There is no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) has brought many benefits to people and businesses alike. From helping consumers to shopping and answering questions online to improving company productivity and curing diseases, AI is increasingly becoming an integral part of life in modern society. Yet while AI is an incredibly useful tool, it is important that governments, businesses, and the public at large know what can happen if AI is used indiscriminately or without understanding its dangers and negative impacts.
In this regard, in January 2022, the Information Security Institute announced the launch of a full-scale study that will examine the impact of AI on society from a social science perspective. The study will be conducted by a team of experts in AI, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics and will examine the potential impact of AI on various aspects of social life.
The study will address topics such as:
- Increasing socio-economic inequality and crime. What new professions will emerge in the foreseeable future? Will the replacement of labor by machines lead to an increase in crime, due to the fact that people in low-skilled occupations will be out of work?
- New forms of terrorism using artificial intelligence. Unlike nuclear weapons, AI weapons do not require expensive or rare raw materials. Will they become ubiquitous and cheap to mass-produce, and what new forms of terrorism will humanity have to face in the near future?
- Information and physical security. AIs base their responses on data which they constantly gather and process, and are increasingly entrusted with important decisions. How do companies manage the data collected by AIs? What should be done to avoid situations where incorrect AI predictions could lead to life-threatening events? What measures should be used to supervise and regulate AI?
- Cyber-vulnerability. What are the implications for online users of the automation of cybercrime?
- Impacts on social platforms. If AI integrates and scales, what new threats will online businesses face? How will platforms respond and what measures can they take today?
- The rise of misinformation. While false accusations have a long history, individuals and institutions could historically rely on eyewitness evidence and particular kinds of recordings to determine truth. Yet AI-powered techniques for creating realistic fake material are becoming increasingly sophisticated. What will the blurring of the lines between reality and fakery lead to? What do you do when you literally can’t believe your own eyes and ears because an image, video, or audio recording might be created by an AI?
- Protection of copyright and intellectual property. AIs store and process large quantities of data which are not necessarily in the public domain. What protections should apply to members of those professions whose results are used to train artificial intelligence?
This is not an exclusive list of topics. The study is expected to take several years, and the research team will present its findings at conferences and in scientific journals. The results of the study in the form of analytical reviews and reports will also be available to those organizations and entities that have entered into a partnership agreement with the Information Security Institute and have access to the private research of the Institute.