While AI has undoubtedly benefited mankind in many fields, it also comes with certain concerns, not the least of which is that, in my humble opinion, it’s been foisted upon us when far from perfected.
I’ve said previously that AI is far from a finished product and has been mass deployed prematurely, as proven by numerous instances of incorrect and sometimes downright bizarre responses.
Indeed, if you open the Copilot app, you’ll see the following warning included at the bottom of the window:
It seems to me that if a company feels the need to include a disclaimer, potentially absolving the company of any harm caused by its product, that product is probably not fit for mass distribution in the first place.
Here then are my thoughts on the dark side of AI.
Lack Of Regulation
Currently, regulation of AI is practically non-existent. The danger here is that the major companies involved with AI development do not care about whatever faults might lie within their products; they are only interested in getting the technology out there as soon as possible so they can begin recouping their massive outlay.
Governments therefore have an obligation to make sure these AI products are 100% fit for human consumption, which I assert they currently are not.
Jobs At Risk
While AI advocates are keen to point out that the emergence of AI technology will see the creation of many new jobs, I am of the opinion that AI will almost certainly cost more jobs than it will create.
According to my research, the jobs most at risk include:
roles focused on writing, translation, customer service, sales communication, research, data processing, and information retrieval, such as interpreters, translators, writers, customer service representatives, sales representatives, technical writers, editors, journalists, and market research analysts.
Indeed, there are now websites set up to help workers ascertain if their jobs are at risk from AI. One of the questions I came across on one of those sites asks the following:
“Are you prepared to defend your role against an HR algorithm that might decide your career’s future without a human in the room?”
Definitely food for thought!
Resource Hungry Datacentres
In my experience, all governments tend to be reactive rather than proactive. That is, they fail to plan ahead even for clearly predictable situations. Instead, they’ll wait until the obvious consequences of their decisions reach crisis point and then try to fix the problem… usually by throwing money at it.
I can see that happening with the proliferation of AI datacentres. AI datacentres consume massive amounts of energy, as much as a small city. Here in Australia, the power grid is already struggling to meet demand, especially during the summer months with millions of air-conditioners chugging away.
Our government has already approved 48 existing datacentres with more on the way, and it’s only a matter of time before the grid becomes overloaded. Did the government expand the power grid in preparation for the additional demand created by these datacentres… no, zero expansion and nothing in the pipeline.
So, while AI definitely has its benefits, it’s not all chocolates and roses.
As always, your thoughts via the comments are most welcome.
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Hi Jim. I believe that in Australia, those data centers should supply their own power (using wind turbines) and not overload the grid.
Here in Quebec, we have plenty of Hydro power, but mother nature still calls the play.
I question the need for more new centers. Just who are they serving? And AI is still in the learning stage, Mindblower!
Rather than wind, the data centres should be covered in solar panels and the whole centre should be restricted to how much power it can generate off those panels.
That should be the limit to their size and output.
Some wanna be pollies are pushing for nuclear power and it will get to that if all these data centres go in.
There will be no choice in the matter. There really isn’t an alternative that will produce the volume of power required.
But more than power is the horrendous amount of water they consume. On one of the driest countries the last thing we need are data centres producing crap we don’t need at such scale that our farms will suffer and towns will run short of water far more regularly than already happens.
As our population increases exponentially, our need for water and power increases with it.
But nothing concrete in the pipeline so far too deal with that.
And now we have these data centres scraping the barrel and demanding first use. It’s not even second hand water. They want pristine first use.
They are far too greedy.