The Generative AI Push Poses an Increased Risk of Harm for Many Users

Posted on October 24, 2024

The Generative AI Push Poses an Increased Risk of Harm for Many Users

I’ve noted this in the past, but it feels like we’ve learned nothing from the negative impacts caused by the rise of social media, and we’re now set to replicate the same mistakes again in the roll-out of generative AI.

Because while generative AI has the capacity to provide a range of benefits, in a range of ways, there are also potential negative implications of increasing our reliance on digital characters for relationships, advice, companionship, and more.

And yet, big tech companies are racing ahead, eager to win out in the AI race, no matter the potential cost.

Or more likely, it’s without consideration of the impacts. Because they haven’t happened yet, and until they do, we can plausibly assume that everything’s going to be fine. Which, again, is what happened with social media, with Facebook, for example, able to “move fast and break things” till a decade later, when its execs were being hauled before congress to explain the negative impacts of its systems on people’s mental health.

This concern came up for me again this week when I saw this post from my friend Lia Haberman:

Amid Meta’s push to get more people using its generative AI tools, it’s now seemingly prompting users to chat with its custom AI bots, including “gay bestie” and “therapist”.

I’m not sure that entrusting your mental health to an unpredictable AI bot is a safe way to go, and Meta actively promoting such in-stream seems like a significant risk, especially considering Meta’s massive audience reach.

But again, Meta’s super keen to get people interacting with its AI tools, for any reason:
I’m not sure why people would be keen to generate fake images of themselves like this, but Meta’s investing its billions of users to use its generative AI processes, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemingly convinced that this will be the next phase of social media interaction.

Indeed, in a recent interview, Zuckerberg explained that:

“Every part of what we do is going to get changed in some way [by AI]. [For example] feeds are going to go from – you know, it was already friend content, and now it’s largely creators. In the future, a lot of it is going to be AI generated.”

Resource: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/the-generative-ai-push-poses-an-increased-risk-of-harm-for-many-users/730849/

 

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