Why AI is Controversial

The practical and social issues raised by artificial intelligence are as thorny as the technology is complicated. Here are just a few of the concerns that have generated widespread and lively discussion:

• AI tools replicate and thereby amplify the biases and misinformation in the data they’re trained on.
• AI tools can’t distinguish fact from falsehood and frequently invent their own “facts” (a phenomenon sometimes called “hallucination.”).
• Because AI tools solve problems through statistical inference, they can’t be counted on to perform basic calculations or data analysis reliably.
• Much of the content used to train AI tools is copyrighted, raising questions about the legality of this training.
• AI tools have made it easier than ever to create and circulate misinformation and disinformation, polluting civic discourse and distorting the political process.
• AI tools for generating image content have led to new forms of sexual exploitation and harassment.
• AI tools have complicated the task of educators by making it harder to detect cheating.
• The data centers that make cloud-based AI tools available at scale consume large quantities of energy and water, resulting in significant potential for adverse effects on the environment and on the communities where these centers are located.
• To reduce the amount of toxic (e.g., racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, violent) content produced by the major AI tools available to the public, the companies that create them rely heavily on human labor that is typically poorly compensated.

The impact of AI on labor and the environment tends to receive less attention than the other concerns listed above.

This brief segment of the show 60 minutes offers an introduction to the issue of poorly paid “humans in the loop”:

The first of several episodes in the series “Data Vampires” recorded for the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us provides an introduction to the issues surrounding AI, the environment, and communities: