It is no secret that artificial intelligence is quickly becoming prominent in the world today. Taking society by storm, AI is trickling into many facets of everyday life and affecting people in positive and negative ways. Controversies have risen about whether AI is being implemented too far into society or not enough. Ignoring either side, Artificial Intelligence has revolutionized industries to an extent never seen before. Technology is quickly advancing with the aid of AI but not without backlash, questioning ethics and the loss of human jobs.
A specific industry impacted by AI is the transportation industry varying from large-scale trucking services to everyday vehicles such as cars and taxis. Automated systems have been invented and implemented to handle tasks originally made for human drivers. These systems present positive effects such as efficiency, reduced costs, and cheaper services. In this automated vehicle uprisings, AI-powered vehicles have been seen to reduce commute times by up to 25%. In Moscow, AI vehicles combined with optimized traffic lights the speed of vehicles have been documented to be upped by 13%. In large populated cities such as London, automated vehicles have predicted traffic up to a 90% accuracy rate significantly improving the flow of traffic. Website ArtSmartai states “AI integration in logistics can cut fuel consumption by up to 20% by optimizing delivery routes based on real-time traffic and weather data, which also reduces carbon emissions by up to 22%.” With the advanced technology of AI, it has the potential to reduce accidents by 90% sources say.
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Of course, along with many positive impacts, AI and automotive driving have many relevant issues to consider. A significant issue isn’t directly related to AI itself, but rather the over-reliance of humans on AI systems. Artificial intelligence, although amazing, it’s engineering is not perfect and a human left relying wholly on AI could lead to them being unprepared during a given failure. An obvious issue with adapting AI to almost any industry is the loss of human jobs. If over-implemented, AI could severely thrust many people out of their jobs, especially in many large urban cities where taxis are a very sought-after service.
The Bureau Of Labor Statistics states that in a populated city such as New York, there is an approximate employment of 60,000 licensed taxi drivers. It is unreasonable as of now to say that every one of the 60,000 taxi drivers will be replaced with AI, although if even half were replaced that is the loss of 30,000 jobs in one city alone; a very important statistic to take into consideration. A more controversial problem surrounding artificial intelligence in vehicles is the question of how AI will make decisions in an impending life-or-death incident. This is a common ethical dilemma proposed to major tech companies pushing for AI. The question remains, how will the AI react in such an unpredictable scenario, does it protect the life of the driver resulting in the death of pedestrians or opposite drivers, or save the life of the pedestrians and other drivers whilst losing the life of the driver itself?
Retail and customer service industries have also turned to AI for chatbots and automated systems that provide around-the-clock assistance. Despite productivity increases and a wider array of services, the problem once again arises of displacing human workers spiking worry about job security. Johnny Durso, a Senior Manager Digital Strategist in the world-famous Hyatt Hotel chains was instructed with his team to create an AI customer support chatbot to completely replace the previous human customer support. “Me and my team were working on this new AI chatbot to increase efficiency with our customer service. It works really well but I heard a lot of workers weren’t happy with it” says Durso. According to hotelbusiness.com, Hyatt is the second most popular hotel chain in the world second to Hilton. Amassing a total brand value of $6 billion, Hyatt has solidified itself as a hotel giant. With around 1,350 hotels in 70 countries, Hyatt’s large workforce faces potential reductions as AI-driven customer service reshapes the hospitality industry, emphasizing efficiency over traditional staffing.
Potentially where AI is taking the most affect is in the youth and education. With chatbots such as ChatGPT providing instantaneous answers to virtually any question it is no surprise that ChatGPT has essentially become a household name. Many are split with the use of ChatGPT for educational purposes leading to many schools trying to ban the use of the chatbot. On the positive end, ChatGPT easily provides personalized learning for individuals by quickly adapting to input placed by the user. This is a very adequate way to stay caught up in school, especially for specific people who find it difficult to learn in school. Another positive is how accessible it is, platforms like ChatGPT can be found essentially on any electronic device and are free for the base product, this allows anyone to access the internet to get speedy answers.
A huge problem that faces many teachers of students who consistently use chatbots for answers is the students become too reliant. Students will often rely solely on AI as the basis of all information and virtually fail many assignments when AI is not accessible at the moment. This also dulls the creativity of one’s mind, being too reliant on AI for all your answers takes away the beauty of critical thinking and problem-solving. This lack of problem-solving will more likely set up individuals for failure rather than success when given access to all answers in a split second. Many critics highlight the fact that real learning is a thing of the past, they argue AI is making people forget the idea of dependence on themselves and is giving them easy access to take the easy way out. This debate over AI chatbots in education highlights their potential while stressing the need for monitoring. Teachers often urge students to focus on independent problem-solving before relying on AI, fostering critical thinking skills.
Artificial intelligence extends far beyond its relatively harmless state of simple chatbots and search engines to a rather dangerous state of impersonation. Advanced AI tools are ale to create extremely hyper-realistic images and have progressed to videos to impersonate people and events. These advancements have led to an alarming spread of false information and false narratives confusing and misleading many. These tools allow people with malicious intentions to impersonate innocent people and easily scam and steal their money and information. There have been many cases of people using AI to imitate a victim’s family member and ask for money or information. These events are very common and the world has entered into a state where cyber security has become a very important need to protect one’s money and identity. On the other hand, AI also strengthens cybersecurity defenses, offering advanced tools to detect and counter cyber threats. Many of the top cyber security companies use advanced AI systems to protect people’s information and identities. This dual nature of artificial intelligence reflects what is known as a “battle of AI” where its positive potential to impact the world is very high it is at the same time threatened by people with AI used for mischievous intent.
A surprisingly impacted area for Artificial intelligence is healthcare. AI is completely revolutionizing diagnostics in an incredible way. Diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are being detected significantly earlier than normal methods by using tools such as IBM Watson Health and DeepMind. These accurate and early catches of diseases also lead to AI being able to create productive treatment plans. Additionally, AI tools are being used to assist doctors in operations removing the chance of human error providing extremely precise results. Problems that may arise are many, implementing these AI doctor assistants costs a lot of money which therefore puts down the accessibility to healthcare establishments that may not be as wealthy as others. Not only this, but the obvious job losses would be critical in a field such as healthcare. Similarly to relying too heavily on ChatGPT, doctors and healthcare workers may begin to rely too heavily on AI and begin to lessen oversight on operations and diagnosis. Patients will also express their concerns about the privacy of their healthcare data, with AI retaining an exuberant amount of patients info, it puts the patient’s insurance, healthcare records, and various other personal information at potential risk.
Artificial intelligence has gained a hold on the development and advancements of the world, it has affected so many industries positively and negatively in its relatively short inception. Concerns and backlash will always arise but the use of AI will arise and continue as well, it has the extreme potential to boost the economy and impact the world positively but it also hurts us to the same extent. Many fear the uprising and many embrace it, but fact is fact and the revolution of technology is here and more prominent than ever. A field that contains so much more to discover and if moderated correctly and used with good intention could launch the world into a new technological paradise.
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