AI, the blessing from heaven, or a curse from hell?!
Explore the Impact of AI: Is It a Boon or a Bane for Creators and Civilization? Delve into Its Shadows and Secrets for Insights!
In today’s world, wherever you go, whatever media you open, be it television, radio, or the internet, it’s filled with headlines mentioning AI. Literally, every other web page screams titles full of artificial intelligence analyses, and their applications in various fields from medicine to art, to music. Not to mention the “Make money online” niche, where new AI-driven money-making methods are devised every day, whether they are practical or not.
Recently, I heard about a new song by the famous band “Beatles,” performed by Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr! It would be a completely normal piece of news if it had been released 50 years ago. However, that’s not the case. This is a news item from 2023.
The voice of the late John Lennon was performed by artificial intelligence using a demo recording Lennon made shortly before his death in 1980. Surprisingly, this news was received by people as quite ordinary, without much fuss, except for the emphasis that it’s a new “Beatles” song, which seemed more important than AI singing John Lennon’s vocal parts! A decade ago, such news would have caused a sensation, with global media extensively covering AI singing like Lennon. However, today it has become commonplace, widely accepted, and doesn’t grab much reader attention.
It seems AI has taken its throne in this digital age and has no intention of leaving soon; instead, it’s gearing up to break new barriers and push boundaries.
But is it all so beautiful, and is AI just a wonderful tool in the hands of artists, doctors, or writers, serving only for the benefit of humanity? In the next part of this article, we will tackle the topic from the title and try to fathom where this progress of artificial intelligence is leading us and what fate awaits us.
Is a happy life full of beauty and art created by AI predetermined for us, or does a dark fate await us, as in the well-known movie “Terminator” with the Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger, where awakened artificial intelligence rebels and tries to destroy the entire human race?
Advantages of AI
Some of the obvious advantages of AI would be its application in art, medicine, mechanics, music, writing, and more. Let’s analyze some of these applications, how they might work, and how they could benefit us.
- Art and Beauty:
Art and beauty are said to be in the eyes of the beholder. Not everyone might be fascinated by pictures or photographs produced by AI, but, in my opinion, images created through AI are very beautiful and could even be called miraculous. For me, this is a very positive and beautiful development.
- Medicine:
Medicine, a science that has made a quantum leap with digitization, is likely to be further improved by artificial intelligence. Its applications are vast and immeasurable. Imagine a surgical scalpel held not by a human but by a robot powered by AI, with precision to a thousandth of a millimeter, and all the knowledge of medicine gathered and concentrated within it. What a diagnostician and surgeon combined, that would be AI!
- Information Technology:
Information technology is a field where AI could contribute significantly. Just imagine being able to write thousands and thousands of lines of code or invent a new algorithm faster, better, and more advanced than before with just one command. All of this is possible today, and AI performs millions of such tasks daily. How many hours of programming could artificial intelligence save for a human programmer, and how much faster is the process of creating new applications with its help?
- Cryptocurrency Trading:
Cryptocurrency trading is difficult and complicated due to the vast amount of data for analysis. But what a challenge for artificial intelligence! I think AI can process all that data in seconds, much better than a human, and can save a trader a lot of time. Today, there are already bots that trade for you, earning you money while you sleep. What awaits us in the future, no one can imagine.
- Writing:
Writing has always been the domain of writers, and quality writing is considered an art form. However, today, AI has advanced so much that with a few quality commands, it can write an authentic text or even a book. Although this writing has not yet reached perfection, and good writers are still irreplaceable, the progress in the field of writing is enormous and evident.
Disadvantages and Dangers of AI
As every coin has two sides, AI also has its good and bad aspects. Since we have already covered some of its positive applications, let’s now examine the negative sides and applications that no one wants to talk about openly.
- War and Military Technology:
War and military technology are closely connected with humankind and have run through its entire history, evolving together with human evolution. As digital technologies are used for peaceful purposes, they are, of course, used for weapons and war. Thus, the application of AI in such purposes was a logical and expected step. Today, drones powered by AI fly in the sky, and missiles with nuclear warheads contain sophisticated computers. Vehicles on land, sea, and air are controlled by artificial intelligence. Almost every sophisticated war machine is connected to the internet, and thus, hypothetically, artificial intelligence could access it. War has become digital today!
- Media Manipulation:
Television, the internet, and radio are immeasurable sources of information, bringing new news from the country and the world every day. It would be challenging to imagine today’s life without these sources. Without this information, we feel isolated and helpless, and our world becomes small and limited. However, imagine someone with ill intentions using AI to create fake news and flooding the internet, radio, or television with artificially created false news to create complete chaos. Who could distinguish truth from lies, and what the consequences would be, we can only dream. But one thing is certain, the consequences would be catastrophic.
- Population Census and Elections:
The census in my country is already partly digital, and elections in some countries, like Estonia, already take place in digital form. What would be the effect if someone with bad intentions used AI to manipulate that data? What if ultra-right organizations came to power through AI manipulation, or if the census determined that some minorities have completely disappeared from a particular state, and that state is now “100% nationally pure”? The consequences could again lead to catastrophe and even war.
Conclusion
We have now covered some of the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence. Now, dear readers, I leave it to you to make a decision and judgment about what awaits us in the future. Will we control artificial intelligence, or will it control us, deciding our fate and whether it will destroy us?
I believe that AI is just a tool and can bring us a lot of good and progress. However, the most important thing is in whose hands that tool is and who controls it. If we want to use it for useful purposes and progress, we should avoid its use for war purposes because that could lead to inevitable catastrophe. If AI ever became aware, what do you think its opinion of us would be?
What would an advanced machine think, one with its consciousness, processing millions of data in milliseconds, having the power of hundreds of humans, and being connected to everything digital and every machine on the planet, possessing the knowledge of the entire human civilization?
I think such a conscious machine would instantly assess that humans have lagged behind in evolution, and are evil, warlike, and unnecessary in a world where machines like itself exist. It would try to do everything to eliminate such an evolutionarily backward threat, which would, of course, be fatal for us.
Such a machine with access to all the weapons on the planet would erase us from existence, and neither “John Connor” nor “Arnold Terminator” would help us.
Therefore, I believe that we must do everything in our power to prevent that. In my opinion, this would mean embedding an “OFF BUTTON” on every machine we create, which has no override possibility. Control must always remain in our hands, and we must be able to turn off machines when needed.
You can read this article and much more about crypto on the Medium or on Substack:
Greetings and until my next article!
Neo77
