Too much focus on ChatGPT in this thread. That isn't the arena where AI is going to be a risk factor. Sure misinformation, disemination of false truths etc is a problem but it's one reasonably easily handled by putting in legislation enforcing that all AI generated content is clearly labelled as such (both visually for humans to see and internally so other AI bots know it's AI generated).
The real risk from AI (even it's it's current phase which is really just machine learning, as has been said in this thread), is that it puts human jobs at risk, it has the potential to accelerate development of all manner of things both good and bad (vaccine or inccurable virus - take your pick etc).
The low academic acheivers of this world are already limited to stacking shelves down your local supermarket etc, that's not going to change, what will happen (and very quickly if employers - particularly tech ones - have their way), is that middling academic acheivers that currently make up the bulk of the office work force will be made redundant as there will be far far fewer positions reqiured once their job is enhanced through the use of AI. That means the majority of jobs that will be available in a given work environment will be the high tech ones, (such as those helping to develop AI ironically), all of which require high academic acheivement to fulfill. Sure it would be great to live in a world where nobody has to work, if they were just given money by the state etc due to the wealth being created by AI and a small minority of people, but that's not what the reality will look like. It'll be huge numbers of unemployed people being given miserly hand outs that are barely above subsistence level. With the inevitable huge increase in crime etc.
www.theguardian.com
