It's alive: artificial intelligence is a clear and present danger

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By Prioleau Alexander

We have been monitoring the status of artificial intelligence for three years, and here is a fact that most people do not understand:  In these three short years, AI has gone from Wright Brothers technology to Apollo 11 technology. The speed with which it is barreling forward is a wonder to behold. 

For our readers who are unaware of the nuances of AI technology, which actually describes most Americans, the computer developers in Silicon Valley have taught computers to “think,” a reality enhanced in large part because AI has access to every single nugget of information on the Internet — ergo, every fact and theory known to mankind.  

AI has already reached the point of developing and programming new computer systems — birthing their own offspring, if you will. They are creating systems that their own designers cannot comprehend.  

We believe we need to take the potential and ongoing threats with absolute seriousness. However, this is not a science fiction thriller; AI doesn’t appear to be on track to become fully sentient, and as a result, rebel and destroy mankind a la the film The Terminator:  The Rise of the Machines. Will it? Hard to say — thus far, “deviousness” must be added as a factor in experiments conducted by developers. 

So, can you make a case that the sky is falling? Let’s start with how AI will destroy our education system, and it already has done so, to some degree. Students always take the path of least resistance and are doing so right now. It’s so simple, a child can do it:  Go to Chat GPT, and type in, “I’d like a 20-page term paper on the significance of Carolina Day, and Colonel Moultrie’s victory over the British Navy.” Can it be done? We just did it. It even gave an outline before beginning and asked if we would like to see it two to three pages at a time. We told it, “No. All 20 pages.” It took Chat GPT 60 seconds. And it was a reasonable first draft; no doubt with more input for the intended result, it will improve. 

Education aside, the biggest reason the sky is falling is because AI will destroy many white-collar jobs within a decade. Completely gone. It’s fascinating that today’s professionals are thinking, “Oh, those poor blue-collar folks are going to be replaced by robots.” 

That’s not the case. Let’s compare the blue-collar/white-collar dilemma:  Your toilet is broken. It would cost billions of dollars to develop a robot plumber that could drive to your home, walk up the stairs, find the bathroom, diagnose the problem and fix it — and that is just one of hundreds of blue-collar jobs that cannot be replaced due the financial and robotic barriers-to-entry. The cost-to-income ratio doesn’t make sense. 

Now consider that your lawyer and physician are already using AI to help with their work. And they didn’t have to absorb the cost of billions in development — they’re using it for free. 

Let’s take a look at just a handful of professions AI will soon destroy. 

Architects:  Would you rather pay an architect $100,000 to design your home … or spend a few bucks on renting an AI architecture app for a week? This would be an AI program that has, literally, read and memorized perfectly every architectural plan that’s ever been digitized, and can provide endless options as you change your mind and play with the application:  “I’d like a smaller version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house, with a budget of $1,000,000. Oh, and once I approve it, choose the most experienced contractor based on these specific construction needs. Then have all the materials delivered to my homesite.” 

Engineers:  Within just a few years, there will be sub-sections of AI for all disciplines of engineering. If you’ve never seen in person what an electrical engineer does in creating the electrical overlay for a building, rest assured, it is incredible. It makes our heads spin. 

However, we will soon have an AI app that has read every electrical plan from the past 50 years and has the equivalent of 1,000 PhDs in the field. Some shuffle this off, saying, “Not all electrical engineering plans are online.” That will be easy to fix. The owner of this AI app will simply say to a retiring engineer, “I’ll pay you a million bucks for your 50 years of files.” 

Consider the practice of law. Some will be safe, but what about contract law? Real estate law? Plaintiff lawyers? If you have access to AI that has read every contract ever written in the United States, why not have AI do the negotiations with stipulations and demands from both sides?  

In one minute, AI will tell you if a deal can be struck or not. It will offer advice to both sides on what needs to be done if a deal is to be made. If the AI can broker the deal, it will write the contract, and a lawyer would be needed only to review it. What once took hundreds of billable hours to finish will be done by AI in two minutes. 

The rabbit hole is endlessly deep. Let’s say you have your professional and personal information behind a state-of-the-art digital wall. The person who wants that information, with access to one of these supercomputers could sic it on you, and the AI would analyze a billion ways to hack your digital wall in 1,000th of a second. 

For the first time, a member of our team rode in a Tesla. The owner punched in our destination and took his hands off the wheel and his feet off the pedals. It drove us from downtown to a church in West Ashley, safely obeying every traffic law, and parallel parked when we got there. And this is self-driving cars in their infancy. 

Imagine what this will do to the tens of thousands of long-haul trucking jobs. Nothing says the big rig needs to be electric — it could remain diesel, and the AI would use 1,000,000th of its power to safely pilot a truck from Charleston to San Diego. 

Writers and journalists are not safe from this, either. At this point, you’ve read hundreds of articles by “reputable” media outlets that were written by AI, with the byline of a reporter who doesn’t exist. Our writers are real, thank you, but this is a real issue. Google AI newspaper articles. Think about how easy that is for AI:  “Read every article ever written about the war between Israel and Hamas and give a liberal slant as to why Israel is the bad guy.” 

Everyone has their head in the sand. Parents paying for college. White-collar professionals. Teachers and professors. Governments. Especially the youth who are going to live in this brave new world, where professions cease to exist, and the mega-rich and mega-powerful will become 100-times more so. Everyone believes “they” will come up with a solution. But “they” are supercomputers, and those who control them.   

Yes, gentle reader, this is an opinion piece but is also the cold hard truth. As Hemingway described his character’s bankruptcy, it will happen “gradually, then suddenly.”    

Prioleau Alexander has been a Mercury contributor since 2006. He is the author of four books, all of which are available on Amazon.