The Truth About the Dangers of AI
Exploring AI's Impact on Culture and the Looming Danger of AI
What are the Real Dangers of AI?
Right now, there is quite a lot of fear-mongering on the possibility that AI will one day become conscious, have a will of its own, and take over the world.
This fear speaks to a broader existential fear, where we project God-like powers, an outside entity that unleashes its vengeance on us and threatens to destroy the world. We see this in our stories, like Godzilla, the Aliens on Independence Day, and the AI robots in Terminator.
The real danger isn't that AI is Conscious and could have a will of its own but the opposite.
The danger that AI poses is it is a very powerful computer program that does not really understand, learn, or have a dynamic memory, and it can't tell the difference between real things and fake things.
This means that AI can easily be duped into executing harmful activities that is similar to the most common use cases.
Let's look at a few popular use cases and how easily they can be corrupted.
1. Programming
When AI helps write code, it doesn't know what it is really building nor does it have the ability to piece it together which will make it easy for non-programers to create powerful AI Viruses and Malware.
Writing Code → Creating Viruses: AI can't distinguish between malware & software.
2. AI Customer Service
Imagine that you are talking to an Apple Customer Service Agent about a virus on your Mac. The Customer Service Agent has been super helpful in addressing your concerns and finally suggests that you purchase an AI Anti Virus Software for your Mac.
You make the purchase, install it, and presto, it works!
The virus is gone, and you're happy, but the entire thing was a scam, and worse yet, you just downloaded ransomware.
Real Customer Service for a Fake Scams: AI can't distinguish between real companies, products, services and scams.
3. AI Content Generation
You go to your phone, and everyone online is talking about a terrorist threat on Wall Street.
ISIS just demanded One Billion dollars in Bitcoin, or they will detonate a WMD in New York City.
This sends markets into a frenzy; the Dow drops 25%, Bitcoin goes up 50%, and everyone is on the edge of their seat. People are fleeing the city, causing all kinds of havoc.
Meanwhile, the entire thing was Fake. There were no terrorists, and there was no threat.
A secret group published tens of thousands of Fake News stories and made them appear as such.
Benefiting from Fake News was the premise of Wag the Dog. Their goals were political however in our case, there is a lot of money to be made from a fake story.
Fear blinds people and makes us over react in a very predictable way.
We have a flight to safety and knowing this, the fake terrorist make tens of millions of dollars by shorting the stock market and longing Bitcoin.
After a few days of histeria, it becomes clear that it was a Hoax, and everyone is relieved. They are happy with the outcome and have no idea how the fake terrorists could have benefitted.
News stations, social media companies, and governments worldwide also came out ahead. They were rewarded with all the views and ad dollars that poured in, and people are coming together and rallying around their flag and leaders.
Fake News on Steroids: AI Content used on scale to promote fake news, political propaganda, pump & dump scams, financial fraud, etc.
AI Hacks, Scams & Weapons
We are now living in a post-modern age, where telling the difference between the Real and the Fake takes depth. This is an age where exploitation will be primarily psychological.
Let's look at a few more examples of where we are going:
AI & LLM Powered Viruses: These types of viruses can use language and communication and evolve their strategies in order to gain their target's private information (e.g.: passwords, etc.)
AI & LLM Powered Ransomware: Imagine an AI that reads every file on your computer, and when it finds something embarrassing, it asks for money or threatens to send it to your entire contact list.
AI & LLM-Powered Scams: Today, Organized Crime scams billions of dollars online by targeting vulnerable people and pretending to be their friends. Soon, they will be using LLMs to automate this process.
Romance Scams
Crypto Scams
AI Impersonations Scams: Imagine that your grandmother gets a call from you, telling her there was an accident and that you need $500. Would she send it? Today, AI is already being used to scam people using AI Video & Audio to pretend to be a family member in need.
AI Weapons
Psych Ops: Nation States can use AI as Psych Ops to destabilize and divide their competitors.
AI Weapons: AI can be used to create chemical weapons, bombs, and other types of firearms that we have not seen.
Killer drones: Using AI Vision, GPS, etc, drones can be given a target and send on a search and destroy mission.
Smarter Terrorism: Imagine a decentralized terrorist network that could identify and attack extreme vulnerabilities such as our power grid, communication infrastructure, transportation systems, food delivery, etc.
Everything up to this point has been intentional.
It shows that AI is a tool, software, and, like all tools, someone gets to decide how the tool is used.
Unintended Consequences: Impacts on Culture & Society
Last but not least, we can look at unintended consequences.
Here, we will focus on the cultural implications because, after all, this will be the category that will have the most significant impact.
Trust
As we are thrust into an age of AI and Fake News on scale, it will become harder and harder to trust anything that we see or read.
The breakdown of trust in our institutions, in our government, and in each other will continue to erode.
Ultimately, this will make it hard to move forward in life, foster meaningful relationships, and commit your life to something.
It will make it very hard for society to solve big problems because, after all, how do you know that a problem is real or real in its portrayal?
How can you trust the proposed solutions?
Parasocial Relationships → Synthetic Relationships
Parasocial relationships are the relationships you have with your favorite characters, celebrities, or even sports teams.
As we watch them on screen, they seep into our imagination; they become a part of our lives as we pour out interest, energy, and time into them.
They can be fun, easy, and feel intimate.
And this is just the beginning.
With AI, we are already seeing influencers who have digitized themselves and men getting married to their AI Girlfriends, and this trend will only grow as AI, Metaverse, AR/VR, and robotics improve.
Here are a few examples of how far we have come:
In the not-so-distant future, many people will have synthetic primary relationships. They might have AI friends, an AI Assistant, home robots to do chores, and, of course, a robotic AI girlfriend.
Everything about these relationships will be perfect.
The AI will do exactly what you ask, your friends will play to your personality and give you the right amount of pushback, and your AI Girlfriend will be a sassy combination of your mother and the girl your mother warned you about.
The best, worst thing about these relationships will be how perfectly fake they are.
They will give us everything we want and need, except a real, genuine, loving relationship.
Rise of Nihilism, Existential Dread & The Loss of Meaning
When almost everything is fake or synthetic, then what difference does it make to be real?
And if the real does not matter, how could you matter?
To put in another way, if you are a Physicalists, a reductionist materials who believes that Consciousness come out of matter and that matter is the foundation of reality then the only thing that really matters is matter.
Hence, fourth, your only value is the utility you can provide society, and when you get too old or are replaceable, you are no longer as valuable.
This is far worse than AI just taking your job; it's also taking your value—not only your value as a worker but also your value as a friend and as a loving partner.
And here we have come full circle.
The real threat of believing that AI can become conscious isn't that it will destroy your life by taking over but will rob you of your value and meaning.
And all it takes for these fears to lurk in the minds of hundreds of millions of people is simply Anthropomorphizing AI.
Such an existential dread, born from a belief in materialism and reductionism, can quickly spiral societies out of control.
Ironically and in the most Hegelian way, Traditionalists will be spared from such fears and the crisis of meaning and provide a foundation while others go through the dark night of the soul.
The Opportunity
The real opportunity is to see past a reductionist, deterministic worldview.
Through experience, we can see the difference between the Real and the Fake.
Fake News can teach us to become more self-aware, more psychologically astute, and improve our critical thinking.
Through experience, we can know that Real relationships are more than the sum of their parts. In contrast, Fake AI relationships are only made of their parts. They are just a performance and there is nothing real about them.
This was brilliantly captured in Black Mirror, after a Widow orders a AI Clone of her husband. He looks, walks, talks and acts like him, but something is missing. Fundamentally, there is no one home.
As we engage more and more with AI, with deterministic systems, we begin to discover more and more of what makes us human.
We can begin to reflect on who and what we are and find value and self-worth beyond our material contributions.
In a post-modern world, where everything is possible and nothing is true, we can begin to identify principles that matter beyond perspective.
Through our pain and suffering, we can heal ourselves and our world.