The Unfounded Concerns about AI's Power

Nearing fiscal year 25, the U.S. and global economy has seen significant stock changes due to one pervasive technology: Artificial Intelligence.

One of the most searched terms on Google as of 2023, AI has sparked mixed reactions. On one hand, technology enthusiasts venerate the advanced computational impacts of AI. Still, on another, people caution about the ethics of AI (especially with copyright and giving credit to rightful owners), and also what it could do to take over human jobs.

This is a complicated issue with multiple components, but the first point that has to be addressed is "taking over human jobs."

Any time a new technology is introduced to the world, jobs will inherently be "lost." Take the example of cars. Back in the day, people used horse and buggy as their primary mode of transportation. This space created jobs for people. And then suddenly, one day in 1908, Henry Ford and William Durant introduced the car titled "Model T." Consumers immediately began transitioning from horse and buggy to this new technology. Everyone involved in the horse and buggy domain - people who fed and groomed the horses, people who created carts, people who chauffered the horses - "lost" their jobs. But their jobs weren't actually lost (thus the reason I put the misleading term in quotes), they were simply displaced. With the advancements of cars, so many new jobs have been created. With the hundreds of global brands of cars come workers involved in the tires, seats, and paint of cars, the marketing of cars, gas and diesel pumps, and even the AI sector of cars. It is undeniable: the transition of technology has increased the number of jobs available. For the individuals in the 1900s, it would've seemed like their jobs were lost, but they really were just displaced and would go on to exponentially increase.

AI may seem like it's eliminating jobs. Health professionals don't have to diagnose illnesses, teachers don't have to answer every question a student has, and business specialists don't have to spend hours collecting and analyzing data. However, as technology fills up these spaces, jobs will simply transfer. Perhaps jobs will transition to AI testing, or to verifying ML models, or to devising new computational libraries. Since technology makes lives easier by completing certain tasks, some jobs will inherently be displaced when those tasks can be fulfilled by an inanimate object. But nothing is created without human intellect, and these jobs will transfer to higher-level professions very soon.

Now comes the second point: which is AI in ethics. I've never been much of an artist myself to be honest, but I completely understand why content, especially art and words, have to be tackled sensitively with use in AI. For those of you who are new to AI, the reason it works is because large amounts of data are thrown to a computer, and the computer picks up on connections in the dataset, then applies those to complete its own application.

The issue comes in when art or essays are the data used to train the AI model, and the creators of this data have not given their consent for this. The AI model will spit out a conglomeration of the data is was trained on, and this sense, data that was originally not allowed to be reproduced is being reproduced. However, since AI blends data out, it is often difficult to pick up on the fact that a specific piece of content was unwarrantedly used.

I can foresee one solution that might fix this problem: there should be a profession for people who create data to train the AI model. Artists and authors can create content that they accept will be used for reproducing data. This creates two benefits: 1) instead of training the AI model on arbitrary pieces of data from the internet, it can be trained on data that is the median or reflects the population entirely (i.e. if you have a model that creates images of people, artists can draw a variety of individuals, people with all races and facial features, for the model to be trained on. This will allow the AI model to spit out realistic, diverse content instead of only sticking to people from a certain race, or people who look a certain way). And of course, the second benefit is 2) artists' content is not stolen. In this situation, they allow for their art to be used for reproduction.

Of course, AI, like any other powerful technology comes with some dangers and concerns. "With great power comes great responsibility." But even though cars cause so many accidents, contribute significantly to pollution, and have a multitude of downsides, they are utilized because overall, their benefit outweighs their downsides. Similarly, AI might seem like it's removing jobs, but it's just displacing them temporarily - and will go on to multiply them. With proper implementation and consideration, AI is on the way to becoming a technology that works alongside people, not against them.