A dystopian future is only a footstep, or a stumble, away

Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as AI, has unlimited potential; however, if you think about it, unlimited doesn’t hold a candle to the potential that exists for the manipulation of the knowledge base that feeds AI, thus manipulating its outcomes.
This became very clear to me in my early days of marking and assessing student assignments in the earliest days of AI, when I found a clearly discernible feature of AI-produced texts was a reference to the benefits of AI, along the lines of... “greater use of artificial intelligence can significantly minimise spelling and grammar mistakes, and produce coherently structured sentences.” It was so obvious.
The danger is that the AI moguls could influence the output by adding or deleting names, titles, vocabulary, in fact, anything. Can you imagine if, in UK politics, all references to the Conservative Party were deleted by accident from an AI platform used by a major media organisation? Their polls would ‘fall off a cliff,’ wouldn’t they? Now, I’m not suggesting anything so blatant would happen; it would be just too obvious, but it’s a scary thought!
AI is being exhaustively used within the service industries, where intangible goods and services offer an amazing diversity of opportunities for AI, that, despite all the positivity surrounding the ‘genre,’ if we can call it that, the potential for negativity is even greater. Just consider for a moment the vacuous nature of so many social media posts, the influence of ‘influencers’ on youth, and the growth of anti-social behaviours in society, as much of it is interpreted by the younger set as ‘harmless.’
AI has human traits and qualities that are so well-developed they are often referred to in the social sciences as anthropomorphist. Belanche et al (2024) identify that the human aesthetics and communicative qualities of AI are so far developed that they significantly exceed the intrusive capabilities of humanity. They also point to the misuse of information, the erosion of emotion, empathy and morality, all of which relate to an absence of purpose.
The manipulation of AI even extends, in many settings, to the use of female features, such as their name, voice, and physical qualities that produce more favourable consumer willingness to interact, responses, and satisfaction (Seo, 2022). That’s an understandable perspective to emphasise, but so discriminatory it beggars belief to ponder the potential for cybersecurity intrusion, financial ruin, and the manipulation of justice and politics. It’s a scary scenario, isn’t it?
Another area of research is that associated with the potential for employees to find out that decisions made on their jobs, livelihoods and futures may potentially be made by AI. It’s bad enough when employees consider that those decisions are made and implemented by men and women, who have never ‘walked in their shoes,’ but to find out they had been made redundant on the whim of a ‘calculation,’ would be for many, the ultimate indignity, wouldn’t it?
Rasha Waheeb (2023) of the University of Baghdad and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology acknowledges the fragilities of the human experience as compared to computer-generated entities, identifying that for many, the trade-off, or the decision to be made, is of moral and ethical responsibility, versus the ‘dark reality,’ of a breathtaking depth of knowledge.
The problem is, though, that whether we have a faith that encourages us to believe all discovery and progress is a good thing, or not, it is difficult to hand over the ‘keys to the kingdom,’ so to speak, in terms of accepting that those with the power of AI will use it wisely, with societal and humanitarian imperatives.
With no sugar coating and no tolerance for it, it saddens me that such short-cutting is on the edge of becoming ‘acceptable.’ I never thought I would see the day, but then... dystopia is only one more footstep away.