A Defence of AI

This post aims to address the most common concerns that are usually brought up regarding the development of artificial intelligence systems. The points that I seek to refute are: the derivative nature of AI generated content and the risk of theft, dangers of deepfakes, job loss, artificiality and soullessness of AI generated content, and being used solely for profit and the benefit of monopolistic corporations. For the sake of efficiency, I am assuming that the reader is familiar with these arguments and will not elucidate them here. In the eventuality that this is not the case, here is a link to an AI generated summary of them.

Firstly, I shall confront the notion that since all AI generated content is trained on a set of data whose creators may not have consented to it being used for that purpose, it should then be considered an imitation of their work and therefore theft from them. While it is admittedly true that all such content is to some extent derivative and entirely reliant on human input, it is also worth noting that all our own creations can scarcely be considered wholly unique. Every artist that produces something is relying upon the works they have been inspired by over the course of their life, every story that is told, every painting painted and every song written is based upon a foundation of the works of dozens if not hundreds of other individuals. Is this also theft? As I see it AI isn't doing anything too different.

With regards to the dangers posed by the threat of deepfakes to our society, I concede that we need to develop methods to protect our society from bad actors that may seek to misuse this technology. However, seeing just the negative consequences of these tools is somewhat short-sighted. There exists a myriad of benefits and positive contributions that tools such as AI voice generation can make. For instance: AI generated voices can allow those who have lost their voice due to age, disease or some other factor, to potentially regain it by training algorithms on old recordings.

To address the issue of jobs, it is indeed true that there will be those that lose their jobs as a consequence of AI, however that has always been the case with the advancement of technology. Should we have not invented cars for the sake of carriage drivers? Should we have not industrialized for the sake of the handloom weavers and the dozens of others that were trampled over as a consequence of progress? New jobs of greater sophistication, skill and pay will open up to replace those that were lost, probably not enough to accommodate for every single job lost but more than enough to prevent a societal collapse as some doomsayers insist. There will be those who will be forced to change careers and while that is unfortunate we cannot allow that stop the advancement of the human civilization.

As things stand it is not invalid to state that AI generated content can be lacking in quality and often requires a human touch to make it suitable for use. However, it is highly premature to look at the primitive rendition of AI that we currently have access to and declare that it will always remain so. Great strides have been made within the last few years alone. The AI we will have in a few decades is extremely unlikely to resemble what we have today. Consequently, there is no reason to assume that we will be left in a 'less colourful, less creative world', as some have put it.

The argument that AI would be used exclusively for the benefit of the hyper rich and the mega-corporations is one that I encounter frequently and consequently requires a detailed rebuttal. Doubtless, most development of AI will inevitably be motivated by profits, that is simply the nature of our civilization in the twenty-first century. However, every innovation that has been produced for the past decades has also been in the same environment. Even the invention that may have been the most paradigm changing in all of our history, the internet, was made under these conditions. Its importance is hard to overstate and it would not be an exaggeration in the slightest to state that it revolutionized our entire civilization. I would like to draw attention to the fact that it also faced significant opposition and challenges during its inception, with many of the talking points against it being very similar to those being used against AI now. Namely, the influence of greed and megacorporations, the threat to society, making other methods obsolete etc. In retrospect, I can confidently state that it has been a massive net positive for all humankind. I would argue that a century from now, the same will hold true for AI.

The invention of the wheel, industrialization, electricity, the internet, etc; all such technologies have greatly benefitted humanity, why should this one be the exception that brings about a dystopian future? Furthermore, I believe such an outlook completely ignores the countless benefits of AI that have the potential to transform every aspect of our society. The elimination of many menial and repetitive tasks, advancements in research and development, automation exponentially increasing production and consequently supply, improvements to every industry across the board et cetera.  To provide a somewhat trivial example for the purposes of understanding how this tech could affect even minor things such as hobbies: conversations in videogames could be completely changed by AI in the future. Imagine actually taking to characters with your own words/voice, and having them react and respond based exactly on what you say using LLM and AI voice generation. 

As I have said before, the potential is infinite and single-mindedly focusing on the downsides is a rather narrow minded perspective to hold.

In conclusion, AI is the future and I firmly believe that it has the potential to bring about one of the greatest technological and societal revolutions in human history, on par with the industrial revolution, the advent of the internet, and the foundation of the first cities in the fertile crescent. Are there risks and pitfalls? Yes. Is the 'singularity' still a long time away? Also yes. But the benefits outweigh the cons in my not particularly humble opinion.