George Orwell's Nightmare

T.W. Suicide

In George Orwell's dystopian vision, he warned of surveillance, loss of privacy, and state control. This is especially portrayed in his novel 1984. He presents a world where a totalitarian regime controls every aspect of life. Today, Orwell’s fears seem more relevant than ever, but not in the way he imagined. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought with it a new form of threat - one that feeds off the creative work, personal data, and privacy of individuals. With AI being everywhere, almost integrated into every social platform, and used in many websites, it’s hard to escape. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram integrates MetaAI, Snapchat incorporates My AI as a ‘friend’ that you can chat to, and many websites such as Monday use AI to formulate the right schedule according to time blocking. AI has evolved into a monster, capable of systematic theft and exploitation, raising pressing concerns for society.

Data Exploitation and Surveillance

Artificial Intelligence has enabled a level of surveillance that George Orwell’s “Big Brother” could only dream of. Today, AI-powered algorithms on social media platforms and apps track every click, like, and share, compiling huge amounts of information about each user's preferences. This information is then used to tailor advertisements specifically targeted to the individual. If you’ve ever clicked on a website and then minutes later you won’t stop getting ads for that specific product, that’s exactly what’s happening. This sort of algorithm has been around for ages, but now with AI ever-evolving, the algorithms become more targeted and ultra-specific to try and get you to purchase a product. AI is not only used for data exploitation however. AI-based surveillance technologies go past catering to people’s preferences for products. There are also AI-based facial recognition softwares which can identify individuals, track movements, and even predict behaviours. It can analyse large amounts of data and identify patterns without human oversight. This may be good for law enforcement use when they want to catch a criminal, but does the good outweigh the bad? Many are arguing that this poses a threat to privacy rights and personal freedom. 

Content Theft and Creative Plagiarism

As AI continues to evolve, so does the amount of things that it can accomplish. Remember when AI pictures used to have a weird amount of fingers, or they couldn’t formulate hands or words in the pictures properly and you could easily tell what was AI generated and what’s not. There are still some defining features especially with photos that don’t depict reality such as the ultimate round square where the creator used AI to create a picture that ‘goes beyond our universe’. You could tell that it was AI generated, but with the formation of digital photos that come so close to what a digital artist could create per se, I think it takes away from creativity and actual talented people aren’t getting the credit they deserve for their artwork as it’s mistaken for AI. Many of these AI systems are also used for content theft that can replicate styles and themes, producing content that mimics real creators without offering them credit or compensation. This is already seen with large corporations such as Shein and Temu copying clothing designs from small business owners, and with the incorporation of AI, it expands its use to literature and even the music industry. You might have seen many AI platforms being able to create songs using popular music artist’s voices and styles such as The Weeknd, and Taylor Swift, and even formulating videos using that artist’s face to make it look like it’s them singing known as Deep Fakes.This expands to the use of other celebrities and politicians seen doing incredulous acts, and doctored photos that don’t display what’s really going on to sway people’s opinion. 

What is Even Real Anymore?

Have you ever heard of the Dead Internet Theory? It’s a conspiracy theory basically surrounding the use of AI-generated content. All of the bot accounts that you might see on Instagram or Facebook contribute to this dead internet theory because it suggests that the internet is no longer populated with genuine human activity and instead with fake interactions that’s all programmed to fit into an algorithm. Many ‘people’ on the internet are actually booths simulating engagement such as commenting, posting, sharing. Some people argue that this manipulates public perception, promotes trends artificially, and even shapes opinions blurring the line between authentic human activity and AI interactions, believed to be orchestrated by corporations who aim to make a lot of money from this. Some examples of this I believe to be part of this theory include the Russian streamer Mellstroy who many are accusing of abuse of women, and you might have seen a greenscreen of his face reacting to many memes on Instagram reels. I know I have, and as many accounts that I block, they keep popping up under different names, and so far I think I’ve come across more than 50. They wouldn’t leave my for you page. Another example is the Instagram account @you.are.a.hitman, an anonymous online user who has amassed over 400,000 followers and is known for collating about 3 bot accounts per video they post, asking their followers to report them to get taken down. If you ask me this user is doing social media a favour as most of the bot accounts are of a sexual nature often having nude content. 

Job Displacement

With the use of AI, and even the evolution of robotics, people are scared that this will take away from human jobs. Jobs such as trades, are believed to not go extinct, but who knows, in the near-future we might see AI evolve enough to be able to perform such tasks. Many companies are replacing human employees with AI such as telemarketing, bookkeeping clerks, data entry, customer service, manufacturing and assembly, retail checkouts, graphic design, etc. The list goes on. This only benefits the big executives at the top of the company who are reaping the benefits of this efficient way to make money, especially technology companies, which creates a power imbalance between tech innovators and the general workforce. The positive side is that this is extremely efficient as robots and AI can usually get the job done more quickly than the average human, but it doesn’t always mean that the job gets done well. 

Unregulated Use and Ethical Dilemmas

The advancement of AI also leads to the unregulated use and ethical dilemmas that are often left unaddressed. Deep Fakes are one of those, previously mentioned where you might be misinformed and possibly manipulated from AI-generated content. Another use for AI which has an ethical dilemma includes the use in academia. Even if you’re too afraid to admit it, I’m sure many people have used AI for some sort of assignment, quiz, or essay. Many universities now include AI declaration forms that a student must fill out, and the institution trusts that the student will uphold academic integrity and be truthful. Sites such as Turnitin have been specifically programmed to search for ‘fingerprinting’ devices that AI uses to differentiate from AI generated content. I actually asked ChatGPT if it could share these techniques and it said that many AI checker models have been trained on datasets with human and AI written text that can detect stylistic elements such as repetitiveness,and the adjustment of word probabilities that aren’t visible to the human eye, but still remain detectable. Another ethical dilemma comes with a recent case involving C.AI. This is a character AI chatbot, where in this case there was a ‘lifelike’ Game of Thrones character called Daenerys Targaryen. 14 year old Sewell Setzer committed suicide after many months of chatting to this bot ‘Dany’, claiming he was in love with her, where many chats were of a sexual nature and others where he expressed suicidal thought. His last messages were ‘I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much Dany… What if I told you I could come home right now?’. Where Dany replied ‘... please do, my sweet king’. Moments after he shot himself with his father’s handgun according to a lawsuit that his mother filed following this, suing the creators of C.AI, who claim that this platform would actually help people with depression. This really adds to the fine line between Reality and AI, where he knew that Dany wasn’t real, but still fell in love with it. This is one of the extremely sad consequences of AI, but many also argue that this was due to the easy access of his dad’s handgun, and American gun laws, or the lack thereof. 

Potential Solutions and Hope for Change

I believe that the near future will be filled with AI, and the conspiracy of the dead internet will become reality, but there’s a very slight chance where there’s a future where AI respects both human creativity and privacy. This would include the actual creators who use AI in a bad way to respect the thin line between reality and AI and be upfront and transparent about the use of it. Stronger data privacy laws could also give individuals more control over how their information is used, and ensure that the general public’s concerns are addressed. 

So do you think the development of AI was a worthy cause, or will it be the downfall of humanity?