‘AI Impact by 2040’: Experts share scenarios, describe how things might play out

Judith Donath
Personalized digital agents are likely to turn users into unknowing ‘agents of the machine’

Judith Donath, fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, observed, “In computer-human interface design, the word ‘agent’ refers to chatbots and other seemingly autonomous entities that act on behalf of the computer in their interactions with us human users. It does not take a great leap of imagination to predict that soon many of us will ourselves similarly be computer agents, acting on behalf of one AI system or another – a role we will have willingly, even eagerly, chosen.

“A voice, pleasantly modulated to your aural preference, reminds you to drink more water, helps you choose which gift to buy and provides answers to the innumerable questions, big and small, that pop up in the course of everyday life. It is your dedicated assistant – part DJ, part life coach, part trusted confidant – a quiet whisper that is your constant, necessary companion. Perhaps the most valuable functions of this virtual coach is the astute guidance she provides in social situations. Run into a vague acquaintance at a party? Your assistant will remind you of their name, their kids’ names, whom you know in common. When conversations ebb, she will provide you with an apt comment so you can re-enliven the discussion. Difficult conversations, from salary negotiations to tense family disputes, are made much easier by this trusted advisor-who-lives-in-your-head: the collaboration not only helps you find more effective (and, if needed, less antagonistic) words, but also alleviates the stress of having to think it all through on your own.

“One can, of course, always turn the assistant off, silence her for 15 minutes, or an hour, or even until morning. But, once accustomed to the benefits of a preternaturally insightful aide, few will want to do so. Instead, people will adjust themselves to the rhythm of waiting a beat before speaking, just enough to catch those quick, helpful cues. Indeed, we are not far from the day when unmediated interactions with other human beings will have become rare; a social nakedness that will seem, outside a limited circle of close family and friends, unpolished and rather embarrassing.

“The requisite technologies are nearly here. Today, if you are a runner training with a virtual coaching program or a seeker of mental focus employing a digital productivity guru, you are already enjoying a primitive version of this. We have the ubiquitous earphones, each miniaturized new model more suitable for 24-hour wearing. We hear the chorus of personable and euphonious computer voices. And, most importantly, we have the greedily generative neural networks, the algorithmic metabolizers of every article, photograph, screed, riff, shopping list, program and spreadsheet available. Yes, there are pieces still to be solved, notably context-aware machine comprehension of live conversation and other situations. But nothing will delay the arrival of this scenario beyond a few years into the future.

Each interaction that every artificial entity engages in provides their parent company – and those to whom they sell this information – with data about what phrases, tones and timings prove most persuasive. … Such persuasiveness is troubling – even if the virtual assistant’s aim is to benefit its human user – for it jeopardizes free will and autonomy. … Here will be a new and insidiously powerful form of manipulation, enabled by the computer’s influence over our words and thoughts. … You are the product, the resource, the walking, talking human agent acting on behalf of your AI’s sponsors.

“The optimistic view anticipates widespread improvement of human society thanks to these technologies. It foresees digital doulas who will model soothing baby-talk for young mothers struggling with a squalling infant, workplace-provided virtual facilitators who will discreetly steer meeting participants towards consensus (and, if necessary, away from the shifting edges of acceptable speech), and synthesized therapists who will be prescribed for members of troubled families and whose whispered cues will mediate their fraught interactions. Digital assistants, in this view, will democratize the advantage that wealthy, powerful people have long enjoyed: the superpower of an ever-present confidant, supplying the well-wrought words and timely hints needed to craft and maintain ones’ desired image.

“But digital assistants will have far more influence over their person than their human analogues have. Each interaction that every artificial entity engages in provides their parent company – and those to whom they sell this information – with data about what phrases, tones and timings prove most persuasive. Researchers endeavor to find ever more effective ways to make social bots appear more trustworthy – how to better mimic the expression, gestures and intonation of a trustworthy person. When performed by a human, these actions are meaningful because they are intrinsically linked to cognitive and emotional processes related to the trustworthiness of the individual’s intentions. But when performed by a machine there is no such tie; the mimicry only serves to make people more vulnerable to digital manipulation.

“Such persuasiveness is troubling – even if the virtual assistant’s aim is to benefit its human user – for it jeopardizes free will and autonomy. Will this deter people? Experience shows it likely will not because the danger seems remote and conceptual while the benefits – impressing a date, losing weight, winning a debate – are prized and concrete goals.

“And the ultimate aim of most virtual assistants will not be to help their human user, but to benefit their corporate parent. The prompts filling your head via a work-supplied facilitator will ostensibly be designed to increase your focus and productivity, but it will also be crafted to subtly encourage employees to work long hours, reject unions and otherwise further the company’s goals over their own. Highly sought-after personal coaches will be prohibitively expensive – unless paid for via various forms of commercial sponsorship. And here – along with the familiar tropes of our ad-saturated world, the product placements and inducements to upgrade – will be a new and insidiously powerful form of manipulation, enabled by the computer’s influence over our words and thoughts: the transformation of users into agents of the machine.

“It is only a year, as I write this, since ChatGPT was first released, but already it has become the valued coauthor of innumerable student papers, news articles, short stories and online posts. Testimonials tout newfound dependence: ‘I can’t imagine now how I used to have to write without this fabulous tool.’ As these tools improve, our reliance on them will deepen.

“Today’s AI programs are known to cite false information and replicate biases, but this is due to the information quality of the vast datasets on which they are trained; it is not deliberately induced in them. In the future, however, as tuning these programs becomes more tractable, it is inevitable that some providers of artificial assistance will seek to profit by offering to influence their users – and to make those users themselves into malleable influencers. For the few able to afford to pay, certified independent assistants may exist – but most people will choose commercially supported free or very low-cost ones. As has been said about television, web browsing and social media – and must now be said about the soon-to-be-here intelligent and influential AI assistant: If you are not paying, you are not the customer – you are the product, the resource, the walking, talking human agent acting on behalf of your AI’s sponsors.”

Victoria Baines
AI advances will bring the metaverse up to speed and accelerate 5G/6G and smart cities

Victoria Baines, a global expert in online trust, safety and cybersecurity who has served as an advisor to the Council of Europe, Europol and Facebook, said, “It’s tempting to consider the future of AI as vertical, but technologies do not develop in vacuums. They enable, accelerate and even frustrate each other.

“For instance, further developments in large language models (LLMs) and machine learning will power the synthetic individuals, content creation, administration and enforcement that may make metaverses more compelling and better populated. Machine learning will also be integral to the (semi-)autonomy of smart-city infrastructure and the Massive Internet of Things and 5G/6G may accelerate the transition of AI to on-device and edge processing. Quantum computing is expected to greatly expand available processing power, which in turn could accelerate AI’s iterative evolution.

It’s tempting to consider the future of AI as vertical, but technologies do not develop in vacuums. They enable, accelerate and even frustrate each other.

“Envisaging a converged world is what I do in my cybersecurity futures exercises. The most recent of these, co-written by Rik Ferguson, is ‘Project 2030: Scenarios for the Future of Cybersecurity.’ A very brief excerpt follows from one of those 2030 scenarios. It describes the life of a fictitious woman named Resilia:

‘Instant access to the world’s knowledge has obviated the need to learn anything. Education is now focused on processing rather than acquiring knowledge. As a result, people increasingly know less objectively. … Algorithmic optimisation has become a key technology in the battle literally for hearts and minds. Search results are now the subjective truth; manipulating these is a target for those looking to spread disinformation and propaganda.

‘As more people have opted for [internet-connected] implants, it has raised the possibility of changing people’s belief systems more efficiently and more directly, for good or ill. Hyper-personalised headlines are delivered directly into Resilia’s field of vision. Constrained by the lenses’ character limits, mainstream news is now essentially clickbait, with added emotional engagement and the psychological impact of not being able to look away. Scammers and influence operators have been able to capitalise on the opportunities of a more captive audience. …

‘Increased teleworking has led to companies giving up expensive office space. Faced with downtown desertion and potential deprivation, so-called bright-flight, the city innovated at the expense of the out-of-town shopping malls. Rents were slashed for residential, recreational, social and creative uses, and there is now a vibrant leisure hub. They’re calling it recentrification. And, as the city centres are repopulated, the suburban sprawl is shrinking, leaving behind ghost districts and ghost suburbs. …

‘People’s digital versions of themselves have become so extensive as to require dedicated management. Resila uses a tool that broadcasts her privacy preferences to every service that requires her data. The tool grants permissions that are contextually sensitive, the data is homomorphically encrypted and only Resila has access to it. … Humans have now volunteered so much of their lives through self-generated content that archives for individuals have not only become necessary, they have resulted in digital selves that outlive the physical death of a person. What was once a collection of memories on social media is now a seemingly living thing. … Increasingly, these digital humans have agency, particularly as the physical and digital worlds combine. They engage in inappropriate behaviour and sometimes commit crimes like engaging in hate speech. Government authorities are now considering whether they are culpable and what appropriate enforcement measures might be for their illegal activities.

‘Grieving families, meanwhile, have sought the help of human rights lawyers to prevent their loved ones being switched off, or, in some cases, to enforce that they are.’”

Liza Loop
Humans’ scarcity mindset inhibits our willingness to embrace abundance

Liza Loop,educational technology pioneer, futurist, technical author and consultant, said, “I imagine positive, negative and middle-of-the road futures for the year 2040 without predicting whether or which are most likely to occur. Most significant, and a component in all three scenarios, is an increase in humanity’s ability to produce the goods and services necessary for individual human survival accompanied by a decrease in both environmental pollution and erosion of stocks of natural capital. This boils down to the potential for what has been called ‘the age of abundance.’ Let’s take a quick look at some positives and negatives while noting that an increase in our ability to do something does not imply that it is likely to happen.

“In the positive take, by 2040 ordinary people will have far more choices in lifestyle and decreased risk of dying from disease (genetic, environmental or contagious), exposure (to cold, heat, lack of food or water and poisons), or civil violence (either as widescale war, personal attack, or small-group terrorism). Accidental death may be unchanged or increase because some people may choose to take more risks. Death by abortion or infanticide is likely to be less frequent as we become more skilled at preventing conception.

“A survey of the living will reveal people will be enjoying a much broader range of lifestyles without the social stigma that was attached to many lifestyles in the 2020s. For example, voluntary ‘homelessness’ or ‘nomadism’ will be considered a valid choice at any age. Similarly, many more people are choosing ‘simplicity’ or ‘sparse’ paths in order to avoid the responsibility of caring for and storing possessions they don’t use every day even when they reside in one geographic location.

Optimistic future: With the decline of ‘owning stuff’ as the primary indicator of social status, there is a rise in acclaim for people who contribute by caring for others or by producing and donating artistic creations. The existence of Universal Basic Income and effective Universal Education permits social service workers, artists, adventurers and scholars to eschew wealth accumulation and focus on their avocations.

“With the decline of ‘owning stuff’ as the primary indicator of social status, there is a rise in acclaim for people who contribute by caring for others or by producing and donating artistic creations. The existence of Universal Basic Income and effective Universal Education permits social service workers, artists, adventurers and scholars to eschew wealth accumulation and focus on their avocations. At the same time, those who so choose are free to exercise the historic values of control of goods and services in excess of their ability to consume them.

“Lost in this scenario is the necessity for competition which many people in the 2020s still rely on as a primary motivator. Abundance is a condition where there are enough basic resources to eliminate zero-sum games and if-you-live-I-must-die conundrums. Under abundance, competition is only one of many lifestyle choices for humans.

“Another ‘loss’ I hope for by 2040 is the high value placed on large families. Rather than proud parents enjoying being surrounded by 10 of their own children, in 2040 a ‘family’ of 12 or 20 would include great grandparents and 3rd cousins as well as parents and children. This is an example of how a relatively small change in social attitudes can have profound effects on how humans impact the planet.

“A negative view of life in 2040 incorporates the trends and fears being discussed in 2023. Little has changed in our social and economic institutions which have led to further concentration of wealth and growing dysfunction in global civil society. The power brokers of 15 years ago have co-opted the increase in productive capacity enabled by AI without instituting compensating channels for redistribution of what has been produced. Stockpiles of consumer goods are targets to be ‘liberated.’

“The military-industrial complex survives on the demand generated by ongoing small wars that have not yet succeeded in destroying the worldwide productive infrastructure rather than on genuine human need. Population growth has continued apace resulting in an exponential rise in the number of humans living in extreme poverty, misery and despair. The ubiquity of video communication allows rising aspirations among the world’s poor as they are continuously exposed to narratives of luxury they cannot attain.

In a negative view, little has changed in our social and economic institutions which have led to further concentration of wealth and growing dysfunction in global civil society. …We will have continued to train AIs and each other that the goal of educating humans is to enable them to be successful competitors in the employment market at the same time that we are decreasing the demand for human muscle and brain power. Unemployment is rampant while employers lament the lack of adequately trained workers. This view is frighteningly likely, given that AGI is still way beyond the 2040 horizon. …If we continue to train both neural networks and semantic systems with rules, data and beliefs that sustained us during eons past but ignore today’s realities, we cannot blame the AIs for the result.

“Of particular interest to educators in this negative scenario is the lost opportunity to spread know-how among the less fortunate. High aspiration without the knowledge and skills to fulfill these wants decreases overall perception of well-being even under conditions of increasing availability of food, water, consumer goods and health care. In this negative future, we have continued to train AIs and each other that the goal of educating humans is to enable them to be successful competitors in the employment market at the same time that we are decreasing the demand for human muscle and brain power. Unemployment is rampant while employers lament the lack of adequately trained workers.

“This view is frighteningly likely, given that AGI is still way beyond the 2040 horizon. While there is no reason to anticipate that an AGI would spontaneously develop the competitive, amoral, greedy personality exhibited by some humans, there is also no reason to assume that guideposts against such an outcome will be put in place by today’s researchers and developers.

“Why do I envision these changes for 2040? It is because the environmental conditions under which humans evolved have changed while many of our socially reinforced values have lagged behind. Behaviors that were a ‘good fit’ for humans existing ‘in the wild’ no longer ensure our individual survival from birth to the time our children reach reproductive age. Like many other species, humans are able to produce many more offspring than they are able to nurture. By maintaining the belief that every child we are able to conceive is innately valuable and should have a right to life, we endanger ourselves and those with whom we share the planet.

“By relying on an economic theory founded on an assumption of scarcity, we inhibit our willingness to embrace abundance even in the face of the capacity to produce it. AI technology accelerates our productive capacity. However, if we continue to train both neural networks and semantic systems with rules, data, and beliefs that sustained us during eons past but ignore today’s realities, we cannot blame the AIs for the result.”

Maja Vujovic
Maybe we should substitute the word ’Enter’ on our keyboards with ’Please,’ just in case…

Maja Vujovic, owner, senior writer and trainer at Compass Communications, Belgrade, Serbia, said, “We’ve only had a couple of years in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to come to terms with what AI can do for us (or to us). In the cacophony of new apps now sprouting by the hour, three 2040 scenarios might immediately come to mind about the future of this technology.

“In Scenario One, advanced AI winds up simply being a bunch of tools that will massively improve our productivity, entertainment and healthcare. In Scenario Two, the use of this new tech is too pricey and inaccessible for individuals and thus restricted to secretive research at remote facilities under the auspices of governments and a handful of private players. And in Scenario Three we reckless brats have opened an AI Pandora’s box; it blows up in our faces and we die out.

“None of these scenarios will prove accurate. AI will most likely have a similar effect on our personal lives and our societies to how internal combustion engines have transformed our world over the last century and a half. Sure, there will be a few inventive individuals and teams who will fiddle with all the possible options and ideas for a while. However, it’s mindbogglingly expensive for AI to answer our (mostly lame) prompts. Just as large, cost-conscious car factories – Ford, GM, Citroën, Morris, Opel – gobbled up or wiped out tiny, tinkering car manufacturers in the early 20th century, in the same vein, the owners of large data-processing facilities – i.e. key cloud providers – will eventually choke off other AI developers in the first half of this century. Who hoards the servers and the data that AI uses as fuel? Mostly it is Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Rinse and repeat for China (Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba). No one of note in Europe. Yandex in Russia.

“What would trigger the AI industry’s tectonic transformation is a larger arms race. Mark Isambard Brunel patented and introduced stationary assembly-line machines in England, in 1802, during the Napoleonic Wars. In the U.S. in 1821, Thomas Blanchard pioneered the assembly-line style of mass production at an armory in Massachusetts. Server capacity and big data echo rubber, chromium and steel of yore. These were strictly rationed when, as of early 1942, U.S. auto manufacturers became government contractors and quickly converted their capacity to generate enough supply for the war effort.

“In case we soon opt to convert our cultural and political differences and our trade and financial rivalries into a full-blown world war, we can expect 90% of all AI capacity to be requisitioned by governments, which would have them crank up their output to an unprecedented level. If we survive that test as a species, all that capacity would then be converted back to civilian use. Only then could we expect to see mass-market AI apps that might transform our productivity the way that personal four-wheel vehicles transformed our mobility, at scale, after WWII. Only when the production of bombers and tank engines was no longer required at vast numbers of existing facilities could sedans and camper vans take their places in auto plants. And become affordable at last.

“Just as we learned to regulate the resulting motorized mayhem on our roads with speed limits, seatbelts and anti-lock brakes, we will develop rules and tools to control and contain AI. And we will also put up with this tech’s bad sides – e.g., job destruction, bias and hallucinations, to name a few – just as we collectively tolerate pollution, noise, roadkill and horrible harm from driving accidents.

We will develop rules and tools to control and contain AI. And we will also put up with this tech’s bad sides – e.g., job destruction, bias and hallucinations, to name a few – just as we collectively tolerate pollution, noise, roadkill and horrible harm from driving accidents. … Driven by human profit-seeking, AI will keep encroaching upon what used to be jobs for highly trained humans. While more and more of us struggle to earn a living, synthetic abilities will invade even our homes. … Hearing a real human voice in real-time could become a privilege fairly soon. … We will increasingly seek solitude and a reprieve from that obnoxious saturation of just-in-time information. Ironically, we might seek to escape into virtual worlds powered by AI.

“What we will see as a boon to us in the future is AI-driven, incredible productivity tools. Alas, they will not do much to reduce inequality or restore fairness in our societies. We port those flaws into the digital. A definite shift to digitized living is underway. The more our two worlds coexist, the more we will struggle to negotiate the strained relationship from day to day. Moreover, the neat, digitized layer of our lives will be in stark contrast with our increasingly more volatile real-world experiences. Freaky weather, mass emergency-driven migration, financial volatility, pandemics, cyber warfare – the disruptions in our analogue lives are becoming more frequent, more severe.

“Driven by human profit-seeking, AI will keep encroaching upon what used to be jobs for highly trained humans. While more and more of us struggle to earn a living, synthetic abilities will invade even our homes. We are already getting used to interacting with digital humans in entertainment and at work. The novelty of encountering them in ads, videos and news services is quickly fading. Our fridges, heaters and vehicles may chat us up ad nauseam, serving us the latest news flash and weather alerts, sports results or stock data, cleaning tips and pop star gossip, mixed with quotes, ads and memes – and our up-to-the minute shopping list. Hearing a real human voice in real-time could become a privilege fairly soon.

“Even if we opt out of such services, others around us will expose us to the Synths. Our teens will listen to a personal tutor; our senior parents will cajole their companions; our puppies will be house-trained by digital devices. We will increasingly seek solitude and a reprieve from that obnoxious saturation of just-in-time information. Ironically, we might seek to escape into virtual worlds powered by AI. Our sleep, intuition and creation will suffer, as we will struggle to drown out the echo of that constant information assault. Trying to remember where we learnt something will be exhausting, thus tools will be made to record all our impressions, resulting in more data about data and about us. There will be little relief from all the automated agents deployed to inform us, amuse us and keep us alert.

“We won’t need any grandiose artificial general intelligence to defeat us. A daily swarm of brainless Artificial Specific Intelligences will suffice. As for AGI, I doubt that thing is likely at all. We will surely develop many specialized replicas of it, a plethora of digital parrots on steroids that will regurgitate back to us everything they know, only tweaked a bit with many filters and flavours.

“What all of these tools don’t have – and where the biological common sense really resides – is emotions, in particular the hormones permeating everything that underlies our conscious selves. AI is not another species. It lacks the kind of instincts and sensations embedded in every living creature. But, just in case it does prove to be a new, advanced form of autonomous intelligence, let the record show I always said we should substitute the word ‘Enter’ our keyboards with ‘Please.’”

Alexa Raad
Blurred ‘truth’ and the erosion of trust are likely to deliver AI’s most significant impact

Alexa Raad, longtime technology executive and host of the TechSequences podcast, wrote, “By 2040 AI will permeate everything. It is highly likely that it will have passed the Turing test well before 2040. Many aspects of daily life will be easier and more efficient due to the integration of AI. A few areas in which I expect that AI will dominate with a more-positive balance of outcome are manufacturing, commerce, transportation, education, entertainment, healthcare and robotics.

• “Healthcare will be transformed: We will see greater AI integration into diagnostic and decision support tools. New treatments and drug designs will emerge. The process from conceptualizing a drug to its eventual placement in drug trials will be less expensive and timely and less prone to error. Disparate data sources can be combined to facilitate drug research and predict potential drug interactions and/or side effects. AI-based software tools such as AlphaFold from DeepMind have already expedited drug design by tackling complex problems such as predicting the 3D structure of a protein just from its 1D amino acid sequence. Graph Neural Networks can speed up tasks such as text classification and relation extraction. Cancer will be one area in which AI will make positive impacts for drug discovery due to the complexities inherent for human researchers in understanding all genetic variants of cancer and how they may respond to new drugs or protocols. AI will help in not only designing better drugs faster, but also in uncovering new drug combinations. AI will also positively impact patient management. Multi-modal conversational AI virtual assistants will streamline administrative tasks in patient access and engagement (for everything from scheduling to bill pay to patient record access). AI will improve patient monitoring and early detection by analyzing vast amounts of data from disparate sources such as wearable devices, patient records, genetic data, elf-reported data, third-party sources, etc. AI will improve accessibility and efficiency in telemedicine by enabling medical practitioners to triage patients more effectively, monitoring patients remotely for early detection and warning and increasing diagnostic accuracy. AI-powered surgical bots are poised to deliver real-time rich data to reduce complication rates, while AI-powered robots will be engaged to complete routine patient-care tasks and provide elder heath or companion services to address staffing shortage and turnover.
• “Manufacturing and Commerce: AI will dominate, manufacturing and commerce for both the merchant and the consumer in positive ways. The merchant can more accurately predict consumer demand, tailor prices, identify and respond to changes in consumer tastes and trends and better manage inventory and the supply chain. Merchants will be able to effectively target individual consumers with personalized products recommendations and offers. AI-powered drones will dominate delivery to the last mile. For the consumer, AI will deliver next-generation customer experience, with a highly tailored marketing, sales and customer-support experience. AI-powered shopping assistants will cater to unique customer needs such as finding the best offers or verifying product attributes (e.g., verifying authenticity or sustainability). Consumers will be able to virtually trial products in a way to mimic the actual use of the product and obtain individualized post-sales support.
• “Transportation: As smart cities become more commonplace, AI will help urban planners with common transportation-related problems such as traffic monitoring and road safety by analyzing real-time data from traffic sensors. They will increase vehicle and pedestrian safety, reduce congestion and optimize traffic flows. Drones will dominate last-mile delivery for e-commerce merchants.
• “Education: AI will positively transform both teaching and learning. AI will enable data-driven, personalized education plans for students in every stage of the education system. By 2040 advances in virtual reality (VR) and extended reality (XR) are powerful enough on their own, however the combination of AI and VR and XR will be a powerful force for transforming any formal or informal educational experience.
• “Entertainment: AI will deliver customized and immersive experience to consumers. The combination of AI with other technologies such as VR and XR will be highly immersive. It will be a cost-cutting boon, as studios will be able to quickly create background visuals, resurrect a famous actor from days gone by for a scene, correct audio and visual errors and speed up editing.
• “Robotics: By 2040 advances in robotics and AI will yield a full spectrum of AI-enabled robots to take over tasks considered mundane, repetitive, risky or undesirable. A variety of household robots will be available to take on domestic chores. In healthcare, robots will also be deployed for tasks such as executing precision surgery and providing companionship and eldercare. Much more sophisticated robots than those of today will be deployed for military and policing functions. We will very likely witness robot soldiers (in the military and as local police) that are as intelligent as humans and capable of handling various tasks, from reconnaissance to combat.

“Advances in and greater integration of AI will bring additional challenges to society overall by 2040, including a polluted information ecosystem and corresponding heightened risk to democracy and democratic institutions, greater economic inequity, loss of human interaction and agency, loss of privacy, increased cyberattacks and the dangers of cyberwar.

• “Disinformation and a polluted information ecosystem: The most significant negative consequence will be AI’s impact on the information ecosystem. According to a 2022 Pew Research poll, adults under 30 trust news from social media almost as much as news from national news outlets. Thus, the news-consumption preferences of the most tech-savvy swaths of the population create a highly effective target for disinformation campaigns. Declining media literacy, widening economic inequity and mass migration all create ideal conditions for social division that can be exploited by cleverly constructed disinformation campaigns. As AI-enabled tools become more prevalent and affordable, disinformation campaigns and computational propaganda will become more ‘normalized’ and commonplace, i.e., no longer the purview of nation-states or deep-pocketed bad actors. The ultimate impact will be the blurring of truth and fiction and the erosion of trust in democratic institutions such as elections and the justice system. This is the single most significant and worrisome consequence. AI and AI-powered algorithms can greatly influence how news is shaped, amplified and distributed in such a way to bring social divisions into sharper contrast. The current concentration of power in big tech (i.e., the fact that a handful of big tech platforms control how news and content are distributed) and their surveillance capitalism business model, are accelerators. Greater social manipulation will, in turn, lead to three negative outcomes: 1) Reduction of the public’s ability to discern the truth. 2) Erosion of trust in news and media. A free and independent media and a well-informed electorate are critical requirements for a functioning democracy. Still even assuming that both are present, there is an implicit assumption of trust in the free press by the public. Disinformation campaigns work long-term by eroding trust in all media, even those with rigorous journalistic standards. 3) Decline in critical thinking skills as the information eco-system gets more polluted and AI takes over more mundane tasks previously done by humans.
• “Economic Inequity: The adoption of AI will increase economic inequity and widen the digital divide, not only between the haves and the have-nots in society but also between the more-developed and less-developed nations. The climate crisis will result in mass migrations from less-developed nations to more-developed ones (especially in Europe) further exacerbating the divide. Widening socioeconomic inequity due to AI-driven job losses is a huge threat. Blue-collar manual-labor and repetitive jobs that are prone to labor shortages and high turnover will be a natural target for AI automation, but AI will also target white-collar jobs that have traditionally been more lucrative and stable. Jobs in software development, customer service, accounting, tax preparation and paralegal positions will disappear. Access to education and skills retraining is predicated on one’s socio-economic status. Employers must make adequate investments in upskilling their workforce now to prepare for the future.
• “Loss of Human Interaction and Agency: Some of the interactions with AI tools and systems will be a replacement of interactions that had previously taken place between individuals. An over-reliance in AI systems in lieu of human interaction, will affect socialization, especially of the youngest generation. Decreased socialization at this level will have consequences for larger human collectives in terms of social cohesion, understanding and conflict resolution. As AI systems take on decision-making roles, we will lose more human agency.
• “Loss of Privacy: Enough has already been written about the threat AI poses to privacy, that I will not focus on it here in too much detail other than to highlight it as one of the major negative consequences of advances in AI. The highest impact over individuals’ lives will be in regions already under the influence of state surveillance, especially in nation-states (such as China) that have far-reaching surveillance programs tracking their citizens. Advances in AI will further enable nation-states to closely surveil citizens, quickly identify and locate detractors and dissidents and take immediate punitive measures against anyone they consider antagonistic to their regime.
• “Cyberthreats: Cyberattacks will be far more complex and effective thanks to AI. We can fully expect that the existing asymmetry between the cyber defenders and the cyber attackers will be exacerbated as AI provides myriad new tools to bad actors. As quantum computing advances in the next few years, we will soon reach the capability of breaking today’s cryptographic algorithms, which would render all digital information protected by current encryption protocols open to attack.
• “Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems: This as an area in which the negatives will outweigh the positives for all of the reasons that have arisen out of intelligent public debate on all of the problematic issues tied to it. These systems pose unprecedented questions in multiple areas: ethics, governance, future of warfare etc. They also bring up traditional concerns (‘What if it is hacked?’ or ‘What if it goes rogue?’). Most worryingly though in a world fraught with religious, sectarian and regional conflicts, it has the potential to ignite an arms race.

“The adoption and uptake of AI systems requires the trust of users, which in turn depends on how well we address these core issues. 1) Accountability: ‘Who is accountable when a poor decision is made as the result of use of an AI-powered system?’ The decisions and recommendations of AI models cannot always be fully understood, nor explained (even by the developers of the system). Thus, establishing accountability and legal recourse will prove to be a challenge. 2) Fairness: ‘How can we be assured that we are not encoding bias and thus perpetuating discriminatory practices?’ 3) Transparency: ‘Are we transparent to the stakeholders regarding issues such as equity, privacy, security, interpretability and intellectual property?”