There is still a long way for AI to actually become sentient so I am not worried about it taking over the planet any time soon. That being said the use of AI is more common now than it is to comb your hair. At the consumer level we probably see only a fraction of what is really possible to do with AI meaning manipulating text, audio and visuals. At a commercial or industrial level the use cases are much more complex. They are designed to manage large systems and are used to monitor and execute nuanced processes.

In my opinion this is where the actual danger exists. There is a potential for unchecked control given to AI agents which can trigger catastrophic errors. The politics of humans can also misuse this excuse as a way to gain leverage in a particular scenario. Most people won’t have access to all the AI agents in these systems but in the case they do then the results could be whatever the user wants.

AI is a powerful tool because it has access to even the most minor details of a program. In recent events we have seen how an average developer made a lite version of all Adobe tools. We also witnessed how there was a flaw in the eMudhra certification which used to be considered highly for website security and was widely used around the world. This is just the beginning of how disruptive AI can be. The real question is who uses it.

Knowing humanity we are not in fact ready for so much power at our fingertips. I believe the laws around AI are primitive and we have seen this before when the laws around social media were primitive. Lawmakers around the world are uneducated of the pros and cons of AI and have absolutely no backbones when they see money and power dangling in front of them.

In academics people like us are using LLMs to manipulate results in research and faking data to get grants and approvals. Students are using it to cheat on their essays. They were only caught because the AI hallucinated the data in some cases which is a major side effect on its own. There is absolutely no control over this.

Don’t even get me started on Datacenters. Apparently they can be made in a way that it consumes extremely less water and electricity but these billionaires cheap out and are trying to build the nasty ones for higher ROI.

Despite all of this I still believe humanity will prevail. Not in the sense that they will conquer AI but in the sense that AI will be used for the better good. If used properly there are several ways to make leaps in various fields such as engineering, medical, pharmaceutical, chemical, fashion, food and real estate. Some of these industries cause a lot of waste and in order to reduce the waste and optimise production AI can and will be used. In the medical field diagnosis and treatments can be done in an optimised way which in turn will affect the pharmaceutical industries.

AI is currently in the Wild Wild West era and still in its infancy. There is a race to monopolise it like there was a race when the telephone needed to be patented and then when the internet arrived and more recently when smartphones and their apps arrived.

Like everything it is under dire need of regulations. The use of it is only going to be higher and its environmental impact will be seen if measures are not taken. As disruptive, manipulaive and hallucinogenic as it is the truth cannot be hidden and people will have to come to terms with how it is evolving and how it can be misused. At the end of the day it is a tool and must be used as such. Dynamites were invented for mining until they were used in war. Lets see how big of a boom AI is going to make.