Now the cons

Previously I wrote about the pros – the benefits that AI can help us from a work perspective and when used in the right was those benefits can help in many ways, from productivity to cost savings.

On the flip side there are always some not-so-great things about advancements in technology. Let’s jump into that discussion!

1. AI will reduce the work force

AI-powered services will affect the work force, especially in the creative, content and development roles.

Imagine having a requirement to develop an app or small piece of code that can be described to an AI service and in a matter of seconds you have the code and relevant explanation of using the code, whereas asking a developer for the same thing might require more explanation, the engineer will then take several hours to create, then testing before handing back for further testing. Doing this with AI is exponentially quicker, as long as the requestor has the skills and ability to be specific in what the code should do.

In the creative arena, AI can already create images and videos, these abilities are only going to get better, this is going to have an affect on designers, AI will eventually be good enough to use specific designer styles to produce any kind of creative, whether it be logos, websites, images or videos.

Content, well the most common use now is web content, creating content for pages or blog posts for companies pushing their brand or services through to monetized websites pumping out content chasing SEO and ad clicks. Back when Google first started and SEO was the wild west of getting clicks and links, using AI now is giving content creators a pump action shotgun of content creation.

Then will come creative writing, the novelists, the poets and song writers, creating a Stephen King style novel without Stephen King – will anyone know the difference? For now yes most probably, eventually it will be almost impossible

All of these things that previously had teams of people to do with college degrees and years of experience or brilliant creative minds can now be replaced with AI. It’s a very scary and real situation we are finding ourselves in.

2. Power Consumption

AI involves several things for it to be efficient, it requires access to vast amounts of data for consumption for it’s training. Then are the outputs, the answers and images or videos that are been requested by the multitude of people using these services.

All of these require a lot of electricity, there is a lot of computational work going on for AI to train and work. The power consumption requirements are only going to increase as AI learns more and provides more services.

There are a lot of countries in the world that have old or outdated power creation and distributions networks. AI will put pressure on electricity creation and distribution in the coming future, if nothing is done to support this we could face unexpected outages and power distribution issues. The private sector and governments will need to continually invest in power and distribution to offset the drain and pressure on power services.

3. Education and Dependance

From a business productivity perspective AI can be very useful is saving time and increasing output, whether it’s helping write emails, website content or code. Where problems occur is when students are using it rather than learning or using their own skills. Having AI do everything for you from a young age isn’t going to have results. Just like the internet opened up a world of information adding in the ability to search for anything with the likes of Google or Yahoo, gave us a wealth of information. Using AI takes away the necessity to do anything other than prompt AI to do it for you. Chat GPT is common amongst students, so common that teachers are prompting Chat GPT with examples and asking if it wrote it. Students using AI is a slippery slope to create a world of dependence on it because we will lose an educated population that won’t be able to do anything other than prompt AI for information and answers.

4. Privacy

While AI has access to vast amounts of information and is getting even more, the latest version of Chat GPT can now access websites in real time. As training AI involves consuming data, getting access to as much information as possible is imperative to the kind of services that it provides. The more information AI has access to the less privacy we have. AI can inadvertently share information that is considered private through lack of security measures.

5. Security

As one of the benefits of AI is automation or productivity, it could also be used for unethical or automated hacking or malware creation. AI is going to have to be taught right from wrong, but that comes from the trainings it’s given, so in the wrong hands AI taught to do things considered wrong it might not know, at least until it becomes intelligent enough to understand the difference.

6. Accountability

As AI makes decisions that are automatically acted on or acted on by the people using the AI services, the accountability becomes blurred, if AI makes a decision who is ultimately responsible, AI or the AI trainers. If it was a legal matter, could AI be prosecuted?

Conclusion

Maybe in a not too distant future there would be new laws protecting the brilliance of human creativity where there is a move away from having AI do everything, however as of now everyone is guessing on the possible futures. One thing is for certain is that AI is going to change our lives.

One of the best meme’s I’ve seen recently is AI is giving us the ability to concentrate on the tasks we don’t want to do such as house work and cleaning, why can’t AI do that while we work on the stuff we like…

Disclaimer this article has been 100% written by a human, you can tell, it’s not perfect, the writing and idea flow isn’t brilliant. Humans – perfectly imperfect.

About the Author Justin Ferguson


Justin is an experienced solution consultant with over 34 years experience providing IT and software solutions. Focusing on listening to customers needs and pain points to be able to provide cost affective solutions, training and support. Disclaimer - this bio has been written and typed by a human :-)