Focus on AI’s real harms, not end-of-humanity hype
Illustration: Hannah Perry/Scientific American
End-of-days hype surrounds many AI firms, but their technology already enables myriad harms, including routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.
These issues, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, are the real threat of artificial intelligence.