Artificial intelligence has seen exponential growth in development over the past few years. We’ve evolved from creating simple chatbots to programs that can mimic voices and images. Despite these advanced capabilities, there are both positive and negative aspects to consider. While AI has brought order to society, it has also introduced its fair share of chaos.
On one hand, these advancements have opened up new possibilities for careers, academics, and personal lives. The University of Pennsylvania recently added an Artificial Intelligence major to its Bachelor of Science in Engineering program, becoming the first Ivy League school to do so. This provides prospective college students with a unique opportunity to explore the field in depth. Many prestigious companies and investors have put a lot of funding into AI since 2021. Nvidia is one company that has made tremendous innovations in AI in the last couple of years. Their combination of hardware and AI skyrocketed the company’s value to over 3 trillion, putting them on track to be the next Apple or Microsoft. In the first nine months of 2024, funding for AI accounted for 33% of all venture capital investments, and it’s still skyrocketing. Today, people use AI services to automate repetitive and tedious tasks, assist with writing essays, articles, and reports, and generate creative ideas that blend with human intelligence to produce high-quality results. The list of applications is virtually infinite.
Although these advancements offer a plethora of benefits both at the individual and macro-cosmic levels, there is always darkness, even in a room full of light. With its popularity and immense potential, people have also found ways to misuse AI, creating a negative perception that some might argue that it outweighs its benefits. For example, some have used AI to create deep fakes, which are AI-generated images or videos of individuals or groups. These deepfakes have been used to produce pornographic content without consent, politically manipulative material, and false advertisements, all intended to deceive the public. Earlier this year, a finance worker at a multinational firm was manipulated into paying over 25 million dollars to people who used deep fake technology to impersonate the company’s Chief Financial Officer and other employees. In regards to academics, many students use AI programs to do their homework or write essays for them, this makes it harder for educators to be able to trust and grade their student’s work. Many instructors have increased their usage of programs that help detect AI, to punish the students who misuse the tool, but those detectors are still in the learning phase and can often be inaccurate or provide inconsistent outputs. One woman who was balancing working a full-time job with a second child on the way and the demanding workload of a college course received a zero on an assignment simply because the professor stated that it was most likely AI-generated. She later mentioned that she has a disability that impacts her writing style and it was most likely the reason why AI was detected. The zero was taken out but if her work were to get flagged one more time, it would be regarded as plagiarism.
In summary, these rapid advancements have profoundly shaped our society, offering advantageous benefits while also posing new obstacles. On one hand, AI has revolutionized all types of fields ranging from academics to video games. However, the misuse of AI can have negative long-lasting effects on people and groups. As we evolve even more, we need to be crucial in how we deliver these products and how to ensure the safety and consideration of everyone.
Sources
Bloomberg: false cheating accusation
Deepfake in Hong Kong
University of Pennsylvania AI
VC Investments in AI
Nvidia AI