The Benefits and Risks of AI
What was it the late Stephen Hawking once said? … “AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization”? That’s hard to imagine when artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly become a critical part of the average person’s everyday life, from using the GPS system in our cars, to reading emails, to depositing checks. Indeed, the field of AI has accelerated with new developments in robotics, chat bots, image/speech recognition, search algorithms, autonomous vehicles, and beyond. Far from “new,” AI has been promoted and hailed as the future. Today, its far-reaching benefits are more apparent than ever before, becoming the fuel behind new scientific discoveries and relevant applications for combating climate change and the COVID pandemic. So how is it that AI could ever have been referred to as possibly ‘the worst event in the history of our civilization’?
