A Dystopian Future or a Utopian Future: Which Would You Prefer?
Everyone’s using AI, from businesses to individuals. It’s been forced on society, yet also embraced by many. But it’s been found to create inaccuracies to the level of making things up that are entirely not true, like legal cases. It’s tempting to use it when under pressure, but it is established that it cannot and should not be trusted. If used, it must be checked by a human, which in some cases – perhaps many – means that it would be quicker to just do the entire piece of work yourself without robot “help”.
In some instances, people find it very helpful for their jobs, providing assistance that they don’t otherwise have. But in other cases it’s more trouble than it’s worth. If it’s going to assist, and nothing more, then fine. But, if it’s going to be used to take people’s jobs, that’s not fine! Think about it. If it means a vast number of people unemployed and they can’t get any other jobs due to the same cause, the economy will fail. People need to work and earn money to pay for goods and services and their taxes. This keeps the economy functioning. Take it away, and what do you have? A society filled with children with not much hope of a future, elderly pensioners, and only a small number of employed people in between, many doing very low-paid jobs. In the world, there is only a minority of people who are rich. Most people struggle. A lot of the people who were employed, in the scenario I gave, have no work and, in the UK, claim benefits which usually don’t cover much. People end up homeless and starving. All of this on a scale never before seen. People can’t afford to buy things, so companies go out of business. More people become unemployed. There isn’t enough tax, so governments fail. Where does this lead? Societal collapse and perhaps even civil war. People won’t accept such a dark reality. Even now they’re protesting against it.
Why would anyone want to support such a future? If you invest in AI, you’re supporting the potential of vast unemployment. People need jobs. We need a human future. With a population of about 8.3 billion and counting, we need more work and more money, not less. It doesn’t mean AI can’t be used at all. It’s applied incredibly in some areas like healthcare. But when it’s used to scrape human beings’ hard work without permission, generate (not create or write, as it cannot truly do so) content, images, etc, or read people’s CVs without consent to do so, that’s not legal. What happened to data protection and privacy? What happened to consent?
At work, employees are forced to make use of AI and help “train” it to do their jobs. In many instances, it’s proven to not be able to effectively do people’s jobs because of human elements such as critical analysis and accurate decision-making. This forced environment increases stress and anxiety for employees who are human beings with aspirations. If you don’t comply, you’ll be performance-managed out. No one wants to find themselves being made redundant, so why would any one do such a thing to any one else? It’s unethical.
We should be creating more jobs for humans to improve society for the sake of future generations, not creating a destructive dystopian future of hopelessness.