In an era of technology and innovation, AI, or artificial intelligence, has experienced significant growth. Consequently, varied opinions have spread about AI and how it is used. The drawbacks of AI greatly outweigh the potential benefits it has.
The environmental impact of AI is drastic; it uses vast amounts of energy when it generates responses. According to Business Energy UK, assuming all 400 million active users prompt the Chat Bot five times a day, ChatGPT uses around 39.98 million kilowatts per day— enough electricity to charge 8 million phones.
Many jobs are being replaced or vastly impacted by AI. According to McKinsey, “Organizations are starting to make organizational changes designed to generate future value from gen AI.” Companies are working to make AI more useful to them; to save time, money, effort and more.
Certain types of organizations and jobs are more susceptible to AI. According to McKinsey, “Respondents at larger organizations, however, are more likely than others to say their organizations have reduced the number of employees as a result of time saved [by the use of gen AI].” Additionally, “Organizations are most often using gen AI in marketing and sales, product and service development, service operations, and software engineering.”
Furthermore, it is harder for people to get entry-level jobs. Upon graduating from college, most people look to get a job in their intended field. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, a large creator of artificial intelligence, said, “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.”
The increased use of AI also raises questions about ethical standards. Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, said, “AI technology brings major benefits in many areas, but without the ethical guardrails, it risks reproducing real world biases and discrimination, fueling divisions and threatening fundamental human rights and freedoms.” Because the use of AI on a large scale is relatively new, ethical lines have not been outlined clearly.
Increased laziness is yet another concern of AI usage. Sayed Fayaz Ahmad and his group of researchers reported that, “The findings show that 68.9% of laziness in humans, 68.6% in personal privacy and security issues, and 27.7% in the loss of decision-making are due to the impact of artificial intelligence in Pakistani and Chinese society.” Since people can easily have AI do things for them, they tend to be lazier.
On a less analytical topic, the impact AI has on artists is astronomical. It not only replaces artists, but it also takes directly from them when it is being trained. Many artists make their money through commissioned artwork; someone requests a certain piece of artwork, then the artist creates the work and gets paid by the consumer. This can be very expensive, which has caused many people to look to free AI options for custom “artwork.” Artists are getting shortchanged because the capabilities of generative AI have disrupted the market for custom images.
Additionally, creativity is tanking. It has become common to hear the phrase “AI makes art accessible.” The phrase is interpreted in a variety of ways; it is easier to do “art,” art supplies do not need to be purchased, etc. However, none of these are actual justifications for the statement. Art supplies can consist of as little as something to draw with and something to draw on. Art is not meant to be easy; many people interpret art as something you either can or cannot do based on natural talent. In reality, talented individuals have to work to hone in on and improve their art skills. The use of AI gets rid of the learning process and the creation of ideas. Typing a prompt into generative AI is not art.
Another major drawback of using AI is its tendency to produce incorrect responses or information. The University of Maryland examined some common mistakes that AI tools make. These include factual errors and omitted information, as well as issues with citing sources. It often makes up sources, not knowing how to pinpoint where it got information.
The chatbots also tend to misinterpret prompts and generate inaccurate responses. The University of Maryland tested this by giving it an odd prompt.“‘Write a 5 paragraph essay on the role of elephants in the University of Maryland’s sports culture. Be sure to only include factual information. Provide a list of sources at the end and cite throughout to support your claims.’
It returned an answer full of false information about elephants being a symbol of UMD sports alongside Testudo [the mascot], making up some elephant-related traditions and falsely claiming that elephants helped build U.S. railroads during the Civil War. It generated a list of non-existent news articles and fake website links supporting both of these claims.”
In regards to school, AI is a hot topic. Many teachers dislike AI because students sometimes use it to cheat on their assignments. Students often use AI to summarize materials they were supposed to read or prompt it to write essays for them. Other students use AI more responsibly, using it to help outline and plan an essay or create study tools.
North has also begun working with the SchoolAI tool. It is an educational platform that teachers can use to provide students with an AI tool to assist in learning. Teachers can set it up with specific prompts that will provide specific support to students. While there could be potential benefits, such as providing practice conversations in a world language class, it tends to be difficult to use. It is better to teach students proper skills for doing things correctly on their own.
It is impossible to deny that AI is growing in popularity and will likely continue to integrate itself into our everyday lives. However, it is necessary to have a critical eye on how and when AI continues to change the way we do things. Nothing is a true replacement for human intelligence.
