People check their phones as AMECA, an AI robot, looks on at the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal, on Sept. 28, 2023.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
The widespread use of artificial intelligence has ushered in a world of contradictions: scientific revolutions tempered with ethical concerns, creative power devaluing human-made creation, companies finding advantage while cutting jobs. In many sectors, AI is already hard at work – for better or worse.
Employment
As with the introduction of many new technologies, AI will create new jobs requiring new skills. AI applications promise to help workers dispense with mundane tasks, and hopeful assessments suggest AI could leave workers to focus on other elements of their jobs that can’t be automatically generated. (This is despite some studies saying that AI has actually added to employees’ workloads.)
That efficiency and improved accuracy can reduce risk for companies, said Chloe Allen, a strategist at Toronto-based business consultancy Impro.AI. “Small mistakes that may have derailed a project or initiative in the past can be avoided,” she said.
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AI’s ability to destabilize knowledge work has been the subject of intense discussion. But it will likely also build on the impact that automation has already had on the work force in recent decades, leaving many out of work in industries such as manufacturing, logistics and customer service. Such a change would leave many low-skilled workers out of a job, further increasing economic inequality.
Meanwhile, much of the promised rewards of generative AI have yet to materialize, making the bet a costly one. Goldman Sachs pegged the spending in coming years on generative AI alone at more than US$1-trillion – and said that so far, only those providing the infrastructure are yet making a profit.
Security
AI dually affects security and safety both online and in the real world.
Controversially, AI is being used by militaries to operate and target unmanned weapons systems, in predictive policing to identify crime hot spots, and in facial recognition by governments and corporate entities. Canada, too, is working toward making its armed forces “AI-enabled” by 2030. Over all, these systems risk infringing on personal rights and falling victim to biases built into the data sets they were trained on.
And AI is now used in pro-active cybersecurity to identify and correct vulnerabilities more quickly, searching for anomalies to spot security threats faster than a human could. But at the same time, AI has enhanced threat actors’ capabilities by scaling attacks, from phishing to ransomware, said Neil Desai, senior fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, and entrepreneur-in-residence with the Rogers Cyber Catalyst.
AI-powered cybersecurity threats extend to the real world, for instance, by putting hospitals and infrastructure, and therefore lives, at risk.
“Because of AI, you can now instantly attack people around the world with the push of a button,” Mr. Desai said. “Ultimately, AI enables the threat actor faster than it enables those trying to secure the vulnerable.”
Environment
The use of AI could help address environmental challenges, but could also add to them.
AI can analyze data to reduce energy use in buildings, predict future energy demand, help experts model future climate patterns, and monitor conservation efforts. And AI could help farmers better allocate water and use harmful pesticides more judiciously, as well as autonomously operate machinery.
“Scaled up, AI-driven agriculture could reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint, which is significant,” said Kelly Bronson, Canada Research Chair in Science and Society at the University of Ottawa.
But training and running AI models require significant computational power, which requires vast quantities of electricity to run and fresh water for cooling, exacerbating the planet’s existing shortages and adding pressure to energy grids. One study pegs the 2027 emissions from Nvidia Corp.’s servers alone as equivalent to the annual use of the province of Ontario. Meanwhile, AI data centres depend on physical equipment, which will eventually add to landfills.
Media
AI is shaping the way we consume content.
AI has made possible a range of creative tools with applications across sectors, from personalized education to immersive video games. While it can be used to assist in artistic production, it has already been used to flood the internet with poor-quality, copyright-violating content and inauthentic AI-generated images and video.
It has changed the landscape for journalism and news consumption. AI news gathering allows journalists to process vast amounts of data quickly and uncover stories that might otherwise remain hidden, said Natalie Turvey, president and executive director of the Canadian Journalism Foundation. It can also help news organizations large and small reach audiences more effectively.
However, the rise of AI also poses risks to the integrity of journalism and the way it is understood. When used to further fuel existing algorithms that shape the news content that readers discover, AI could deepen societal divides and degrade trust in reliable sources.
The ease with which AI can generate convincing misinformation threatens to flood our information ecosystem with falsehoods, Ms. Turvey said. “This makes news literacy more crucial than ever.”