AI has been on the rise for a few years now, but there’s two specific types that are brought up the most often, generative AI and AI assistant tools.
On paper, AI can be a useful tool that helps you get ideas quickly and lets you get quick feedback on opinions or work that you don’t even need to socialize for, swift and easy right? In reality, AI can be harmful to us and the environment, but the question of what AI is more damaging hasn’t yet been answered, generative AI or AI tools?
We use AI in almost everything, reading the AI overview on a google search, recommendations on Netflix or Spotify, emails, apps, even down to your fridge and the list goes on.
AI assistants and generative AI are used in many devices that help us throughout our day and plan out our projects, the debate on which one is the most unfavorable is up to the downsides and negatives.
While AI assistants can be heavily relied on and be a concern for biases and data privacy, more commonly for chatbots, generative AI can potentially lead to a greater risk.
Generative AI gets a lot of its data from content pulled directly from the internet, even outdated and extremist text, this can lead to misinformation and biases.
That’s not to mention the dangers of deepfakes, a photo or video made to look like a person did or said something they never did, these few reasons don’t even scratch the surface of generative AI. Mr. Hurt, an English teacher at Tahoma, says his concerns that, “On the generative AI side, just the potential for people to kinda lose their creativity spark that makes humanity cool.”
Generative AI feeds on people’s innovation and ability to create new concepts or art, just type in what picture you want and move on, it’s almost too straightforward.
Generative AI can’t create original art either, the picture you made came from artworks posted across the internet that had no say on whether the AI could use it, it’s a massive infringement on copyright that won’t be held accountable. Mr. Hurt can agree, “There’s a significant amount of responsibility that I feel like a lot of companies are ignoring.” It’s not like artists can take these companies to court either, as it isn’t possible to say that a generated picture can be copyrighted.
AI assistants can also be damaging, especially in schoolwork and socializing. Students and teachers alike can closely rely on AI tools to help with grading, getting feedback, or even finishing their work for them. It can lead to no learning at all.
On top of that, chatbots can reduce socialization, leading to isolation and reliance.
AI assistants can be a helpful tool, but can be easily abused, there needs to be a sense of balance when working with it.
Of course, both forms of AI can be destructive, but we should still be informed of the risks and harm AI does to our environment and society before we potentially make things worse.
