Artificial Intelligence and Modern Society: A Sociological Interrogation of the Sprawling Social Threats

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming the cornerstone of all strands of society: governance, business, banking, weaponry, hi-tech, general manufacturing, etc. With a high guarantee for organisational efficiency across civilian and military industrial complexes, as exemplified by the increased degree of precision and delivery of variants of AI-automated lethal autonomous weapons, among others, artificial intelligence has come to offer the modern society rare services and commodities at the least cost. Despite the gains, there are emerging threats all around the process, and society, as the centre of it all, is increasingly confronted with the glaring absence of comprehensive AI social safeguards against any potential devastation in the event of errors, omissions, or designs in the handling or delivery of variants of AI-automated lethal autonomous weapons. The central question is: how safe is humanity in an AI-dominated world? The paper critically analysed the multi-dimensional threat fronts of artificial intelligence in general and lethal autonomous weapons in particular and found that, though society has indeed a lot to gain from the technology, it is not without safeguards against the threats of its possible devastation, which are becoming more real every day. It is thus recommended that cost-benefit analysis be deeply entrenched into the whole process of development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons and other forms of artificial intelligence so as to continually increase the gains and contain the excesses that open every aspect of human society to threats.