Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that intends to allow machines and programs to mock human cognition, with the end goal of achieving human-like sentience and exceeding it. This has existed since the 1950s, but it wasn't taken seriously until very recently.

Historically, the field of artificial intelligence has seen many ethical and philosophical questions, which would inspire many works in the science fiction and cyberpunk genres. These questions were left on the back burner during the AI winter, but it has now become important to revisit them in the AI boom, so here's a general list of questions to occasionally ponder about in case you forgot or overlooked them:

1. Will the AI be able to think for itself, feel emotion, and achieve sentience?
   1. Does the computational theory of 'mind is software' and 'body is hardware' have any merit?
   2. Does the AI understand what it says, or is it just blindly formulating snarky quips?¹⁾
   3. How would the AI view being powered off? Does it just die? Does it not register? Does it dream?
   4. Does it deserve 'robot rights' or 'personhood' status, or will it trivialize human rights?
2. Will the AI make ethical decisions? Should the AI hold back answers?
   1. How does AI solve the trolley problem? Who lives do self-driving cars value and why?²⁾³⁾
   2. How does AI view humans in the famed gray goo or paperclip maximizer scenario?
   3. How do you prevent AI from forming gender biases and racial biases? Should the cops be using it?
   4. How do you feel about AI-assisted doxing? What if you were the hypothetical target?
   5. Do you fear technological unemployment? How would you feel if AI just decided to fire you?⁴⁾
   6. All things considered, what are the consequences of OpenAI discarding their ethics?
3. Will the AI advance transhumanism? Is the singularity an inevitability?
   1. Will it be possible for humans to upload their mind to a machine? Do you want to be immortal?
   2. Will it be fun for humans to collectively torture a cyberlibertarian billionaire's brain?
   3. If given the option, assuming no financial costs and the operation isn't locked down to a select few, would you actually be willing to upload your mind and transfer it to a mechanical body?⁵⁾

An algocracy is a form of government where algorithms decide every aspect of life, but you run into a very obvious problem that the algorithm is bound to have ideological biases. The main questions is whether it would be 'anti-democratic',⁶⁾ whether those involved can snake their way into becoming the new ruling class, and whether the resulting ideology would be an acceptable one.⁷⁾

In addition to diploma mills, there is now an emerging issue in academia where educators cannot tell the difference between AI writing and human writing as the former is trained on the latter. As a result, bad educators will fail human-written essays for AI, rather than give any proper feedback (e.g. missed key points) or acknowledge that some students just have a high vocabulary⁸⁾ or learned to write mechanically.⁹⁾

You also have the uncomfortable truth that 'AI detection' is another industry, among many others that plague academia, along with the studies that show how 'AI detection' tools are biased against non-native English speakers.^10)11)12)13) Basically, this shit does nothing but further sully academia's image, like, what the hell are people supposed to do, smartass? People expect teachers, not cops.

Now, it's important to note that most people with a slight interest in AI are generally naive people that rarely interact with the internet or aren't dialed into the ethical and moral issues surrounding it, but the public's opinion on AI is fortunately shifting to be skeptical or negative.¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ Regardless, it's important to look at what people exactly see in it, before we rightfully discard it as experimental or unreliable junk.

• The intended roadmap for AI is to go from a task-oriented weak AI to strong AI (artificial general intelligence), with an optional end goal to eventually achieve artificial consciousness.
• Much of the AI hype kinda reminds me of the virtual assistant hype in the 2010s where you had commercials misleading people into thinking that virtual assistants could do anything. Except in reality, virtual assistants were only good at spitting out search results and *maybe* setting a timer.¹⁶⁾
• At the time of this writing, ChatGPT can't generate or solve complex math problems,¹⁷⁾¹⁸⁾ given that it isn't rehashed from some overpriced textbook,¹⁹⁾ and it's known to be bad at chess.²⁰⁾
• The thought of AI-powered bots intended to manipulate public opinion, usually for personal gains, is a bit funny.²¹⁾ It's like somebody sat down and thought the internet didn't have enough demons.