According to the World Economic Forum’s study, artificial intelligence, otherwise known as AI, is predicted to supersede human workers with an average of 85 million jobs run by AI by 2025 (Built In, 2023). Industries such as healthcare, agriculture and software engineering are AI’s prime labours and are almost comparable to the impact of farmers’ work dynamic during the industrial revolution. Despite this troubling statistic, the rise of AI is predicted to produce 97 million new jobs within the same time scale; whilst AI is continuing to dominate the job market, jobs will continue to generate to support software to strengthen the AI revolution.

As AI gains intelligence by consuming billions of articles and information, the plethora of power that AI holds has begun to transcend the generic manufacturing roles and has the potential to infiltrate society’s white-collar roles. AI expert Kai Fu-Lee argues the range of sectors can range from truckers to accountants, paralegals and radiologists- we are no longer needed to control the technology that aids us with our employment and instead, we can inform AI to complete roles instead (Built In, 2023).

Picasso Meets AI

Although AI technology is commonly perceived to follow formulaic algorithms that operate in an industrial setting, the creative industry has also fallen victim to the complex AI tools that can compromise the creativity and originality of society’s artists. As millions of artists and graphic designers have mastered their strokes of imagination and subjective concepts of art, AI has bypassed the need for practice and improvement by utilising millions of forms of data, art styles and photos to generate the most intricate of art pieces within seconds. This particular form of AI can be incredibly useful for those that do not have a creative flair; simply typing in a phrase into sites such as Midjourney and Dall-E can allow AI to generate art, however, several issues arise with this particular feat of AI; as artists are used as the foundation for AI’s work, there is no protection over millions of original artwork and AI is not permitted to credit artists for work that is referenced (Study Breaks, 2023).

The melting pot of various art styles from realism, minimalism etc. had placed AI on a virtual throne that can derail the creative industry by putting artists out of commission for a quicker and cheaper alternative.

The World of Deepfakes

Not only is AI art stepping on the toes of artists, but AI can also trigger artificial images that go viral for the wrong reasons, leading to widespread misinformation. Earlier this week, pictures went viral of Donald Trump getting arrested; for many, this would be a great sight to witness, however, the pictures were unfortunately revealed to be false. This example has uncovered the danger of generative AI-made images that can fuel false narratives but also damage reputations- if the edit is good, anyone is at risk of the annihilation of their character. This longstanding phenomenon, otherwise known as deepfakes have had several viral moments, from Obama calling Trump a ‘complete dipshit’ and Mark Zuckerburg bragging about having ‘total control of billions of people’s stolen data’ (The Guardian, 2020). For many, this eerily realistic content is entertainment, but with the speed of social media virality and the lack of fact-checking, deep fakes can quickly become smear campaigns and PR disasters for anyone, from entertainment to political news. For instance, the 2016 US election fell victim to deepfakes, with 11% of those over 65’s sharing misinformation caused by AI-generated images (The Daily Beast, 2023).

Pornographic content is a major problem within the deepfake phenomenon- AI firm Deeptrace found 15,000 deepfake videos online in 2019 of which 96% were pornographic (The Guardian, 2020). Many of the videos utilised AI face mapping to insert female celebrities into pornographic content for one’s fantasies and are made available to buy.

The talkative google

Although AI has posed a risk for millions of creatives, AI in communication is generally not considered a threat; for many companies, burdening menial jobs such as customer service requests to chatbots can allow human employees to operate on more significant tasks. Despite the grunt work that AI is beneficial for, it appears that AI has also mastered the notion of storytelling, essays, reports, and script writing through the form of sites such as Chat GPT (Built In, 2023).

Chat GPT is an AI-powered language tool that can provide information on millions of topics due to the significant amounts of data and computing techniques to devise sophisticated and human-like responses to even the most obscure prompts, from writing an essay about quantum physics to a script for a comedy show (Insider, 2023). Considered a chatty version of Google, Chat GPT continues to improve the more it is operated; by running on an algorithm that allows the user interface to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

The language tool is restricted to speaking on topics that can promote harm, violence and discrimination, nevertheless, a key underlying issue is the ramifications within society, with 90% of students using Chat GPT for assignments (Forbes, 2023). For many, Chat GPT can provide a session of goofing around and playing around with the most ambiguous prompts, but the conversational chat machine has not gone unnoticed by tech giants such as Microsoft which have invested approximately 10 billion dollars.

What’s next for Artificial Intelligence?

With many utilising AI in their daily lives, it is guaranteed that technology will continue to strengthen and grow at an alarming rate, predicted to dominate 50% of jobs within 15 years (Built In, 2023). Bill Gates once argued that we should tax robots that take over human jobs; even if this proposal was extended to include AI, is this a small price for companies to pay for millions potentially becoming compromised by AI? Whilst AI is working under algorithms that follow the principle ‘do what you can learn’ it appears that the possibilities are endless for the future of AI; let’s hope that there's something that technology can’t do.

References

Built In (2023) Robots and AI Taking Over Jobs: What to Know About the Future of Jobs.
Forbes (2022) Educators Battle Plagiarism As 89% Of Students Admit To Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT For Homework.
Insider (2023) If you still aren't sure what ChatGPT is, this is your guide to the viral chatbot that everyone is talking about.
Study Breaks (2023) The dangers of AI art.
The Daily Beast (2023) We need to stop freaking out about AI deepfakes.
The Guardian (2020) What are deepfakes- and how can you spot them?