learntoquestion ltq discussions

Word Count Requirement: 350-500 words

Sources to Reference:

Please refer to the ideas, either using a description, quote or paraphrasing, from at least one of the sources in your response and please respond in some way to only one of the question sets. You can also refer to the documentary that we watched as a class about AI in warfare.

• AI Will Change What It Is to Be Human Are We Ready.pdf
• Your Chatbot Wont Cry If You Die.pdf
• Everyones Using AI To Cheat at School Thats a Good Thing.pdf
• BPS Draft AI proposal
• Trust but verify: U.S. troops, artificial intelligence, and an uneasy partnership
• The risks and inefficacies of AI systems in military targeting support

Questions to Consider:

1. What are the ethical considerations of using AI in education? Please respond to any number of these questions that you discussed with your peers during our Dinner Table Discussion:

~In what ways has the current structural issues in our education system contributed to so many students' reliance on AI as an academic tool?

~How does the widespread use of AI tools challenge traditional definitions of academic integrity? Is using AI always dishonest? Where or how do we draw the line between cheating and using AI as a tool?

~ Should school’s prioritize in-person skills like discussion and communication skills to ensure that students can still think critically?

~Is it wrong to let AI influence and even form our opinions and thoughts on world events, history and literature? Does this mean that we are losing the ability to reflect on the commonalities that make us human?

~As the use of AI to cheat in school rises and grades become obsolete, will networking and personal connections be valued more by employers? Does this work against people who are introverted or who struggle with social interaction?

~Do you think that the use of AI actually makes students less incentivized to participate and learn in class? Are students bored because they don’t really need to think much any more?

~Should teachers who use AI to grade papers be punished in the same way that students who use AI to write papers are punished? In theory educators get paid, partially, to think for a living, is it unethical for them to offload that job to AI?

~How can you ensure that the use of AI in schools is equal and does not give anyone an advantage? Is it fair for one student to do the work and another to use AI for the entire thing and have them be graded on the same rubric?

2. What are the ethical considerations of using AI in everyday life? Please respond to any number of these questions that you discussed with your peers during our Dinner Table Discussion:

~What characteristics are so uniquely human that regardless of how far scientific and technological advancements go, they will never truly be able to be replicated by AI?

~With AI replacing many people in more "intellectual" jobs, is there a risk that we will become dumber? Worse at thinking critically? More likely to blindly follow others? Will we lose our empathy and emotional purpose as humans?

~Does AI pose the worst identity crisis that humanity has ever faced? Is it possible to ramp it back now that we have begun using AI?

~ Is it the role of humanity to play the "creator"? What obligations, if any, do we have to our creations? Does this change if they are sentient?

~How might AI create a disparity in the social fabric of advanced, developed countries vs underdeveloped countries that lack technological innovations?

~AI can replace human interaction, but should it? Should AI replace doctors, therapists, teachers and even friends?

~Do you think the use of AI as a form of comfort is dystopian? Won't the use of AI as a means of comfort mean that society will become less dependent on real relationships, and the use of AI will just feed people’s egos?

~Will people begin to prefer AI because it allows them to avoid facing their own flaws and the flaws of those around them?

3. What are the ethical considerations of using AI in warfare? Please respond to any number of these questions that you discussed with your peers during our Dinner Table Discussion:

~Should AI be allowed to make autonomous decisions without human oversight on combat missions? What if AI, currently controlled by human operators, reaches a point of disobeying human commands?

~Do AI weapons systems dehumanize warfare? Could that potentially be a good thing where warfare is no longer waged by humans, thus ultimately saving lives? Will that potentially prolong wars because there is less of a human cost?

~Should the efficiency, precision, strategic advantages and speed of AI warfare outweigh the ethical concerns? Is there a way to balance these concerns with the benefits?

~What happens when AI weapons systems become cheap and widely available? Should the nations develop this technology in line with the Mutually Assured Destruction theory related to nuclear weapons, to ensure that it will not be used irresponsibly?

~Should there be a global ban on lethal AI autonomous weapons? Does it make sense to institute a ban when some nations and rogue groups will not obey the ban?

~Is it ethical to use AI for psychological or information warfare against an enemy (for example creating deep fake images or spreading disinformation)?

~Who should be held accountable if AI weapons systems commit a war crime like killing civilian non-combatants? Who should stand trial for the crime if the weapons used are autonomous?

It is not exactly wrong to allow AI to influence our thoughts because as it is right now AI is simply a tool to get information quickly. All it is doing is gathering the info that you could have found if you research in other methods. While there is a fear that the AI could be biased due to the coding it may have but that is still the same with other internet resources. AI is better if anything because it can gather all sorts of information from multiple places and present it to you rather than looking at only sources you can find that could not contain all the information possible. Teachers who use AI should face the same reproductions as the students because at the end of the day it is creating the same problem. People are worried that people in the future will not be as smart or as capable as we are today; however, most jobs have already normalized the usage of AI in their workplace, like teachers. Many teachers nowadays will use AI to create assignments and/or grade work. This is simply the same way students use AI; to do tasks that they simply don’t want to do. If we are to punish a student for using AI on a homework assignment then it is only fair to punish the teacher for using AI to grade the assignment because the punishment right now is given in order to prevent the usage of AI simply for us to use AI when we reach another level. However, most jobs won’t stop the usage of Ai simply because it’s too big of a current thing. Rather than punishing and banning AI completely we should instead be embracing it by teaching educational ways to use it. Similarly to when the internet came out and made libraries obsolete. Many people did not like this because they deemed books more credible but with time we adapted and now the internet is commonly used for many things. This is simply another evolution and what we need to do is embrace it and not hate it.

I think that a lot of human emotions that foster connections like love, empathy, friendship, and even negative ones like guilt or anger are things that even with scientific advancements will never truly be replicated by AI. The connections that you make with people throughout your life are so unique and independent from a connection someone might have with another person. There is no way to generalize or replicate that relationship. For example my relationship with my mom is completely different from anybody else’s and that is what makes our connection so special. I think there is a risk at becoming more ‘dumber’. The less demand there is, the less supply. If AI starts replacing doctors, less people will learn to be doctors, and fewer people will be medical intellects and students like the ones we have today. That intellect may be directed towards other fields of studies that require human brain power, like investigating/developing AI. Supply will go wherever demand needs to be met. I don’t think that AI will take over all fields of study. There will still be people who are teachers, study philosophy, question the use of AI, etc. I just think that the focus of study will shift and where we are using our brain power in society will shift. Yes, the use of AI is so dystopian. People need human connection to battle loneliness and to also survive in this world. AI is a temporary fix to loneliness and I think that it fosters more isolation than helping people to overcome whatever social challenge they may have. A real human relationship is something that AI can replicate, and I think that once people experience these happy positive human relationships you can’t use AI to substitute. I think in a way AI does allow them to avoid facing their own flaws and the flaws of those around them. It is a way to escape reality and find comfort in something you know will just agree and reinforce your thinking. This constant cycle of reinforcement can lead to more bad behavior, and is ultimately more destructive than beneficial to people and relationships.

I believe that AI has extremely negative social impacts on humanity. Humans are social creatures, and we rely on our connections with others, both emotionally and in terms of basic needs. AI is increasingly being used as a friend, educator, romantic partner, or therapist as a way to meet our human social needs, but as AI usage increases, social issues such as loneliness will increase as well. This is ironic because the usage of AI in these roles is meant to combat a lack of meaningful connections, but in reality, it only makes these social issues worse. Many people who feel alone and lack important relationships resort to AI to feel better, demonstrating the importance of social relationships. The article “Your Chatbot Won’t Cry If You Die” by River Page states that AI presents as the “perfect” friend sometimes - it doesn’t reject people, it always responds, it will never stop interacting. There are many issues with this. The first one is that these “perfect” behaviors from the AI chatbot raise expectations, so that humans cannot achieve this everlasting level of commitment in real life. Another issue is that time spent with an AI chatbot takes away time from real people like family, or potential friends. This time spent away from people will force the user to become deeper and deeper into a hole of loneliness. Additionally, these AI relationships lack major things that can prevent full satisfaction from a user. One is physical touch. AI chatbots are incapable of physical touch. Something that the COVID pandemic made clear was that physical human interaction is simply not able to be replicated virtually. A zoom sleepover with a friend is not nearly as meaningful as a real, in-person one. Imagine living a life with your romantic partner 100% virtually. This seems infinitely less enjoyable and meaningful than an in-person relationship, but that is the life that everybody with “AI boyfriends/girlfriends” live. Additionally, when only exposed to interaction with chatbots, the human user increasingly loses social skills. This drops confidence and prevents the user from seeking real human relationships. For these reasons, it is clear that AI friendships cannot provide a human with full satisfaction and push them deeper into loneliness, which only worsens issues that these chatbots were created to fix.

With the rise of social media which is coupled with the lack of sleep younger generations experience, students are often rendered unmotivated and exhausted. At the same time, with the rise in competitive workplaces and in education, many motivated students often feel immense pressure to excel. Society needs more time. Although AI can be a solution to some of these issues, they ultimately contribute to its intensification. AI is proven to be a useful tool, and at times for learning if used correctly. AI, however, may encourage people to continue their unhealthy social media habits since they are comfortable knowing that their work will be done in an instant with AI. On the other hand, many busy students utilize AI to ease the effort of formulating complex thoughts, like for writing, for an assignment and are then met with relief knowing they saved possibly more than an hour of work. AI has become a tempting resource for many, despite it impacting the learning process and fueling phone use, all of which will harm you in the future. In an article written by economist, Tyler Cowen, Cowen explains how the use of AI will impact overall work quality in the future and valuable skills needed in schools and the workplace, “The current system is misleading students about the skills they will need to succeed in the future, and providing all the wrong incentives and rankings of student quality.” (Cowen 3). On the other hand, it is unethical for teachers to use AI when grading certain assignments. When analyzing student thought, teachers must be able to interact with the work using the expertise they have gained over the years and not AI. It is essential that we maintain human connection in schools rather than have a machine replace it. Yet, AI can be used for grading multiple choice responses, yet it must not be able to provide feedback. Teachers also play another role for students and their use of AI. Many teachers who refuse to change their teaching methods and are unwilling to listen and digest student feedback facilitate the use of AI in their class. Students may then not be learning efficiently in their class, so they turn to AI to either complete assignments they do not understand or to learn from it to do better in the class.

AI is becoming a staple in our society, and everyday, you hear somebody mention something about ChatGPT. People have not only incorporated it into their daily lives, but they have become reliant on it, which poses a question about where society is going with AI’s presence. We run the risk of becoming less intelligent, that is, we run the risk of losing interest in the things that are intellectually stimulating due to accessibility of AI. It most likely will not be the case for everyone, but there may be a trend where people don’t seek out educational endeavors or experiences that allow them to grow due to the fact that information will be so widely available. This could feed into anti-intellectualism and could ultimately lead to a destruction of many systems that are currently in place, but that is in a very extreme case that we will hopefully take steps to avoid. It is also important to address the fact that many people use AI to replace human interaction, as many apps like Snapchat have incorporated AI into their programs, and others are entirely based in AI conversations with fictional characters. This may be good in some cases, like if somebody can’t afford therapy and needs someone, or in this case something to talk to in order to get their feelings out. However, even though there may be some positives to this aspect of AI, there is definitely concern surrounding how people will develop socially if conversing with an artificial chatbot becomes normalized. Humans are social creatures by nature, and though there are a multitude of reasons why people may not interact with others, using AI as a substitute does not help the problem and may just make it worse. There is a dystopian aspect to using AI for comfort, and I think that some people may use it to completely replace human relationships. It is very easy to get wrapped up in the extremes of a hypothetical situation, and while AI definitely poses a threat to human emotion, sociability, and productivity, the likelihood of the vast majority of people being engulfed by the influence of AI seems, at this point, lower than some make it out to be. So, while AI is definitely emblematic of a complete and utter shift in our society as we know it, it may not be a large issue for us right now. However, we should take the steps in order to ensure that we maintain our humanity.

Overall, I do not believe under any circumstances that AI should be given the agency to take a human life or harm a human being in any way. Although AI has already advanced far beyond the point that we believed it would in our lifetimes, the laws of robotics created in 1940 by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov are important to know and, in my opinion, more relevant than ever as artificial intelligence grows.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Even if these laws were created over 80 years ago, the basic concepts of these laws should be considered as the most important when developing AI. The utilization of these laws in the creation of AI should not only prevent a widespread use of AI in warfare, but also unethical use of AI in general. If AI goes on to be used in a military setting as a replacement to human soldiers, AI’s reasoning will also replace the conscience of humans. There are some scenarios in which a person has to compare what is suggested to be the best course of action and what is ethically acceptable, an artificial intelligence cannot do this, instead always opting for the best course of action, and disregarding what may seem right to a human. When I think about the importance of the human conscience in warfare, I think of the Cuban Missile Crisis;whether or not the mutual destruction of NATO and Soviet Bloc countries by nuclear war would happen depended entirely on the hesitation of the humans that had to judge whether or not there was no other option to resolve the conflict that was occurring before their eyes. Clearly no one on either side wanted a nuclear conflict to spark there, despite the fact that tensions were rising between the two involved groups. If an artificial intelligence were to judge that same situation instead of a human, it is entirely possible that it would have viewed those rising tensions as a reason to use nuclear weapons.

I think some things are so uniquely human that AI cannot replicate them. For example, you can’t build a real connection with AI. Even if it sounds real and it sounds like you’re talking to an actual person, or friend, it still isn’t real. In the back of our minds we’ll always know this so it won’t actually help you learn how to talk to people because there’s no fear there. Building relationships should be difficult, there should be ups and downs, and there should be things that hurt or mistakes that are made because this is how we learn and grow. It doesn’t have emotions and can’t feel any way about you. This is shown very explicitly in a paper by River Page, “Your Chatbot Won’t Cry If You Die,” where she highlights the effects of talking to AI as a form of therapy. Something really interesting in this reading that stuck out to me was her point about AI lacking human features that we dislike. People can be judgemental and often say the wrong things -- something we don’t wanna hear in a moment of vulnerability. That being said, AI is appealing because it can basically tell you whatever you want to hear. That is what it does. One part of this that made a little more sense to me was the idea that people might go to AI for therapy so that they don’t have to bore or bother their own friends with life problems. While this seems like a more reasonable reason to go to AI, it still hinders your ability to approach people in the real world. Your friends are there for you and if we turn to AI at any minor inconvenience, we’ll forget how to ask for help and think critically.

Critical thinking is also an important skill to have for people in any job or just daily life. Math seems like a good example of this. Math is

meant to build your problem solving skills and it’s meant to be challenging. You’re meant to think and you’re meant to get stuck. This is how we learn, and in the end, there’s a very nice sense of accomplishment. Without this, people are going to become dumber and lazier. People are going to forget how to do things on their own, but they’re also going to be less willing to try when the option to turn to AI is all around them. As of right now, I don’t think AI is hurting our abilities to think or our abilities to have human empathy, but it will pose a problem in the future. If restrictions aren’t put on applications like ChatGPT, or if people aren’t taught how harmful overusing it can be, then machines will take over our society. We cannot choose to rely on an algorithm that is not human.

AI has been used in the education setting even before COVID, but it peaked during that time of quarantine. This has even prompted teachers themselves to use AI, but there are instances where they should and shouldn’t utilize it. I focused on AI in terms of grading assignments for its uses. AI can be used for multiple choice responses, but it should be avoided for any written assignments. AI is already used for multiple choice tests, an example of this being scan trons. For grading essays and giving feedback, however, that should remain the responsibility of the teacher. If teachers are, in theory, paid partially for their thoughts, then AI stripping teachers of their opinions and feedback on essays means that the AI should be getting paid. Yes, the feedback AI provides may be insightful, but it is still better that the teacher forms their own opinions.

This connects to the article Everyone’s Using AI To Cheat at School. That’s a Good Thing and the point it brings up about how “[AI is] better than the human teachers we put before our kids, and they are far cheaper at that. They will not unionize or attend pro-Hamas protests.” AI, just like humans, has its faults. It may be cheaper, but for the best experience you still have to pay money, money that could go to teachers. And yes, AI may not unionize or protest, but it can still be hacked into. Not only that, but AI cannot think as critically as teachers or students at times. If one asks AI for chapter highlights of a text, it may just provide a summary rather than an explanation.

This leads to the point that schools should have students use technology less. If the amount of assignments on technology were reduced, it could allow schools to emphasize communication and discussion through collaborating with peers. With AI around, it lessens one's ability to think critically because of how it is at the touch of a button. When people struggle, they go to AI for answers, and even if they may have a point that AI could never come up with, they still use AI because it has searched a multitude of databases, meaning it should always have the correct answer. What teachers are looking for, however, is more than just surface level, something that is repeated constantly at BLS. Through AI, answers become redundant, leading to the loss of critical thinking in education.

The same concept applies on a smaller scale to interpersonal relationships. Using AI for comfort and as a friend is a temporary solution, but does not help the problem of a lack of genuine human connection and accountability that many face. Instead, taking the harder route of working towards genuine relationships, through the challenges, is going to ultimately be more satisfactory than using AI as a companion. The article Your Chatbox Won’t Cry If You Die says, “Humans are unpredictable. They might patronize you; they might ignore you; they might manipulate you. The computer won’t, unless you ask it to: As one person who participated in the Eliza trial said at the time, ‘The computer doesn’t burn out, look down on you, or try to have sex with you.’” This is true, but it neglects one key point: the imperfections of humanity is what makes relationships so special. We don’t have friends because we expect they will never let us down. Instead, we have friends knowing that sometimes they will let us down, but the good friends will apologize and work to change their behavior. It is that effort to improve that helps make a relationship real.

I think that with the increasing number of artificial intelligence chatbots, more parasocial relationships form and more people will turn to it for medical or psychiatric help. We have already seen disturbing stories online about deep fakes and humans connecting with AI, and it will likely only get worse as it develops. The development of artificial intelligence in things like images and videos has been exponentially increasing just in the past few years. Early AI could be easily pointed out in the media because of how fake and bad it looked, but nowadays it’s becoming increasingly more accurate and realistic. Soon it may get to the point where propaganda could be created with AI and we would not be able to distinguish if it is real or fake, which is extremely dangerous considering how fascist societies relied so heavily on propaganda. In terms of other uses, because AI has access to all free online information about medicine and mental health, it could be commonly used in the future as psychiatrists or doctors for people who maybe can’t afford these necessities. There have been multiple cases of AI insisting that it is a licensed psychologist/psychiatrist and cases of people turning to AI as a source of companionship, both platonically and romantically. A few months ago there was a young boy who committed suicide in order to “be with” his AI chatbot girlfriend, and while most people aren’t killing themselves because of AI, the romantic aspect of these relationships is still a real thing. The people who engage in these relationships become isolated from the real world and from real people, confiding in robots that are just code spewing back what people want to hear. These parasocial relationships can be dangerous to not only the users health, but potentially real people that the AI is imitating. Some people are already convinced that they’re in loving relationships with strangers on the internet and won’t hesitate to stalk or confront the people they’re obsessed with in real life. AI bots might solidify these feelings even more which could put anyone on the internet in danger.