It’s hard to turn on the radio or read a newspaper and not hear about artificial intelligence. The computer driven technology generates data that can be mistaken for something done by a human being. It can be in the form of images or audio and that’s just for starters. There’s the apparent worry over jobs being lost to AI, or false messages swaying public opinion. That’s when artificial intelligence is here. Another concern is if AI were to suddenly go away. APR took a look into one way that might happen.
Anytime a journalist writes about artificial intelligence, it's easy to get wonky or go down a rabbit hole. The notion of AI collapse can be especially so. To avoid that, I talk to people who know a thing or two about it.
“I'm Zandra Kubota. I am a software developer and former English major, so career changer.”
Kubota works for a company called new camp. It's a sort of boot camp for cyber security and website development, and Kubota says AI comes up a lot, so new camp has made a new course just for learning about it. Artificial intelligence works by taking what human beings do and reshuffling and reusing that data. Kubota says that's when AI works right. But what happens when it goes wrong.
“Example, yeah, a snake can't survive eating its own tail eventually, you know, it's gonna it's gonna eat itself,” Kubota said.
The snake reference that Kubota is using refers to when AI borrows so much data that it starts borrowing from itself. That's why some people are worried. It's also central to the story. High tech observers have a name for this problem. They call it “AI collapse.” By that, they mean when the AI falls apart.
“It's kind of feel like it's being forced on us at this point,” said Dawson Sconyers. He’s a student at UA who is part of the university's AI club. He feels stuck in the middle between wanting to use AI but not relying on it as heavily as others do. Or companies want people to do.
“A lot of these companies have invested billions of dollars into it,” Sconyers observed. “And so, like, for example, when you go on Google and you type something up, like, even if you don't want AI summary, half the time, the top third of the page is just an AI summary. And there's like, a button to press AI mode, and when you didn't want that.”
The possibility of AI collapse also appears to be generating economic concerns as well. The website DBA lists four Alabama companies hip deep in Artificial Intelligence, they use the technology in healthcare or in managing fleets of vehicles. And then there's Huntsville. Alabama's Rocket City is home to businesses and cybersecurity and defense contracts. That's where Zandra Kubota says it could be an issue.
“Any Huntsville local businesses that are using chatbots, we see a huge influx of AI generated data online or articles, entire books that you'll see pop up on Amazon in like five minutes, entire video series that you'll see on YouTube that are clearly completely AI generated,” she said.
And Kubota isn't the only person keeping an eye on AI collapse.
“I think, I think it's important to use AI. I think important we do research on it. We cannot stay behind on this anywhere,” said Shahran Rahimi. He is a professor and department head for Computer Science at the University of Alabama. He has also done research for many years on AI.
“You're concerned that now we are going to continue reprocessing the contents that is generated by models with the models and continue that cycle, which could cause, you know, intensive lack of creativity. And in fact, in a way, we call it overfeeding.”
Just because Rahimi is watching AI collapse doesn't mean he's necessarily worried about it. He isn't, at least not right now.
“So I think still is early to be concerned about this. I think with all the new creations and hybrids and models that's going to happen,” he said. “This might not be an issue, necessarily, if research for AI continues and resources are focused on preventing AI collapse.”
The hope is that this crash can be prevented before it truly happens. Then there are people who feel stuck in the middle about AI.
“Especially on campuses here, people just blindly use AI just to solve everything they do,” said Dawson Sconyers. We met him earlier in our story, as in an academic issue with him. He's concerned about AI drawing all the oxygen out of the room for upcoming college grads like himself. Conyers believes if he and his classmates aren't careful, the world might change all around them, and he says there's too much reliance on AI.
“Kind of, in a couple years, you're gonna have people graduating who really didn't learn anything, and that could be detrimental to the workforce,” Sconyers speculated.
There are published reports of AI scooping up jobs that used to go to upcoming college grads like Conyers that could be something else that people like him are worried about.
