Marlene Makena
April 17, 2023
With every advancement of technology in the world, human beings continue to push the edge of possibilities in all aspects of life. The ease of doing otherwise difficult tasks has and will continue to increase just as the number of people required to do them decreases. It’s impossible to deny the fact that it’s a great time to be alive since never before have such mind-blowing technologies been seen before but yet again, how far do we go when we can hardy see the ledge?
Some of the most famous artificial intelligence advancements include self-driving cars, smart assistants, the currently trending chatgpt and so many more that we probably don’t even know about. As a wise individual once said, with great power comes great responsibility and this, this is ultimate power.
Did know that if you have ever uploaded a video of yourself speaking on the internet, this simple act has easily put you and your kin in jeopardy? Let’s get into tech mode shall we?
An AI system has been developed that has the ability to clone the vocal characteristics of a given individual simply by uploading a video of him or her speaking and voila! Version 2.0 of the person is created and no one knows except the AI guru who simply pressed an upload button on the given AI website. This is incredible of course since there are given instances where this would be a miracle. A task reduced almost by half. However, with light comes darkness and with good comes bad, and AI is no different when it comes to these polarities.
An example of the dark aspect of this technology took place in Arizona, USA; one that left everyone shocked and concerned over the regulation of AI and its inevitable misuse. Fraudsters employed artificial intelligence to replicate a teenager’s voice in order to coerce her mother into paying a ransom of 1M USD. In the mother’s interview, she explains that at no point did she doubt that it was her daughter as it was exactly how she would have spoken and sobbed. Luckily, she got into contact with her daughter in time before making any transactions.
Gone are the days that one received a text message or phony call that claimed to be aiding or harming them or their loved ones in an attempt to sweep their wallet. These sad attempts often fall on deaf ears as we all got accustomed to and even joke about them due to their high levels of mediocrity. Unfortunately, gone are the days when these were all we could worry about.
Allow me to say it once again. With great power comes great responsibility. It is only the beginning of a new age of enormous and incredible change in the world of tech which affects us all. If no one takes responsibility for the regulation and proper understanding of these changes, we might find ourselves in the reality where we’re living in our favorite sci-fi horror movie, fighting for our lives in an uphill battle against robots and supercomputers. Would there be a chance of our survival?
