Once upon a time, artificial intelligence was largely considered to be a fairy tale. Movies, comic books, and other pop-culture fixtures treated AI like a far-off wonder that would only materialize in the distant future. These days, however, it’s become obvious that AI isn’t some magical innovation of the future but a present reality that’s already changing lives. Some of these changes are truly fantastic, yet others carry with them grim dangers that could threaten our very way of life.

Here’s a review of the pros and cons of AI, why it’s so important we keep weighing them as time goes on, and how this marvelous innovation has already reshaped the contemporary world.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

When it comes to talking about AI, we can largely divide our conversation into three distinct sections: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Beginning with the good, we can see that there are many ways that AI has already helped improve society, in some cases by literally saving lives. Medical professionals, for instance, can attest to the fact that AI programs are making it easier to treat patients with debilitating diseases and other conditions which were once difficult to respond to in a meaningful way.

AI and robotics have come together to usher in a new era of healthcare, according to a recent report from pwc. AI and the medical Internet of Things have produced wearable devices that allow everyday people to monitor their personal health like never before. Whether it’s a simple smartwatch that keeps track of your heartbeat or sleep schedule or a predictive algorithm that determines whether you’re likely to succumb to an inherited illness in the far-off future, we can see that AI has already helped medical professionals in their quest to improve human livelihood.

AI is putting an end to spam

Outside of the healthcare industry, AI has also been put to use to mitigate spam, hate speech, and other harmful content. Social media platforms wouldn’t be sustainable at all if it wasn’t for such helpful innovations. Legal professionals like Cohen Schneider Law PC could use predictive algorithms to help mitigate crime or wrongful convictions in the future. Unfortunately, the bad side effects of AI can mitigate the wondrous good delivered by certain AI innovators.

The bias of programmers can bleed into AI operations, for instance, which could exacerbate discrimimation and inequality in certain realms of life. Emily Ketchen of America’s marketing department at HP has penned a fantastic post exploring the dangerous implications of embracing AI in the modern marketing industry, for instance.

Finally, there’s the ugly side of AI, which consist of dire warnings from leading tech gurus who note that the continued development of intelligent machines could seriously come back to haunt the human race in the not-too-distant future.

Tech experts are warning us of AI-induced dangers

Famous tech experts like Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla have already been sounding the alarm bell over AI for years. Few of these tech gurus argue that AI should be outlawed together – that would virtually be impossible – but they do stress that it must be closely regulated. While it’s unlikely we’re going to be replicating the events of popular sci fi fixtures like “The Terminator” anytime soon, AI could exacerbate bias, lock humans out of important decision-making processes, and lead to technologies that hurt people in their everyday lives.

Facial-recognition technology that’s empowered by AI is a good example of how this technology can go rogue. The recent murder of George Floyd led Amazon to temporarily ban the police use of facial recognition technology, for instance, because the company fears that the software powering this tech could be racially biased. As we can clearly see, there are many good uses of AI, but the bad and even ugly abuses that could be forwarded by the continued development of this technology should have all of us on our guard as we move forward.

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Source: https://datafloq.com/read/weighing-the-pros-and-cons-of-ai/8533