After a flood of movies and series about a potential “robot takeover,” one would think that the general public would be less susceptible to the gradual interjection of artificial intelligence.
I can’t help but notice the widespread normalisation of artificial intelligence. It is extremely tactful and gradual, and is taking place before our very eyes. When AI was first introduced on a global scale, it began with platforms such as ChatGPT, which served as a sort of engine and seemed mostly harmless. However, now search engines like Google and Bing have adopted AI into their platforms, and it seems you cannot search up anything without generating a response from artificial intelligence. This means that instead of reading full articles, people are relying on AI-generated summaries, leading to a decline in reading habits and, ultimately, the erosion of writers’ craft. Social media platforms like Snapchat have adopted AI as a part of their app; I have even found that Tripadvisor has begun using AI to summarise people’s reviews.
At its core, the reason underpinning all of these adaptations is supposedly to make our lives easier. Instead of sifting through websites and articles, you have AI embedded within the search engine that will extract the specific information for you, requiring you to read less. Instead of reading through people’s individual reviews and feelings, you have artificial intelligence that will sum up hundreds of reviews into mere sentences. However, I feel this emphasis on convenience is really just rebranded laziness that ultimately does not benefit the general intelligence of society. In a society where our attention spans are already dimming by the day, to have tools like this at our disposal threatens the beauty of academia as a whole. Platforms like ChatGPT have become commonplace for students to help them write their entire assignments. People are using AI to draft normal messages, write anything remotely formal, or navigate difficult conversations. When communication is already at an all-time low due to social media and phone use, this will break things down even further. This will ultimately cause a lack of general intelligence and basic communication skills that people already struggle with.
In a generation where misinformation and sensationalised media propaganda are at an all-time high, tools like this are a threat to news and factual history. At the click of a button, artificial intelligence can generate an image of whatever you want to see. This has sparked many trending TikTok challenges, with people using the tool to see pictures of themselves in different settings—perhaps pictures of their future children or to generate a professional profile picture for LinkedIn. However, the problem arises when these tools are used for political propaganda. History has taught us that propaganda and media representation are crucial within politics. With artificial intelligence constantly evolving and becoming more difficult to decipher, there is a genuine fear about the ability to sway voters with fake images and news using artificial intelligence. We saw this in the recent 2024 American election, whereby political candidate Donald Trump himself was seen reposting artificially altered images that supported his campaign. Furthermore, media and images are not only how we report current news but also how we maintain history. The historical integrity of media is threatened by the existence of AI. If we are struggling to decipher what is real from what is false in our current age, imagine how difficult it may become in future years when our future generations are trying to learn about our history.
Furthermore, the power to alter an image to one’s own desire is a pitfall. As quickly as AI began to gain more traction and popularity online, we saw multiple reports of AI pornography being made of women who were not remotely related to the sex work industry at all. Female public figures like streamer QTCinderella and rapper Megan the Stallian were both reduced to tears when inappropriate content of them surfaced online that, despite being completely artificial, were scarily realistic. This has since been a running trend for celebrities, most being women.
In conclusion, these fears may seem far-fetched, but a few years ago, if you had told me we students would be relying on artificial intelligence to complete basic daily activities, I would have called that far-fetched too.