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There’s no doubt we live in an age of incredible technological advancement. In fact, it’s not too far of a stretch to say that we are now living smack dab in the middle of the most incredible period of technology development in the history of mankind. It has literally empowered every single person who has a cell phone to have the world and 99% of all of the recorded information from history and every other human anywhere at any time available at our fingertips.

However, with great power comes great responsibility, and I fear we are developing a technological monster that has the potential to wreak havoc on the humanity that created it.

Artificial intelligence, more commonly called “AI,” is essentially the science of making machines that think like humans. It can do things that are considered “smart.” AI technology can process huge amounts of data and information in ways humans can’t. The goal for AI is to be able to do things such as recognize patterns, make decisions, and judge like humans.

Before we talk about the potential negatives associated with AI, it must be said there are incredible positives to be found within it. For example, a medical group at Mount Sinai used deep learning-based AI algorithms to predict the development of diseases with 94% accuracy, including cancers of liver, rectum, and prostate. AI is also the basis for the self-driving vehicles that are becoming more and more common on our roads.

One neat AI tidbit I heard about a few weeks involves The Beatles. Yes, those Beatles. In creating the “Get Back” documentary about the band that came out in 2021, director Peter Jackson used AI to separate John Lennon’s vocals from past recordings by the band. That led Paul McCartney to have the idea of using AI to create a new Beatle song using the technology to add to and enhance Lennon’s vocals on a demo song he recorded in 1978.

Those are just a few of many amazing and useful applications of AI. And, there is no doubt as AI evolves we will find more and more good ways of using the technology.

But there are some uses of AI that are anything but good. In the entertainment industry, unauthorized songs using AI have created vocals that sound precisely like mainstream artists are already creating issues regarding copyrights and such. AI was used to digitally de-age Harrison Ford in the latest Indiana Jones movie, raising questions about the potential of digitally resurrecting dead actors or actresses (or singers) and using them in modern works.

Even more sinister, criminals are finding ways to apply AI in their efforts to rip people off. All that is needed to digitally recreate your voice saying anything is a mere 3 second clip. Last month, a mom in Arizona was convinced her daughter had been kidnapped for $1 million in ransom after hearing the child’s voice telling her as much over the phone.

But it wasn’t her child’s voice. It was an AI generated clone of it. Understanding the potentially huge ramifications of such, the FBI took the case over.

Regular folks aren’t the only ones getting duped by the use of AI. Last April, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was tricked by pro-Putin Russian pranksters into thinking he was speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The lengthy conversation ended up all over social media.

To be sure, voices aren’t the only thing that can be replicated. ‘Deep fake’ videos have been a thing for quite some time, where computers can digitally replace a face on a video clip with any face you desire. But, what has changed is the incredible detail and precision they can be made now through the use of AI.

Why is all of that a big deal, you may ask? Imagine how such tools could be used against someone politically. Statements by someone that were never actually made, or speeches even, done with a virtually perfect clone of a politician’s voice could very, very easily be done. With this technology you could literally make someone say pretty much whatever you wanted them to with almost no way to tell whether what you are hearing is real or not.

And what is to keep someone from creating a video of a political candidate in a compromised situation, as an example, with not only their image but also their voice embedded in it and almost indistinguishable from reality? How would said politician be able to defend themselves or prove that what is being seen and heard is indeed fake?

But on an even bigger scale, AI is designed to ‘learn’ as it processes data, very much like the human brain does. There is a legitimate concern among experts that we will eventually reach a point where AI will be more intelligent than humans are, and the ‘great unknown’ with that arrangement is knowing exactly how AI will handle it.

That becomes very important when you consider the fact that just about every single thing in our lives, including the electricity we use in our homes, filters through and is processed by computers. Should AI malfunction (as all computers eventually do), or worse yet, advance to the point where it wasn’t ‘happy’ with humanity, the ramifications could be disastrous.

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