Nowadays, simply opening a website results in advertisements about AI features showing up, pressuring users to utilize artificial intelligence. These prominently displayed ads often highlight AI’s supposedly helpful features. However, while the advertisement of these allegedly beneficial features may seem harmless, AI promotion hides its harmful impact.
Artificial intelligence has many uses, such as a customer service tool and a question center. For example, CollegeVine advertises its AI college and high school counselor on the website’s main page. Collegevine’s AI is a question center that helps students make major life decisions. This use prevents students from making decisions for themselves despite the fact that these choices can drastically change people’s lives. While the use of AI as a question center can be harmful, its use as a customer service tool can be just as disadvantageous. AI’s use as a customer service tool is often advertised for its effectiveness in reducing the cost of monitoring production, completing necessary tasks, and helping employees, as well as its effectiveness in reducing users’ time spent asking questions and discussing solutions. Nevertheless, utilizing AI to discuss issues and solutions reduces human interaction and does not consider personal factors. Various human experiences and backgrounds provide different, unique perspectives that AI simply fails to recreate.
Artificial intelligence has another somewhat helpful use: providing writing advice and grammar corrections. However, the use of AI for writing help can harm users’ writing skills. Practicing editing and revising writing is significant in improving writing expertise as it allows writers to see what makes writing superb. It allows students to understand why their writing is received in a certain way and understand what they need to improve. Unfortunately, utilizing artificial intelligence for revising and editing writing removes this significant and beneficial process. Furthermore, AI can be used to create entire pieces of writing for people, such as essays. When people use this option, they fail to practice drafting work and writing, and they fail to refine their writing and editing skills.
In addition to being used to write, artificial intelligence is often used to answer questions and explain difficult concepts. For example, Chat GPT is often used by students to explain difficult concepts in math, science, and history. This can be helpful in improving students’ understanding of concepts when teachers are unavailable. However, AI is unfortunately not a reliable source. It frequently makes errors, and, more often than not, it makes up facts that are not true.
These negative drawbacks are concealed by the positive, favorable advertising that tends to be displayed on websites’ main pages. The failure to inform users of the harm they may be exposed to if they utilize AI makes the advertising of artificial intelligence dangerous. If websites continue to advertise this resource, they should provide warnings in order to inform users and reduce AI’s harm.