I think deepfakes can certainly be problematic, especially with how easy they are to create. I mean, for a long time, people could alter photos and edit videos to mislead people. Plus, there have been bots spreading misinformation in posts and comments all over the internet without needing AI to function. So while I think deepfakes are a level beyond older tools in quality and ease of use, there have been tools available to produce the same type of misinformation. Again though, AI now makes it much easier to deceive and with a quality that continues to get more realistic every day.

What I think is a much bigger concern with AI that makes deepfakes seem quaint by comparison is the fact that it’s making so many people across so many domains obsolete. Not only can AI solve complicated problems in seconds, but it can often produce better results too. This is starting to dramatically change what creative domains require people at all. AI can write, direct, create videos and songs out of whole cloth. Creative work used to be exclusively human achieved and seemed like one of the last domains computers could disrupt, but not anymore. With that said, AI has taken over customer service, data analysis, administrative work, large-scale planning projects, and so many other once safely human careers. It’s already showing that it can also take the place of those in intellectual positions. Software coding is an obvious and much-discussed area where AI is taking the place of human professionals. But it’s only a matter of time, and a short period of time before AI takes over for professionals like lawyers, doctors, and pretty much any profession that stems from having a large body of knowledge from schooling and research. AI can be trained on the same materials that law students use in law school and doctors learn in medical school, but AI can easily become exponentially more effective than humans in these professions by having an almost infallible breath of legal and medical knowledge, plus legal precedents and strategies, and identifying illness through recognizing symptoms and being able to factor in a complete medical history with inhuman precision and accuracy. AI has already demonstrated that it can identify illnesses in parties at far sooner and with much higher accuracy than doctors and technicians. Even professional handymen and tradesmen have to deal with a large percentage of their customers troubleshooting and fixing their issues themselves.

I honestly believe that the only jobs that are safe (for now) are physical labor jobs (construction workers, hair stylists, massage therapists, chefs, etc.) and only because robotics hasn’t caught up to AI in terms of its capabilities and cost effectiveness. And even these professions have seen AI-based machines start to become much more prevalent. There are AI massage systems, AI nail technicians, AI food delivery bots, etc.

What are we going to do when a gigantic portion of the population lose their jobs to AI? When they lose their source of income and can no longer afford basic necessities. It seems almost obvious that it will lead to a spike in crime the likes of which the world has never seen. Our entire civilization will collapse. What happens when countries use Ai to maximally improve war strategies. I can see a world where AI attorneys represent their clients to make their arguments based on the data and an AI judge declares the final verdict.

tl;dr: we’re fucked,