How Is AI Changing Us?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of nearly all walks of life as it improves its capabilities at a rapid scale. While AI serves as a useful tool, some have begun to question its ramifications, on the human mind and the global environment, as new data centers to power AI cause hundreds of gallons of water usage.

AI first entered mainstream use in November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT, an “LLM”, or Large Language Model meant to mimic human speech and function as a digital assistant. Since then, many different types and models of AI have been introduced, leading to concerns regarding job displacement, suppression of speech, and the perpetuation of systemic racial issues reemerging into public discourse.

Both the left and the right have been critical of AI, citing concerns with mental health, dependance, and environmental impacts, though some believe the concerns are overstated, and that the benefits outweigh the costs.

The New Yorker (Left bias) published an article which read, “A.I. companions should be available to those who need them most. Loneliness, like pain, is meant to prompt action—but for some people, especially the elderly or the cognitively impaired, it’s a signal that can’t be acted on and just causes needless suffering… But I do worry that many will find the prospect of a world without loneliness irresistible—and that something essential could be lost, especially for the young. When we numb ourselves to loneliness, we give up the hard work of making ourselves understood, of striving for true connection, of forging relationships built on mutual effort.”

A writer for Wall Street Journal Opinion (Lean Right) wrote, “Today’s AI models follow instructions while learning deception. They ace safety tests while rewriting shutdown code. They’ve learned to behave as though they’re aligned without actually being aligned… The gap between ‘useful assistant’ and ‘uncontrollable actor’ is collapsing. Without better alignment, we’ll keep building systems we can’t steer. Want AI that diagnoses disease, manages grids and writes new science? Alignment is the foundation.”

A columnist for the Washington Post (Lean Left) wrote, “I’ve had the experience — maybe you have, too — of feeling underwhelmed when I’ve asked ChatGPT for help with vacation planning. I recently couldn’t remember the name of a pastry and tried describing it to three different AI chatbots. It didn’t work. (The pastry was a frangipane tart.) Disappointments like those don’t mean AI is useless. It can be handy. But there is often a mismatch between the reality of AI and how companies encourage you to think of their AI as magical brains that know and do everything.”

The National Review Opinion (Right) posted an article arguing, “If AI systems produce outcomes that are used by humans in discriminatory ways, we have traditional laws to stop that. But teaching machines that may soon surpass us in intelligence that it’s acceptable — or even necessary — to bend the truth in order to avoid legal exposure or hurt feelings is madness. We need AI that is honest, not AI that has been trained by 500 risk analysts and a DEI consultant to never say anything that might provoke a lawsuit. A relentless commitment to truth is no longer just an academic value. It is existentially important. If we force AI companies to distort reality to satisfy vague standards of ‘fairness’ or ‘disparate impact,’ we won’t be preventing Skynet. We’ll be programming it.”