AI holds tremendous potential to benefit companies and empower their growth. However, it comes with numerous risks. These risks include being biased to operational and IT risks to job eliminations. The worst part is that if something does not work properly, the liability falls on the employee who works on this technology. For such challenges, business executives need to focus on the best practices that can help in the effective adoption of AI in business.
No doubt, the power today’s technologies bring is mind-blowing, and AI tools like ChatGPT are the best example of this. The text it generates is easy to understand and well-scripted. It perfectly fits the purpose. But there have been cases where the users tried to create code that could be used for questionable, maybe wrong, purposes. Although the accounts that made such requests have been blocked.
Companies need to understand that this technology is still young and will become better day by day. However, the AI challenges business executives are facing need to be acknowledged and addressed. Here, we will take a closer look at the top 7 AI threats to a business right now.
- Inaccurate Result
More than 100 million people downloaded OpenAI’s ChatGPT software in just two months after it launched. It was followed by a flood of related products, including chatbots, text generators for websites, tools for scheduling, designers for presentations, and even code. However, ChatGPT and other big language models have an impact by having some very significant accuracy issues.
Even though ChatGPT-4’s developers assert that, compared to its previous versions, it is now 40% more likely to generate “factual responses,” issues still exist. The system can make logical mistakes and is frequently confidently incorrect since it lacks information about events that have occurred since September 2021.
Several developers have tried generating code with ChatGPT and discovered that it is also prone to errors.
- Intellectual Property and Legal Risks
It is especially challenging to track the source of a data source or the source of an AI error (i.e., in the case of hallucinations). Then there are the significant issues around intellectual property (IP). Who owns the intellectual property (IP) if AI uses data models that are lifted from works of art, music, or software? AI removes the middleman between IP owners. When someone searches on Google, it usually returns a link to the IP’s original creator or source; this is not the case with artificial intelligence.
Additional issues include discrimination, prejudice in data, privacy, security, and ethics. deepfakes. When someone makes a convincing copy of you, who is the rightful owner? It is going to be very tough to prove yourself.
Therefore, due to the legal and liability nightmare that this is, some companies have prohibited the use of AI technologies like ChatGPT.
- Replacement of Human Jobs
In mid-January, Microsoft shared that it would lay off 10,000 workers worldwide, or less than 5% of its total staff. With its payroll software, the US-based company can track 18,000 employees in India alone. The announcement of the layoff plan followed rumors that Microsoft was in talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, as part of capital that would value the company at $29 billion.
This is the best example to show how tasks and jobs will be automated by AI, which could result in job losses and labor displacement. Businesses may save money as a result, but there may also be social and economic upheaval, especially in regions where a sizable section of the labor force may be displaced by AI.
- Privacy Violations in Data
Your data is collected whether you experiment with AI chatbots or AI face filters online, but where is this data going and how will it be used? To personalize user experiences or help in training the AI models you’re using, AI systems often gather personal data (especially if the AI tool is free). Given that one ChatGPT bug event in 2023 “allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history,” data provided to an AI system may not even be deemed secure by other users. Although several state laws in the US protect personal data, there isn’t a specific federal statute that does so.
- AI is Biased
You would be surprised to know, but AI is biased. Apart from data and algorithmic bias (which has the potential to “amplify” the former), artificial intelligence is created by humans, and humans are biased by nature.
A.I. researchers are mostly men; they are members of specific racial groups with high socioeconomic region upbringings and the absence of disabilities.
The limited knowledge base of AI developers may help to explain why certain dialects and accents are difficult for voice recognition AI to understand or why businesses overlook the potential repercussions of a chatbot posing as well-known historical individuals. Companies need to exercise strong caution to prevent the replication of strong biases and prejudices that harm minority communities.
- AI-Powered Social Manipulation
Artificial intelligence also poses the risk of social manipulation. With politicians using platforms to advance their agendas, this worry has come to an end.
With AI-generated photos and videos, AI voice changers, and deepfakes penetrating the political and social domains, online media and news have become even more ambiguous. These technologies help in creating lifelike images, movies, and audio snippets, and the replacement of a figure’s image in an already-existing image or video. Bad actors now have a new channel to spread false information and war propaganda, which is a nightmare. It is almost impossible to differentiate between genuine and fake news.
- Lack of Transparency
AI systems have historically been referred to as “black boxes,” meaning that it is either impossible or very difficult for enterprises to understand how the system came to a given conclusion.
The complexity and opaqueness of AI systems increase with sophistication, making it challenging to comprehend how they make certain decisions. For firms, this lack of transparency can result in several problems.
A primary hazard linked to artificial intelligence is the absence of transparency in the process of making decisions. Many AI systems, particularly those using deep learning techniques, make it difficult or impossible for humans to understand how the system arrived at a particular decision.
How to Avoid These AI Threats and Embrace AI
AI has a lot of advantages that may easily exceed its drawbacks. Nonetheless, there are methods to boost AI’s security without sacrificing its efficacy, making it a useful instrument for boosting sales and profits.
Make sure the AI system converts the company’s values into development and is built with security in mind. As of right now, there isn’t a framework that is widely acknowledged to encourage responsible AI.
Becsue of the technology’s reliance on the quality of the data it is trained on, errors may arise that have serious consequences. Furthermore, AI systems might not be able to manage unfamiliar or unexpected circumstances. Therefore, to avoid inflicting harm, human intervention is required.
Due to its limits, AI technology may be destructive or economically inefficient when used in some situations. Verify again whether the use case is appropriate for AI.
Final Thoughts
Overall, AI presents small enterprises with both opportunities and threats. Even if AI can completely change the workforce market and remove some monotonous work, it can also help small businesses reduce expenses overall, improve their products and services, and streamline their operations.
Small firms must understand the possible drawbacks and advantages of artificial intelligence. Companies that want to implement it must be proactive. They can lessen the AI threats to business and take advantage of the many opportunities AI has to offer by doing this.
That’s all for now. We hope the article will help you understand the power of AI for businesses and how to use it correctly. Often visit our website to delve deeper and read about entrepreneurship, technology, leadership, and other motivational entrepreneur success stories.
