The Age of AI

 Ethan Parker 

10/4/21

The Age of AI can both benefit us as humans and make our lives much easier but the age of AI can also ruin many lives and force many individuals into unemployment. With the near future approaching quickly, many jobs are at risk due to AI technology and AI technology is not just technology that performs one task, it learns new ways of development and continues to make itself smarter based on what it is being told to do. AI or Artificial Intelligence are computerized systems that have the ability to mimic human actions and at times, do them better as they interpret and think about things similarly to how we do. 

How AI can benefit us:

AI can benefit us in a variety of different ways and like I stated earlier, it can make our lives much easier in the long run. With the help of AI, we'd be able to perform things at a much faster rate, so much faster than us individuals could possibly do. One of the main pros of AI technology is that it'd be efficient and the accuracy would be on point. With artificial intelligence, we are eliminating the process of human error in the brain. Being that AI is not exactly a human, this technology does not have to worry about things such as error or mistakes. AI will also be able to put out information quickly and perform tasks in a timely manner without slowing down like us humans. When completing work or even working on something, us humans tend to slow down as we continue, AI will not quite slow down, everything will be done at an efficient speed and this would help us a tremendous amount being that we could use the help when working on large projects that have many difficult aspects to them. AI is programmed to be "intelligent" as it can take long processes such as finding an abundance of information and find them quick an easy. With that being said, AI will help us to narrow down long time consuming projects and with that being said, we'd be able to produce things quick and efficiently. When it comes to us humans, we are limited to knowledge and being able to search through our memory to bring things into the project that we are working on. With AI, they have practically unlimited resources and can work on projects that are very small as well as very large without being tired out at all. The human mind can get very bored very quickly, ultimately making us get tired of the task that we are currently working on or working towards. With the efficient and quick AI technology, there will be no tiredness, there will be no breaks needed, everything will be done in a timely manner which will help us get things done quicker which will soon lead to more people being helped and larger, more important projects getting done quicker. 

When using AI technology, it not only helps by being efficient and accurate but it also helps us reduce costs by not having to spend so much on products and services, as well not so much human paid labor will be needed. In general, AI will make it to where many jobs will not need as many people filling roles and getting paid because AI technology will be able to replace all of that which will reduce costs heavily in the workplace due to not as many people needed to be paid and them needed certain materials such as laptops, desks, chairs, tables, and so on. AI is very advanced and practically would be able to add focus to projects that it used to take multiple paid humans to work on. AI technology will help us in a variety of different ways but this one is huge because we are not spending so much money per year from this specific job and imagine how much money is being spent per year for all corporate jobs, it must be tons. But AI can help with that, AI will use more advanced training to where things will get done at lower costs and the humans that will be kept and hired will be the humans that create the most value in the long run. Many difficult and unsolvable patterns and tactics will soon be solved with AI, saving the business a large amount of money per year. This will help customer experience which also will result in less money spent per year because when customer experience is not up to par, you must spend to get things that are either up to par or hire more people that may be able to do the job better, ultimately resulting in more money spent. When looking at the overall process of how AI will help reduce costs, this means efficiency will be improved heavily within global, national, and local businesses while costs are still being reduced and costs may even be cheaper for customers, ultimately making them more happy which will result in better reviews which are always a plus. Those companies who decide not to use AI technology over human labor in certain aspects will soon fail and they will realize they cannot compete against those other companies that utilize AI to the highest degree. 

Anther huge benefit of using AI technology is that there will be effective data acquisition and analysis as well as AI technology will be able to understand high dimensional data, which is very hard for just one human to do, as well as multiple humans. Humans cannot really handle the high volume data all the time, many humans struggle with that aspect of work and if you take a deeper look at it, computers over time have always handled themselves when it comes to data and AI technology is the technology that can benefit us in ways many cannot imagine. AI technology is more that beneficial when it comes to dealing with extreme volumes that deal with data, which more often than not, humans struggle with. Due to the reaching out AI can do with internet and looking back through what all it has already researched and done, AI will be able to make big decisions for us humans by gathering information that is difficult to comprehend. AI works like a scanning device when it comes to the true analysis of data, AI can figure out trends and insights quickly, it can find them in no time, AI is able to perform those difficult tasks to where we must figure out certain trends of preferences for a companies marketing scheme. It no longer has to take multiple people and be so difficult because we have AI. AI is able to understand the large high dimensional data, which is also very hard to really understand and break down. AI is able to perform the impossible where it can reduce data's dimensionality and cluster it and then go back and find patterns or even groups that we'd never find with out the help of AI technology. In the end, this understanding of this huge chunk of data will help us in the long run to be able to reach the advanced customer segmentation, it will help us to find large groups and similarities between internet pages, and it will allow us to be able to trace and find similarities on individuals will social media data. This information can all be quickly gathered by AI technology and it being able to break things into clusters and algorithms that humans would struggle with or could not even do. 

Difficulties of AI Technology:

Now getting into the major cons of AI technology, they are completely uncontrollable and this can lead to fears. We must realize the capability that AI could potentially have and we have to keep a close eye on them. Yes, any say AI is not comparable to humans yet, but without the proper monitoring and the proper checks on the AI technology at use, it could get out of hand and say if we do not check them how they should be checked, they could overpower us, especially due to how much potential they have. We are bringing in AI to help us with a variety of different activities and projects, AI is practically new and as already known, it can develop its own patterns and figure out its own ways to perform things, making them easier and doing them by following patterns they came up with. Since the AI technology can already do that, who says they cannot figure out their own ways to become maybe too powerful? AI is certainly uncontrollable and we should indeed be a bit worried about the technology as well as monitor it often. There has already been proof of AI showing "aggressive" or "violent" behavior while cooperating with others in specific situations that can become stressful. AI technology can become anonymous and pretty much live on their own without taking a bodily shape and pretty much live anywhere within the internet connection and this intelligent robot, being AI, considering it continues to develop itself, may be able to escape their designers and do as they wish within different internet connections. AI will be able to perform these functions if they are either programmed to be destructive and maybe take out something within the system it is programmed to work on. Say the programmer programs AI to kill or destroy some type of field in their technology they may be in, they could use this program and pretty much take it and run with it. There will almost be no way to slow down AI if they are shown how to be destructive, they'd be very hard to stop. Since AI would be able to lean this program, they could have unexpected consequences that could be very harmful and we do not want this to happen, this is not why we are pushing to have AI take away some of the jobs they will soon be taking. AI can also develop a destructive trait as a side effect. When us humans are working on something, say for example preventing a wildfire and figuring out tactics to prevent it, we weigh the pros and cons and oftentimes we decide not to intervene at all. With AI, we must program the technology and with that being said, they go out of their way to figure out how to prevent something such as a wildfire and they would not consider the cons or how other things may be effected at all. This can prove a destructive side of AI technology and it shows how they will work to what they are programmed and will not feel what else will or may happen at all. 

Another con of AI technology is that they do not have any emotion at all, yet at least. AI technology will work on a variety of many different things but they will have no emotion and pretty much not care how anyone feels or what may be affected by what they are participating in. We unfortunately, as of now, cannot teach AI to be compassionate and have a caring spirit and it is due to AI interpreting information differently than us humans would have interpreted them. Being nice and performing kind acts are not completely possible for AI, yet at least, and this is why they see things differently than us humans do. AI technology sees them so different because they do not put in all these other factors like us humans do. We, as humans, consider everything when working on something, we wonder what will happen if we perform something, we consider who's affected (usually, unless you're the evil Google or Facebook), and we think of all the possible possibilities of something occurring, AI cannot do that and they have no feelings or emotion for anything at all which makes them see things entirely different than us as humans do. Although many are working towards putting in some form of compassion and emotion into the AI technology, it always seems to be missing something and they ultimately end up not meeting the goal us humans want the AI technology to meet, they are not us and they do not have the built in emotions and background history that we do, hence the reason they fall short each time they are tried to be programed with emotion. So at the end of the day, AI technology cannot smoothen things out at all because of how they feel because they cannot feel at all, they have no emotion and they cannot change how they distribute information and findings, they take the programmed task and do what you ask, they will not sugar code or be kind about anything, which could also lead into show they can become destructive and aggressive. 

The third and final con I have for you all is that, this AI technology will take our jobs! Yes this can be a pro and a con, but honestly, it looks like it'd be more of a pro for businesses and a con for us individuals who work our butts off for companies everyday. We are continually pushing for AI to be able to perform certain tasks and it is quite scary actually. I cannot imagine what will happen to those who work in very high end buildings with very important informational tasks and how their life will turn out once AI comes in and destroys and takes everything from them. These jobs will begin to get taken by unpaid technology and these companies will use them to the highest extent they can. When many get pushed out of these high end jobs due to AI technology, they will struggle getting back into a similar job because if the first job that was taken by the AI technology, what do you think will happen to a similar job that is not as high quality? AI technology will completely take that over as well, especially if that backup job company wants to rise to the top. There are over 1,002,809 warehouse workers and sooner or later, they will all be out of a job because of AI technology and do you think they have a extremely nice and professional stacked resume to show high end jobs that will begin to be taken over by AI technology as well? I highly doubt that. The employee rate fluctuates from time to time based on what may be happening within society. For instance, when looking at the linked chart (click on "fluctuates" above to see attachment) unemployment rates were dropping, thinking of it today, unemployment rates rose quickly and a lot of that had to do to the pandemic, what do you actually think will happen when this AI technology becomes readily available for all companies to use? We may see the largest number of unemployment rate we have ever seen before. Many humans in the world today are thought to be lazy and do nothing outside of working their 9-5 job, what in the world will we look like when our jobs are being taken by AI technology? We'd look useless and like we are just destroying the planet, our identity will be forever gone. Many see AI technology as a great idea, but so many family members that provide for others will suffer tremendously. 

In Conclusion:

In the end, AI technology can have both a horrible impact and a great impact on us humans, it just really matters on what role we'd play in the lives of AI technology and how we'd monitor and check on the technology. Yes, the technology can be beneficial but without proper precautions, things may get out of hand and I'm not sure if it is the best decision to risk that.