Topic: Discuss the following statement: “AI is a threat to humanity.

Final Submission

According to John McCarthy, "AI is the science and engineering of making intelligent
machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of
using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself
to methods that are biologically observable." Stephen Hawking once asserted “The
development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Over
the past few decades, the development of artificial intelligence has revolutionized
computer science and the workplace. As the field expands, people start to question
whether or not humanity can be put at risk by artificial intelligence. The following essay
will discuss both positive and negative impacts of AI on existential humanity.

On the one hand, Artificial Intelligence possesses a myriad of outstanding merits that
immensely improve people’s living standards. With its sophisticated algorithms and
practical applications, AI has rendered assistance to humans in presumably two most
significant aspects of life: healthcare and education. In terms of healthcare, AI is
regarded as a boon to medical practitioners thanks to its capabilities to “design and
develop new drugs, monitor patients and personalize patient treatment plans” (Secinaro,
et al., 2021, p. 17). As an illustration, AI is currently being employed in monitoring
people testing positive for Covid-19, estimating the probability of the patients’ survival
and drafting the treatment plan for patients diagnosed with the pathogen (Arora et al.,
2020, p. 719). The next aspect that AI has a major role to play is in education. Regarding
AI's contribution to education, Karandish (2021) suggests that AI-powered technologies
enable learners to gain unrestricted access to education and conduct self-paced learning.
Plus, he believes that the utilization of AI also benefits educators by reducing the time
needed for mundane teaching tasks such as “administrative work, grading papers,
assessing learning patterns” (Karandish, 2021). Striving its best to enhance the healthcare
system and education sector, AI is assuredly an indispensable and helpful assistant in
human’s life, encouraging humans to enjoy greater life satisfaction.

On the other hand, some people believe that technological advancements in Artificial
Intelligence result in social discrimination. Despite the fact that AI is increasingly applied
within social domains, most studies focus on particular aspects such as technology and
law, neglecting the need for a general understanding of AI-based discrimination and its
social implications (Whittaker et al. 2018). AI systems learn to make conclusions based
on training data, which may include biased human decisions or reflect historical or
societal imbalances, even when sensitive factors like gender, ethnicity, or sexual
orientation are excluded (Manyika et al. 2019). The UK Commission for Racial Equality
convicted a British medical school guilty of discrimination in 1988. It was discovered
that the computer software it was employing to choose which candidates would be called
for interviews was prejudiced against women and people with non-European names.
Furthermore, a criminal justice algorithm employed in Broward County, Florida,
mislabeled African-American defendants as "high risk" at nearly double the rate it
mislabeled white defendants, according to the investigative news site ProPublica.
Deceptively unprejudiced, AI, in fact, is among contributors to social discrimination.

Another drawback associated with artificial intelligence is large-scale unemployment,

which has had a significant impact on many people’s lives. Nowadays, workers in
various industries are being gradually substituted by cutting-edge technologies or
software systems. In 2018, a report from the World Economic Forum posited that
approximately 75 million jobs will be eliminated by 2022 with a net growth of 133
million new opportunities. According to the analysis, by 2025, robotics, automation, and
artificial intelligence might replace 85 million worldwide jobs. Even lawyers and
paralegals have been displaced by discovery software that can rapidly determine which
electronic documents are relevant to court cases. For the first time in history, computers
and machines are increasingly taking on cognitive tasks that were once the exclusive
domain of the human brain, leaving many individuals jobless.

To recapitulate, the 21st century has witnessed advancements in the field of artificial
intelligence, which leads to concerns among people about its impact on humanity. While
the potential benefits of AI could not be dismissed, it will undoubtedly exert deleterious
impacts on humanity in various ways. It appears certain that artificial intelligence is not
the only profound thing that humans work on. Humans are the creator of artificial
intelligence, so they should take control of it or else humanity will be put in
life-threatening situations as Stephen Hawking predicted.

References

Arora, N., Banerjee, A. K., & Narasu, M. L. (2020). The role of artificial intelligence in
tackling COVID-19. Future Virology. doi:10.2217/fvl-2020-0130

CBC/Radio Canada. (2018, September 17). Machines will do more than half the work by
2025, report predicts | CBC News. CBCnews. Retrieved April 23, 2022, from
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/jobs-of-future-technology-davos-1.4826623

Ford, M. (2013). Could artificial intelligence create an unemployment crisis?

Communications of the ACM, 56(7), 37. doi:10.1145/2483852.2483865

G. Rupesh , S. Choudaiah (2019). Artificial Intelligence and its Role in Near Future.
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR).
Karandish, D. (n.d.). 7 benefits of AI in Education. THE Journal. Retrieved March 30,
2022, from
https://thejournal.com/articles/2021/06/23/7-benefits-of-ai-in-education.aspx

Manyika, J., Presten, B., & Silberg, J. (2019, October 25). What do we do about the
biases in ai? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from
https://hbr.org/2019/10/what-do-we-do-about-the-biases-in-ai

Secinaro, S., Calandra, D., Secinaro, A., Muthurangu, V., & Biancone, P. (2021). The role
of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare: A structured literature review. BMC Medical
Informatics and Decision Making, 21(1). doi:10.1186/s12911-021-01488-9