With so many recent AI advancements, including the release of the very impressive (and similarly terrifying) GPT-6 Astra, I felt every single one of my fears wriggling their way back into my mind.
When I began writing Fake Creativity nearly three years ago, all I had were fears about AI, barely a single optimistic thought about the technology. Ever since then, it’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. One moment I think it’s a bubble that will burst once all the investors have had their fill, their bottomless bank accounts filled to the brim. The next, I’ll think we’ve already crossed the threshold, and we’re doomed because we live in a society that doesn’t have the infrastructure to safely sustain such a technology.
But lately I’ve been trying my hardest to look at things from a more neutral perspective, something that is so very difficult to do in our world of algorithms, polarizing content, and binary thinking. But it’s more important than ever to toe this line, because being on either extreme isn’t how progress is made. Being one-hundred-percent anti-AI isn’t going to solve anything, because it’s already here, and it’s been here for a long time. The other side is also equally unsafe, because we’re speeding into the future at three hundred miles an hour—and we’re not even wearing our seatbelts.
Still, I keep trying to remind myself of Frankenstein, the novel.
During the period when people were beginning to understand and harness electricity, there was plenty of fear around what this new technology might do. Suffice to say, electricity is dangerous to a degree, but it’s fairly easy to argue that it’s made life a bit better for most of us. We no longer have to walk through our homes holding a lit candle, suffer through a freezing winter without heat, endure the hottest days of summer without AC, and our food lasts for weeks in the fridge.
We just feel the growing pains more with advancements in technology today because they happen so fast. The World Wide Web itself is only a few decades old, which is basically a speck in the timeline of human technological development. We may just now be noticing some of the more severe negative consequences of it, but there’s still time to adjust, work out the kinks, and improve. We just need to be more adamant as a society that putting in the effort to improve these systems and make them safe is a non-negotiable priority.
So, these are just a few of my many fears that I’ve had about AI over the past few years, and the reverse side that I try to remind myself of.
AI is going to take everyone’s job, and the government will be reluctant to implement a universal basic income until tens of thousands of people lose their homes, their ability to eat, and perish.
VS
AI will perform the jobs it’s capable of doing better than we can, take the jobs we don’t want to do as a species, and create new jobs for us that will be more fulfilling for each individual and help make the world a better place.
AI is going to eat up all of our resources with its power-hungry servers and accelerate the destruction of the earth until there’s no saving it.
VS
If AI ever becomes the superintelligent computer many are hoping for, maybe the power suck will ultimately be worth it, because it could help solve our global problems, ranging from pollution and renewable energy to food supply.
AI is going to work stealthily in the background, manipulating entire countries, starting wars, and deciding the fate of the entire world.
VS
Even if AI becomes autonomous and influences the trajectory of humanity, its main goal may still be to preserve it. Wars, destruction, death, and so many other negative things in this life are driven by the greedy, the egotistical, and the power-hungry. AI very well might not share any of those traits.
AI is going to make us all stupid. Or induce worldwide psychosis.
VS
Yeah, this one is probably true. 💀 But hey, maybe we’ll be happier for it, or maybe AI will eventually be capable of being our personal therapist or mental health consultant.
AI is going to turn the world into one giant hive-mind, even more so than the internet has.
VS
Yeah, I worry this fear is probably valid too, but then again, the world being one giant hive-mind isn’t all bad. 🤣 Best-case scenario, it should result in world peace and everyone understanding each other.
AI is going to kill us all in some way or another.
VS
AI will potentially save countless lives. Obviously, we can imagine it doing something miraculous like curing cancer one day. But even if we look at something like autonomous vehicles, roughly a quarter of a million people worldwide could be saved from drunk drivers every year. If they worked flawlessly to the extent that all fatal car accidents were avoided, roughly a million people per year would be saved.
I have plenty more fears, but I think that’s enough for one day. 😂
Once again, if we think about Frankenstein, in the end, AI is also very likely to improve the world. Throughout all of history, we as a species have been afraid of new technology, but more often than not, it ends up improving our lives. Cars, boats, and planes take us where we want to go. Electricity and the internet have allowed us to work, communicate, and learn from wherever. We live in comfort and prosperity compared to the civilizations of long ago.
That doesn’t mean every technological advancement has been good, or that the benefits have been evenly distributed, or that there haven’t been terrible consequences along the way. It just means I don’t think fear alone is a particularly useful way to decide what happens next.
I’m crossing my fingers that AI follows the general pattern of the past, but that doesn’t change the fact that we as a society need to advocate for regulations and safety. We can advance into that future with at least a little bit of precaution. We don’t need to let wealthy tech billionaires decide our fate.
And although that sounds unrealistic, I believe we have more power than we think.
If we were outraged at a company for invading privacy, adding ads, and upping the price of memberships while decreasing the quality of their service, and everyone canceled their subscriptions as a result, how long do you think it would take for that company to correct course and swing back toward the side of the consumer?
Obviously, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes there isn’t another company to switch to. Sometimes the alternative costs more than you can afford. Sometimes these companies have become so embedded into our lives that opting out barely feels possible.
But I do think we’ve gotten so used to feeling powerless that we forget that corporations actually depend on us, on our money. And if you want to change the world, the system, the way corporations and industries operate, the best way to do that is by withholding your money. That’s more true than ever.
But back to the topic at hand. I don’t know what’s going to happen with AI. I’ve spent years thinking about every possible way it could go terribly wrong, and I still think about them all the time. But I also think there are a lot of ways it could make our lives better.
So I’m trying to stay in the middle, and I’m holding out hope that AI ends up improving the world.