Oreo
AI is here to stay, I think we can all comprehend the dangers and the positives of it.What it does need is regulation.
Artificial Intelligence (I wish its initials were not the same as those of artificial insemination) has immense power for good and ill, and power without responsibility is a dangerous weapon.
On the side of the angels, AI can absorb factual information and categorise the data and search through it for statistics and conclusions in nano-seconds which would take a human being a lifetime of work. It can carry out a surgical operation more accurately than a top surgeon, and do it from thousands of miles away. It can operate a vast warehouse using automatic vehicles that locate items, retrieve them, pack and despatch them. It can manufacture items from basic materials to finished product.
All of these require the AI system to have minute information in the form of a database of the measurements, spatial co-ordinates, chemical nature, functions, and so on of what it is physically working with, or of the theoretical base and the history of the philosophies and debates which it is analysing for a decision on a political change or the previous history of an individual for whom it is planning to pursue a criminal charge.
However, it makes draconian decisions, and can't be questioned on them, reminding me of the definition of a bureaucratic committee - it has no heart to appeal to and no backside to kick.
These databases have been created, assembled, added to and stored by human hands, with all the potential for mistakes, omissions, unremoved out-of-date facts, and bias or downright malice on the part of the collator. Then, once they have digested by the AI system, they become part of the system's "reality". - on which life-or-death decisions are made.
A national police force is also a power for good or evil, but in most countries there are restraints on how that power is exercised, so that it can't be used as an instrument of political oppression, and internationally, there are restraints on how one country can use its army to control a separate country.
However, AI is invisible. It doesn't roll up at 3 am in an unmarked car to arrest a sleeping family on a charge of some vague misdemeanor and shut them up, never to be seen again. It doesn't fly above the clouds in a formation of military jets and bomb the bejasus out of a foreign country. It doesn't rob banks and carry sacks of money and jewels to a robber baron's hideout. Yet those who control the data which fuels the country's AI systems and the programming by which the AI engines run can achieve the same results, by influencing the assumptions on which votes are cast and decisions made.
In the service of the propaganda department, AI (or rather, the users of it) can manipulate the masses of images, videos texts, articles, that have been collected and use them to win the hearts and minds of the population of the country it wishes to control. There are more ways than one to control the views, allegiances, votes and particularly the spending power of a population. In these days of almost instant global trade, it isn't necessary to invade a country physically to plunder its wealth and resources. You can do it while they sit watching TV or surfing the web.