EAP 5 Research Essay: Analyzing Negative Effects of AI on Society

This essay critically analyzes the negative effects of artificial intelligence and robotics on society, arguing that the uncontrolled increase in their use has led to several detrimental consequences. The essay highlights issues such as increased unemployment due to automation, reduced bargaining po...Read More

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Negative effect of artificial intelligence and robotics on the society
Artificial Intelligence has become a core aspect of the modern day business. It has become
essential for the organisations to understand the negative side of the use of this technology.
Increased use of robotics or artificial intelligence is getting uncontrolled as almost all the
industries irrespective of its scale is using these technologies. The negative aspects of the use
of this technology are often overlooked after the benefits that it poses to the industry
(Makridakis, 2017).
Society is facing challenges related to unemployment and the excessive use of advanced
technologies has resulted in removal of people from the workplace as the employee
requirement in various processes has severely reduced. This is because Artificial intelligence
and robotics is reducing the human involvement in various processes (Forbes, 2018). This is
not only increasing the unemployment but also reduces the bargaining power of people to
bargain in terms of their salaries. This reduction in the salaries also had an effect on their
lifestyle and their expenditure power. In the long term it has increased the anxiety and
insecurity in the minds of the people in regards to their future. Some of the industries have
already started to move towards automation so as to increase the benefits of the company but
it has seriously impacted on the numbers of labour requirements in the industry. The bigger
the company the more they have adopted these two technologies and hence relatively lesser
numbers of employees (Šabanović, 2010). On the other hand small scale firm that is having
less amount of resources has employed more numbers of people and this is the major reason
why governments have started promoting SMEs. The situation gets worse in the developed
nations were automation is at peak. It is also seen that people have lost jobs when the
machines replaced man and if the machines will be able to think than the chances of
eliminating people will increase. Decreasing employment opportunities will further increase
the incidents of crime which will have direct impact on the peace in the society.
Apart from this, it is also increasing the dependency of people on these advanced
technologies. This is increasing the laziness in the people and also reduces their own skills for
managing different tasks. In the manufacturing sector people are also using these
technologies so as to effectively manage their tasks (Cohen and Feigenbaum, 2014). These
technologies are not easy to use and the traditional societies are not able to take effective
utilisation of these technologies. This is the major reason why a global disparity in the

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societies from different parts of the world is increasing. For example an American society is
more easily able to develop with the help of these technologies when compared with a
community from African reason.
The most severe effect of these technologies is seen on the data privacy. Data has become the
key to most of the operations within the organisation and in the society and use of robotics
and artificial intelligence at much larger levels increases the chances of data privacy and
threat. There are large amount of essential information that are linked with various
technologies and this is increasing the complexity for data privacy (Frennert and Östlund,
2014). With enhanced technologies the chances of data breach has also increased. People that
use these technologies without enhanced security always invite attackers to do play with the
crucial data and this may lead to huge data failures. Since the world is getting connected day
by day hence use of such technologies may accidently give the data in the hands of hackers.
Since these are all technologies and if hacked then it can be used by the hackers for their own
benefits. It is said that today people are using technology but due to artificial intelligence one
day technology will rule human being and their thinking abilities.
It is also said that Facebook data is effecting the elections in different parts of the world. Such
algorithms have been developed that predicts the people intention towards any political party.
It will affect the geopolitical scenario of the world. If some parties have access to these
algorithms then they will influence the minds of people. In the time to come this will increase
the chances of same parties coming to the power. This will increase frustration in the minds
of the people if they even want to change the government (Arkin, 2009). People who are from
the lower section of the society will face more challenges as these technologies are going to
remove their jobs at first. It is also possible that other countries will be trying to influence the
elections that might be happening in some other country. Many bigger corporates are going to
influence the election with the help of hackers and running a campaign against the
government or for the government.
If some day machines get smarter than people, it might gain control of the society. This will
make machines more powerful and hence society will be in danger of the harm that can be
caused by Robotics and artificial intelligence. There is some fear that there can be killer
robots. This is against the ethics due to which robots have been developed (Bostrom and
Yudkowsky, 2014). Researchers suggest that the development of artificial intelligence shall
only be in some areas so as to avoid the chances of destruction. Even one incident as such

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will break the trust of the people from such technologies and might be possible that the
society will go against such developments. It is also expected that it is going to make some
people extremely rich and powerful as they will have enough of resources to influence the
lives of others (Bar-Cohen and Hanson, 2009). The industrialists will have the market in
capture with them and huge amount money saved from use of different technologies.
In conclusion it can be said that often people neglect the potential of technology to do harm
to them as the benefits seems to be on the higher side. But the access use of anything can be
dangerous for the wellbeing of the society.

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REFERENCES
Arkin, R., 2009. Governing lethal behavior in autonomous robots. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Bar-Cohen, Y. and Hanson, D., 2009. The coming robot revolution: Expectations and fears
about emerging intelligent, humanlike machines. Springer Science & Business Media.
Bostrom, N. and Yudkowsky, E., 2014. The ethics of artificial intelligence. The Cambridge
handbook of artificial intelligence, 316, p.334.
Cohen, P.R. and Feigenbaum, E.A. eds., 2014. The handbook of artificial intelligence (Vol.
3). Butterworth-Heinemann.
Forbes, 2018. 14 Ways AI Will Benefit Or Harm Society. [Online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/03/01/14-ways-ai-will-benefit-or-harm-
society/#5ee3a1534ef0. [Accessed on 2 February 2019]
Frennert, S. and Östlund, B., 2014. seven matters of concern of social robots and older
people. International Journal of Social Robotics, 6(2), pp.299-310.
Makridakis, S., 2017. The forthcoming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution: Its impact on
society and firms. Futures, 90, pp.46-60.
Šabanović, S., 2010. Robots in society, society in robots. International Journal of Social
Robotics, 2(4), pp.439-450.