Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, is becoming a bigger part of our daily lives, especially for the newer generation. AI is everywhere these days, from assistants that answer our questions, to apps that can recommend music and videos. AI has taken over many things that’s most people would normally do independently. For example, AI has been used to complete school assignments, even some teachers use it to do grading. AI was originally designed to make life and everyday tasks easier and more efficient. However, though it can be useful, it also has many negative aspects that should not be overlooked. AI is a growing part of our communities, and it will only get more self reliant which is why it’s important to know how AI can impact us negatively instead of just focusing on the positives.
One major problem with AI is that it can take humans jobs. There are lots of companies which are now using AI to complete tasks used to belong to humans, such as customer service. Before there was an abundance of AI, humans would normally answer the phone for a company, instead of computer automated responses. Another example is manufacturing. Jobs that used to be completed by humans are now being done by machines because it is believed that a computer can complete these jobs quicker and more efficiently than humans. This can lead to workers losing their job along with their steady income. This also makes finding jobs harder. New members joining the workforce may be hit with AI taking some of the jobs that they may apply for. For people who depend on these jobs, financial problems might increase.
AI can also make people too dependent on technology. With AI being such a big part of our everyday lives, many people may be attached to AI, making it do everything instead of completing things by themselves. School work is a good example of how AI can be mistreated. Many students around the world have started to use Generative AI to complete their assignments. Although Generative AI has helped many students learn and study by using different tools, it also can be wildly mistreated, perhaps even causing students to be dependant on it to complete their tasks for them instead of doing it themselves. This is especially common among writing assignments. Our community is being negatively affected by this dependency as students aren’t using their own knowledge that they learn in school as much. Using AI like this could lead to students not having the practice of using these skills themselves, so they will be unable to apply them in the future. This leads to a decrease of cognitive skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving. If students keep using AI to complete all of their work, they won’t ever learn how to use these skills in the future which could be valuable to them.
AI can now generate very realistic images, videos with sound, and written documents, which can look real but are entirely made from AI. This makes it easier to spread false news, hurt people reputations, and effect public opinion. On social media especially, things spread quickly. Fake videos can show people saying things or doing things that they have never actually said or done. Because of the confusion between real and fake news, people start to not believe reliable news sources because they are not sure what to believe. Many people may ignore real issues because they may believe that it’s not true. As AI continues to grow it becomes much harder to detect real from fake, causing incredible amounts of misinformation spread all of the time. This makes it quite important to teach people how to fact check and be wary of singular sources.
In conclusion, while artificial intelligence offers many benefit to us. It also has many negative impacts that can not be overlooked. From machines and AI taking humans’ jobs, to humans becoming too reliant on technology. AI has a number of reasons why it can negatively affect our communities and these are just a few of them. Artificial intelligence should be used carefully because it is predicted to get smarter. It’s very important that more people are aware and understand that while AI has many benefits to people, they should also proceed with caution and educated themselves to prepare for technology in the future.
