The Dangers of AI and How It Encroaches Upon Our Human World

By John R. Adkins

The apocalypse starts here. Not with nuclear missiles or a deadly virus, but with the slow burn of a societal shift. Since Pandora’s box has opened, workers and students around the globe have adopted the use of AI technology.
Anyone who’s set foot inside a college campus within the last couple of years could agree, AI chatbots are now ubiquitous in modern education. Professors no longer question whether their students use AI, they expect it. While humans need to adapt to the exponential growth of computer processing, it is worth a step back to realize just how quickly the technology has been accepted into the fold of daily life.

With such rapid acceptance, we risk full societal integration of a foreign entity without any safety measures in place. And like a drug released onto American shelves without FDA approval – this could be dangerous.
It’s too early to tell what this culture of burgeoning AI tech allows for, but our greatest fears have nothing to do with losing our jobs.
At first glance, chatbots (like ChatGpt) may seem like over-glorified search engines, simply constructing responses from a pool of search results on the web. But with how quickly this technology has begun to evolve, we’re likely only a couple of years away from something far more alien. Already programs can mimic other people’s voices and create the mirage of a celebrity interview. How discernable from reality will this content be a year from now? Five years from now?
Assuming these technologies continue to progress, the ability to generate any imaginable scenario in lifelike quality with the click of a button may be just around the corner. And you thought there were trust issues in the virtual world now? If we don’t prepare for this eventuality we could completely lose track of any sense of truth amidst the chaos of an imploding virtual realm.
Individuals who are skilled at utilizing AI software could be hired to farm fake internet personas. Or perhaps there will be programs dedicated to creating personalities that align with certain political ideologies. Either way, this abundance of false talking heads dilutes truth, therefore diluting reality itself.
Instagram user “LilMiquela,” a self-proclaimed robot influencer, has its social media account verified and sitting at 2.6 million followers. This proves that even if a social media influencer is blatantly fictional, people will still “like” and “follow.”

I feel sorry for the kids in school today who fantasize about becoming an influencer. No sooner than it appeared on the scene as a viable career path is it already slipping through their fingers, hence the transience of our rapidly evolving virtual world.
The faster things accelerate, the stranger the internet becomes, and the stranger it becomes, the more we can’t help but watch. And when the algorithms show us content based on what we’ve already watched, we end up with a dangerous perpetuation of low-standard incendiary ideas.
Without regulation, the public becomes helpless bystanders, unable to keep up with the torrent of change brought on by imaginary people and viewpoints with no basis in the physical world. Soon the lines between what’s real and what’s not will completely dissolve.
People will look back on the golden years of social media when it was still young and innocent and try to remember what it felt like when we were all creators sharing content within small circles of friends. However, if we talk about this now, we may stand a chance at preservation. That is before the internet becomes completely overgrown and we’re forever lost in the weeds.
Humans once put a hold on our colonization of nature and preserved what was left of it within zoos and national parks. Perhaps we should now consider preserving our own human space on the internet before it too is colonized by the machines. Artificially Intelligent systems are a force of nature that we have ushered into this world, and how it develops is something our species is now collectively responsible for. Like any good parent, our goal should be to instill good practice before it’s too late.