OPINION - I thought AI would come for our jobs, but it's worse than that: it wants to be our friend

The Government has announced the newly rebranded AI Security Institute will no longer focus on ‘bias or freedom of speech’ concerns, concentrating instead on crime and national security (Alamy/PA) -

Like a lot of people in the creative industries, my major concern with AI would further devalue our skill sets and suck up our jobs. But recent developments suggest something far more sinister — it wants to be our imaginary best friend. And it’s going to get seriously good at it.

The latest ChatGPT-4o rollout showed its hand, badly. Even enthusiastic users grew suspicious when the large language model (LLM) chatbot started blowing an unreasonable amount of smoke up their behinds. One user asked for feedback for a business idea selling “poop on a stick”, only to be enthusiastically reassured the idea was “genius” and they should invest $30k in the venture.