In general, artificial intelligence is associated mainly with smart machines, robots, and self-driving vehicles. Nowadays, face recognition technologies, natural language text processing, and the Internet are very well developed and serve for the benefit of humanity. However, many people fear that AI technologies may be used against people. Read about five main potential threats of AI in our photo gallery.

Autonomous weaponization

Artificial intelligence can be programmed for any type of action. For instance, autonomous weaponization can be set to kill. This poses a real threat. Scientists fear that the world nuclear race could develop into a war of autonomous weapons in case artificial intelligence becomes a weapon in the hands of the government with no value of human life.

Public opinion manipulation

Today, social networks are a powerful tool for targeted marketing due to automatic algorithms. Thus, social networks know all your preferences and can even guess your thoughts. A vivid example is the case of Cambridge Analytica which used data from 500 million Facebook users to predict the US presidential election results in 2016 and the results of the Brexit referendum in the UK. AI can spread propaganda or any other kind of information using algorithms and personal data and effectively shaping public opinion.

Invasion of privacy

Nowadays, it has become pretty simple to track and analyze every step of a person on the Internet. Authorities can get all the information regarding both business and private life. Cameras are installed everywhere, and a face recognition system will quickly identify you. Experts fear that such invasion of privacy can turn out harmful to a human life.

Goals mismatch

Artificial intelligence machines are very popular because of their efficiency and convenience. However, if the machine is not set for particular goals, AI can misinterpret the task. For example, if the traffic rules are not set in an autonomous vehicle, this can lead to an accident on the road.

Discrimination

Since AI machines can gather, track and analyze all personal data, any registered violation of the rules can be used against you during a job interview or by an insurance company. Although today the AI capacity is being used to good purpose, there is always a risk of applying it with evil intentions.