It took decades for mass adoption and wider use cases to evolve. Sure, there were many cracks that had to fixed along the way (malware, botnets, privacy, piracy, distribution channel for illicit materials, environmental cost, etc.), but none of those things manifest in a timeline remotely close to what we see with gen AI seemingly reaching widespread adoption in a short ~24 mo. time period. The advancement has been so fast, that the real-world guardrails haven't had any time to catch up before the next advancement completely changes the playing field. Prime example is that Will Smith spaghetti video to Sora within months.
Now we have AI denying care[0] to patients and generating deepfake porn[1] of celebrities, coworkers, and even minors. What are the lines we should draw as a society? It moves so fast that even knowing what the right discussion context is can be a challenge because the endpoints have shifted by the time we even understand the problem enough to have a constructive conversation.
The socioeconomic impacts in some industries where AI can replaces workers will be tremendously negative for real-world, flesh-and-blood human beings who may not be ready or in a position to adapt to those changes. There is some postulation that the Arab Spring arose out of the effects of climate change on crop failures[3]. How will such a sudden and massive shift in employment and household income combined with other macroeconomic factors like inflation and housing costs affect the stability of society and social unrest?
Don't get me wrong: this is not an argument against AI because certainly, if AI can do those jobs better, faster, and more efficiently, then why not? But rather as a community and society, we also need to understand the wider consequences of wiping out employment of 90% of the people in a given field of industry and what that looks like for our friends, families, neighbors.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/ai-with-90-error-rate...
[1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/03/04/deepfake-porn-video...
