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How AI could destroy our world

Please accept my profound apologies for writing another daily column on the topic of artificial intellgence.

The problem is that AI is simply making so many changes to so many aspects of our lives that it repeatedly appears at the top of the tech newswires and I believe it's important to keep readers updated and talking about the implications.

AI is truly a disruptive technology that has the potential to significantly change the way our technology works and is used. Even more, it is starting to look as if it will reshape our society, perhaps not in such a good way.

Back in the 18th century, the introduction of the steam engine and other mechanical marvels heralded in the first industrial revolution. This replaced raw manpower with machines and mechanisms but it also created new jobs in manufacturing and processing industries.

As the years passed, the later part of the industrial revolution saw automation gradually eliminating many jobs whilst bringing us far cheaper goods and products that could then be mass-produced in volume at a lower cost.

The arrival of the computer and, in particular, the microcomputer, brought about the digital revolution. This saw further boosts in productivity whilst also reducing the need for human beings in many clerical and office-based roles.

The "information age", marked by the growth of the internet and smartphones, has further altered the composition of our workforce and hugely altered society. We now live in a world where geographical boundaries and the tyrany of distance are far less of a factor than was previously the case. Most of us have friends in far-away countries that we may have never met face-to-face yet with whom we regularly chat via email, video and online messaging.

It has been suggested by brighter folk than me, that the nascent AI revolution will bring about the biggest changes of all.

From the perspective of employment it will massively slash the demand for people across a broad spectrum of occupations. Huge numbers of previously employed people will be facing an uncertain future of unemployment or retraining. So many of the jobs that have previously been the exclusive domain of "real people" can now be automated by way of AI.

While AI may represent a fantastic opportunity for many businesses to cut their payroll and the size of their employee numbers, other businesses may face an existential threat from AI.

With voice recognition and synthesis now working so well, many companies are even ditching their front-facing staff, replacing them with AI chatbots or interactive voice-response telephone answering systems.

Graphic artists can be replaced with almost any of the current crop of AI agents. Singers, musicians and composers are all begining to wonder how long it may be before they're replaced by AI equivalents that work almost for free and make no claims over the intellectual property they produce.

The news industry is already quaking in its boots, gravely concerned that AI will simply trawl its pages and create smart summaries that eliminate the need for people to even visit those pages and the ads they carry.

As mentioned recently, programmers are also rapidly becoming redundant, replaced by AI coding agents and those who can do the work of a whole team of programmers with some clever prompt-engineering. Here's an interesting report on that transition from The SF Standard.

We're being promised a bigger, better, brighter, more affordable world, thanks to AI. Companies' costs will fall so the price of products and services will also drop -- or so we're told. Everyone will be better off... or will they?

The problem with this rosey prediction is that there may not be many people left in a position where they can afford to buy anything.

How do you pay the mortgage, keep your car on the road, feed your kids and make sure the lights stay on if your job, perhaps an entire career, has been replaced by an AI agent?

If the workforce is slashed by the huge amounts being predicted, how do we even collect enough tax to cover welfare benefits?

Tax the companies?

Well if those companies don't have customers for their now-cheaper products or services then they too will falter and fail for lack of revenues and profits.

Unless carefully managed, AI may be our downfall rather than our greatest achievement.

Food for thought.

Carpe Diem folks!

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