AI will possibly be devastating to the world, but not because of a Terminator takeover

Posted by AccordingChocolate12@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 23 comments

Before diving into my exact concerns regarding AI I would like to emphasize that I truely believe that mankind can solve so many problems with this new technology. There are already great examples in medicine and other fields that are spectacular and made things possible unimaginable in the past years.

https://cns.utexas.edu/news/features/turbocharging-protein-engineering-ai

The potential of this technology is impossible to comprehend, especially with the new quantum techniques which are arising and todays possibilities of chip design. It is really freaky to be honest and everything is happening so fast that it is really hard to really grasp the development of all of this. I can not really tell how the world has been five years ago and this is… scary… especially since it is evolving faster and faster. But, like I said: I truly believe this technology could make the world better if used thoughtfully and aligned with global goals.

But: The world is the way it is. And my concerns are huge with AI. Not because of terminator scenarios: Totally different ones. Here is a list with my top concerns regarding AI.

1 Energy

90% of data of all the time of mankind was created in the last few years. Imagine that? This is insane to think about. With the apperance of AI image creators and now video creators Coming up aswell the content contribution has exploded and will even more to an unseen and unpredictable extent. Disregarding here the question: „How much of this content is utter trash?“ - how much Energy does this need? The datacenters, the devices, the calculation power of AI. How will our global climate crisis be affected by the increasing power demand of this exploding technology?

2 AI armsrace

Obviously AI holds devastating potential for creating deadly machines. China released footage of some robodog like machine with a machinegun on its back getting dropped by a drone on a roof and then started walking autonomously. So yeah… how about: lets not create those things? But lets be real: there probably are some really super advanced weapons already which are classified top secret or sth. The US and China put so much money into it. This is so scary because I imagine that maybe the use of nukes will get attractive when you have weapons or systems that possibly can intercept the enemys easily or when you can mass produce killing robots without a problem that this is a usecase to be considered by some old mad man. Where is this leading?? We need to work cooperatively with this but the world seems further apart than ever since I was born in the late 90s.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/risks-artificial-intelligence-weapons-design

https://diplomatmagazine.eu/2024/09/01/ai-arms-race/?amp

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01029-0

3 The use of AI will automatize production but the money wont be distributed fairly but rather the centralization of money becomes hyperextreme leading to social conflicts and the breakdown of society.

How will politics react to this? Will some companys basically rule the world?

https://youtu.be/F_7IPm7f1vI?si=EHhPbkEjlIJdz19W

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/20/business/ai-jobs-workers-replacing

4 AI finalizes the alieniation of mankind and we will loose much of what makes us humans leading to a destroyed world where people live in virtual worlds and the rich in Space.

5 AI will be used by some dictators to ensure absolute power and absolute control. Robot armys will secure the government. In the internet everything will be seen and controlled, only specific content will be made available.

6 The overall intelligence will decline more and more and uneducated people will be dependent on machines that do everything for them while a smaller and smaller elite has every tie in their hands.