Question: Why are people so scared of technology and AI?

Neil Barnby answered on 3 Jul 2024:

There are several reasons people are scared of technology and AI. Firstly, people are often scared or sceptical about things they do not understand and this fear is often fuelled by movies made about the subject. However, often as people get to know the technology, they can start to accept it especially when they can see it making their lives easier.
Also people are afraid that technology will take their jobs and make them redundant. This is usually something that happens as technology can make processes faster and more efficient. However, technology, including AI, also will create new jobs. For instance, jobs such as computer engineer, data scientist, software developer, data engineer and technical architect did not exist before computers became popular. When the internet came out people worried about it taking jobs and it did, but it also created more jobs than it took. My job did not exist five years ago.
Finally people are scared technology and AI will take over the world. Many films also fuel this one too. This is one that has many people scared because of the way that the technology and its development is being portrayed in the media. There is talk of how AI can get better pass marks on exams than people, how it can win at games like chess and how powerful it is in its ‘thinking’. This is based of half truths. AI can play games well and get better marks on exams, but you would be able to get great marks if you could look up the answers on the internet too and you would be good at games if you practiced a lot. AI can do these things because the speed at which it works is incredible fast and it is only as good as the data fed into it. AI is just maths at its core, it does not ‘think’ or reason. The AI everyone is getting mixed up with and thinking it will take over the world is AGI or Artificial General Intelligence and we do not have that yet and nobody knows if or when we might get there. The AI we have today is called narrow AI and is made for specific tasks such as creating images or helping you choose what film to watch next on Netflix.