AI Ethics – finding the balance
I think AI ethics and ethical use of AI are absolutely critical as part of the overall AI landscape. This article from the BBC focusses on the music industry and the concern that musicians have about protecting their creativity and livelihoods alongside the dilution of good and original content in the ‘AI age’. They have produced a silent album in protest – view the article here.
While musicians use digital platforms already to create and enhance their music such as DAWs and Synths etc there is still creativity and originality and unique gifting, skills and experience involved. AI pulls from that original gifting and skill to create something based on it, but different. The AI issue is equally important in the video and graphic industries too for the same reason.
(Photo by Aranxa Esteve on Unsplash)
However, it isn’t just the creative industries that can be affected. AI automation is already in use and taking jobs and, over time, although potentially cost saving and time efficient, AI could replace a lot of jobs that would previously have been done by humans.
Shops that can intelligently scan your baskets and products, and with identity recognition, auto pay for your shopping as you walk out of the shop, without the need for human interaction Information hubs without a real human interface, automated project management, AI in the recruitment process to filter and assess candidates automatically, AI generated video content and virtual reality teaching.
We may be a little way off, but the landscape feels like it is developing faster than the ethics surrounding it. Let’s not forget that AI can also be used to create plausible false information and images and generally bad things or things that can be a bad influence.
Into the future, although admittedly (and hopefully) a very long way off for now, the possible combination of quantum computers and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI – that is, AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities) if it becomes viable will completely change virtually every area of life and not necessarily for the better. But that’s a subject for another time.
