Not that im defending anyone here but couldn't almost anything be misused for nafarious purposes?
AI is a general-purpose accelerant and force multiplier. It provides a mechanism for automating and deploying at scale, a set of attacks on our society, against which we have little experience and almost no defense—nor even any good means of detecting, at least not until post-mortem forensics.
The most obvious harmful avenue for this is venal criminality (which will be awful) but the real danger is in the political sphere.
There is already widespread use of AI for disinformation purposes in e.g. the Ukraine war.
I have been saying for the last N months or so, my immediate concern with AI is not AGI but augmented intelligence applications which are leveraged enough to be destabilizing.
In specific, I believe the 2024 election cycle in the US will be decided by AI.
We aren't ready for this.
Hell no. You are probably thinking about things like 'misinformation'. Let me tell you that all such concerns are totally unfounded:
People just buy into whatever already fits their existing bias. Even if they are lies or proven lies. They don't care if something was a lie. If there is more stuff that confirms their existing bias, they will shout louder. If there is less, they will shout less. But they will still vote the same way.
So when the 2024 elections happen and there is a lot of misinformation, everyone will just buy into ! whatever ! confirms their existing bias - be it truth or be it a lie - and vote in the exact same manner they were going to do before that misinformation.
While this reduces the concerns about misinformation and/or the effects of the AI, it also suggests that objective politics is difficult because people are not affected by facts, truth, or even their own prior experiences.
Electric cars have no direct emissions but increase mining operations in certain parts of the world. Or they can be used to plow through a public gathering of people. Or with some rewiring to electrocute someone to death. If you think hard enough, you can find nefarious purposes for almost any household item that's made your life easier.
I think what's important to focus on are the "net" benefits but the outliers feed into our emotional response.
The reason outliers feed our emotional response is a survival/skin in the game mechanism. Parroting Taleb, all it takes in ruin once and the game stops. It’s not unreasonable to be hyper focused on reducing long tail risks with potentially catastrophic and unknown results. Caution and fear is warranted here.
As in children digging in pitch black mine shafts with their hands. Sometimes referred to as "Artisanal Mines"