental studies. She’s located in Indianapolis and is 21 years old. Her overall opinion on AI is neutral.
“I think that one of the things it’s really good at is re-explaining things. I think for the negatives I’ve seen, and I’ve taken technology ethics classes and philosophy with technology. And so I’ve read a lot of papers on people who have an over-dependence on AI and who have started relying on AI for everything.”
With most things, especially technology, they’re negatives and positives. The positives come from using AI as a tool. The negatives form by depending on AI as a “God-like” solution.
When discussing AI, it’s hard to ignore the corporate aspect of it. Through the AI industry, a concerningly amount of billionaires have come to be. Koch told me about what he’s noticed through actually being in the tech industry. “I live here in Silicon Valley, and you see these 20-somethings and they’re driving around Ferraris to go to the office,” he said. “It’s mind blowing. And they’re walking away from it. These people are choosing: ‘This is too dangerous, and I can’t be a part of it, I’m not going to have my name on it.’”
Out of all the things Koch and I talked about, two things really stood out to me. First, many people hold so much resentment towards the leaders of AI. From what’s been seen, these executives will push and push the production of AI even if the results are harmful. They’re getting the benefit from this push which seems to be their main concern, money and power.
Through Koch’s perspective, it was refreshing hearing that those in the same position still have the dignity to walk away. It tells us a lot about the situation of AI. We have something so powerful that even those who benefit the most from it will still walk away.
The second thing that stood out to me was Koch’s opinion on careers outside of the tech world.
When I mentioned my passion for studying the arts, he replied with: “Honestly, I think you’re on the right path in studying art because I think it’s a very real possibility that the most important skills and knowledge that we can have are not the hard sciences. I mean, not that it’s going to hurt you to know math and science; but the philosophies, the art, the music, the soft skills that make humans humans, those are the things that AI can’t easily do.”
There’s a perception that a career in the arts equates to a pointless path of being a broke “starving artist.” There’s clarity in the humanistic values art possesses that a computer can recreate. It gives the impression that an artistic future won’t be as much of a pointless path.
In the time of AI exploding and tech advancing by the minute, the question is: what do we do?
The answer is unknown, a factor in what makes AI so scary. Many of us can’t confidently predict the future of AI in a year from now. We’ve always had some sort of idea of what technology could look like in the future.
A little less than a century ago we predicted flying cars. The point is, estimating the way technology could look seems like an impossible task. It’s impossible to predict the reality of technology being smarter than us because it’s something we’ve never seen before.
Even though there’s no answer to what will be done, I am certain that we will adapt. We’ve adapted to the shift of using horses as transportation to traveling through mobiles and sending texting messages instead of letters. Once the horses and mailmen found less of a need, they still found a way to adapt into society.
AI existing or not isn’t a possible reality at this point. All perspectives fear AI in some way and don’t perceive AI in a way where it could suddenly disappear.
It’s human nature to find shortcuts and make tasks easier. AI offers this. Yet, it’s human nature to solve problems, learn and discover. We grow through learning. Hard situations are difficult to navigate through, but dealing with them prepares us for the future. It’s fundamental that humans still deal with their everyday blockers, whether that be making a grocery list or trying to understand a topic. Asking AI to answer these questions for us doesn’t allow us to be human, to find a solution. It’s a tool, but should it be used as a tool to be human?
Finding the line between letting technology follow its course and let humans be human is something to be found with urgency. AI could be and will be a dangerous force if society doesn’t find a way to adapt as quickly as AI chooses to advance.
Header Image by Ella Malczyk
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