If AI is so controversial, why is it allowed to casually replace human jobs and hobbies? The war on AI morality continues to rage online, but in real life, most people are starting to use it without a second thought.
Firstly, it’s important to distinguish between basic technology that performs simple functions and artificial intelligence that attempts to replicate human thought. Commonplace tech like calculators are without issue, because they only do what the user asks them to. Multiplication, addition, and division are all straightforward commands that a calculator can perform without “thinking” about it. Calculators have been endlessly valuable in modern mathematics, and they streamline menial tasks for just about every job in the workforce. Technology like this isn’t intrusive or concerning. Rather, people start to worry when technology makes human work unnecessary. But given the amount of hard labor that could be avoided, why is this where the problem lies?
It’s because websites like ChatGPT devalue college degrees that require years of hard work and thousands of dollars to obtain. Workers in fields like writing or editing are facing the end of viable job opportunities while many of them are still paying off student loans. After all, a subscription to an editing software is infinitely cheaper than employees who require benefits, a salary, and time off. In this way, skilled workers are actually at a disadvantage when it comes to finding jobs because the years of expensive college do not translate into labor experience. A journalist is not well equipped to fix plumbing, but a teenage apprentice is versatile enough to adapt to the job quickly. Many college alumni are rightfully worried about losing their jobs to instantaneous writing websites.
AI has the potential to cheapen company payrolls and hasten the work, but it falls short by a mile in regards to authenticity. Human approaches to a problem are diverse, flexible, and genuine. Meanwhile, an AI performs tasks by sorting through billions of statistics online and regurgitating the solutions it finds there. These answers are shallow and often inaccurate to the situation presented because an AI has no actual awareness. Human input is so valuable because of a lifetime experience of learning from mentors and mistakes alike. People have the ability to think critically about their work and consider the potential outcomes an AI could never dream of, because in truth, true comprehension comes from living through an event and learning from it, not scanning through studies online. The soul of human thought is integral to problem solving, and when devoid of it, there is no depth to proposed solutions. Binary code on a computer cannot compete with the intrinsic understanding present in our brains after millenia evolving.
It’s an important topic to consider when choosing resources, and even if cutting AI out entirely isn’t viable anymore, the repercussions of its usage should be kept in the forefront of our minds as we continue forward in the modern age.
