AI Is Now the Number One Global Emerging Risk
The AI honeymoon is over!
Gartner lays out the World’s emerging risks and finds that AI takes the top spot!
This reinforces my view that we are marching blindly into a new AI world, led by the siren song of hype and promises of a new utopia from big tech and consultants.
The sad reality is that AI’s dystopian side only comes out in risk analyses like this because these people aren’t selling AI but trying to understand its impact.
AI takes two of the top five spots on the risk scale, but it is interesting that it also acts as an “amplifier” for political and economic risks.
AI’s interdependence with other risks and ability to amplify would seem a clear mandate for AI regulations and laws NOW, not later.
👉TAKEAWAYS
AI has two risks in the top five:
🔹AI-Assisted Misinformation (No. 1 risk)
▻Root Cause: Amplified echo chambers. Social networks, industry cohorts and peer groups allow misinformation to perpetrate and gain credibility among an individual’s existing networks, amplifying the potential for further transmission.
▻Potentital Consequences: Organizations face frequent internal (e.g., employees, board) and external (e.g., investors, clients) pressure on issues that are not directly related to the organization’s goals, operations or performance.
🔹AI-Enhanced Malicious Attacks: (No. 5 risk)
▻Root Cause: Enhanced AI-enabled cyberattack capabilities provide more sophisticated capabilities (e.g., automated code generation and target identification for phishing), enabling better intrusion and more damaging attacks.
▻Potentital Consequences: Frequent and better-executed attacks hit a wider array of targets, including ones that were previously less vulnerable to conventionally created malware attacks.
Emerging Risk Misalignment and Blind Spots
👊STRAIGHT TALK👊
AI keeps winning awards, although this one is a far more dubious win than most!
Gartner is a tech company and some may claim that AI winning the top spot shows their bias toward seeing risk through the lens of technology.
That may be true, but a review of the twenty risks they considered shows that only six of the twenty risks they considered were technological.
So, where does this leave us?
Gartner suggests that if well-handled, at least some of these risks present strategic opportunities.
Heading off problems like AI misalignment or AI IP loss before they become a crisis would seem to be simply good business. Still, many others, like extreme heat or threats to maritime shipping, leave managers with few opportunities.
Big tech is already fighting AI regulation, even though it is already a leading global player in terms of risk. Frankly, I’m speechless, but let’s end this on an upbeat!
Congratulations, AI, you’re number one!
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