The Alarming Rate of Development of AI
“Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background. The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.”
-From the Sora website
Content creators are thrilled by the introduction of Sora and Dall-E, two recent innovative AI tools that generate videos and images, respectively, based on prompts (think ChatGPT that produces videos instead of texts). These new innovations will not only help users generate hyper-realistic videos for their personal entertainment, but also, they will serve as valuable educational resources and tools. What used to be taught verbally with textbooks will now be taught visually through virtual reality, enhancing students’ learning experience.
Instead of memorizing and regurgitating various historical events recorded in textbooks, from the Renaissance to World War I, students will now be able to learn visually as AI tools such as Sora will create videos of the historical incidents, helping students engage more. Instead of struggling to grasp the concept of cells by reading descriptions in biology textbooks, students can now easily understand the nature of cells by watching videos that Sora creates instantly. AI will change the landscape of education, providing students with experiential learning experiences.
However, despite the benefits that Sora offers, it raises ethical concerns, which include faking content such as impersonating someone, framing people, reproducing the same problems, and creating controversies. Given that AI generates information based on the responses formulated by human users, AI engines, including Sora, are prone to recreate discriminatory and biased information. Just as ChatGPT produces responses that may be one-sided and biased, Sora may generate visuals that are stereotypical. Additionally, Sora may cause problems similar to “DeepFake” engines, producing fake news, hoaxes, bullying, financial fraud, and sexual abuse. Sora is also capable of generating videos how it sees fit, potentially causing accountability issues as our control over what the engine is able to generate is very minimal. If we were to use AI with such possibilities such as Sora, it needs to be restricted or have many precautions in place to prevent aforementioned unethical and controversial issues.
Our society will be continuously and increasingly dependent on technology, especially AI. However, with all this rapidly increasing amount of technology comes even more ethical issues and choices that have serious impacts on humanity if mistreated. The once unrealistic sounding fate of AI becoming too intelligent and independent past our imaginations has become imminent, and abuse of AI to result in devastating consequences against humanity will become an even bigger problem. For now, we need to be wary of the risks of the rise of technology and understand that convenience comes with a large cost.
