An insightful article on the impact of AI

Derek Thompson at the Atlantic wrote an insightful article about the impact of AI - AI is a Waste of Time.

Some good points here on how most people will use AI. The more interesting thing in my view is how businesses and government will use AI - and how this public use of AI may distract us from recognizing what’s going on in that deeper work.

Businesses and governments have much greater resources and motivation to use AI for their own gain. And that means they’re the ones most likely to both create amazing things with it, and massively abuse it to benefit themselves at the expense of pretty much everyone else.

Make no mistake, both businesses and governments are already using AI to promote their own agendas. This includes having AI write marketing copy and propaganda (which used to be fringe, but is now mainstream), nation-state actors using AI to write code to exploit software vulnerabilities, and more.

The same is also true from a defensive posture. Businesses are already using AI to detect and defends against hacks, and government is already using AI to detect propaganda and activities from their adversaries.

This means that although it hasn’t broken out into public consciousness yet, the AI arms race is already fully on. While normal people are busy entertaining themselves by creating AI baubles, those who stand to gain (or lose) from it are already using it for information warfare - both against each other, and against entire populations.

So, what’s the bottom Line?

Just remember, those blogs or tracks you’re using AI to create for you are a distraction; the real war is going on behind the scenes. And just as you don’t fly in a stealth bomber when you take a commercial flight, you’re also only seeing the AI technology that’s been designed for public consumption.