I was recently asked to write a short paid article on the risk of AI.

It's my belief that we’re at a precipice with AI that is being shepherded by the few but will impact the many.

So let’s maybe explore that, and what the hell we’re talking about to begin with. Literally.

Focusing on a narrow set of risks because they are in front of us right now, rather than an infinitely bigger set of risks because they seem too far away is itself the biggest risk with the current trajectory of AI development and discourse.

In fact some very well regarded ‘experts’ are starting to be very vocal about this, unfortunately to largely deaf ears.

So experts are trying to draw our attention to the 3 main risks with AI. Each with their own time scale, each a little more mundane (but devastating) than we’ve historically thought about when it comes to the risk of AI.

So in part three we’ll look at those ‘mundane’ risks, and how they may disrupt our world unrecognisably.

The most likely (and arguably best case) is that we’re merely at the point of something that will see the same amount of societal upheaval as the industrial revolution.

Which brings us nicely to part 4 in this series, has history showed us that tech isn’t the problem, humans are?

Cool. So far so bleak (maybe). But what does this mean for me and my daily coffee trip? Is it really the end of the world or my job as we know it?

In part 5 (the final for now) of this series we’ll ask ourselves is this is maybe all just a touch hyperbolic.