I read endlessly about the dangers of artificial intelligence. I see letters signed by experts and pundits of all sort warning us ever so seriously. I have longed for someone to take the time to present a comprehensive view of the specifics so I can find out what I am missing. The answer: nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-problems-danger-chatgpt.html
The problems are exactly the ones I dismiss. Not because they are all impossible but because the problems are just more of the same. And, there are only three of them!!
1) We will live in a world of misinformation. Nobody will be able to trust what they see. People will be fed and believe all sorts of authoritative looking bullshit. More of the same in my view and, perhaps the existence of AI will remove any doubt that digital info is always suspect or worse.
2) It will take away jobs. Now, instead of taking away all those blue collar jobs, it will, where are my pearls!, hurt the white collar job market. This has been said of every single solitary technical advance without exception and it has been true. It will be true this time but, sadly, I am 100% certain that the corporations will find new drudgery to keep people under their thumbs. Perhaps this will finally convince our overlords that UBI is the only way to make society function.
3) Breakout!!!! HAL takes over. In fairness, this is not without merit. I have read of people talking about using AI to monitor their software systems and giving it the ability to generate programs to fix things. While taking over the world and using our children for Matrix-grade 'bio-energy' is not going to happen, this could result in some truly stupid shit.
Thing is, I have only read about one company (Amazon) that allows code to get to production without some kind of review. Once we see their AI offering sexual favors to boost sales, I'm pretty everyone else will continue to have code review before production.