Artificial Intelligence. Benefits, Applications, Risks and Costs

AI is not a novel, unprecedent, revolution in human experience. Other innovations, such as spoken language, writing, electricity, the steam engine, telecommunications, have previously extended our capacities. At the beginning, predictions as to the impact of AI were very different as from different sources. This can be largely justified by the fact that the consequences of AI are indeed manifold. Its applications are numerous, spacing from early diagnosis of diseases in healthcare to a range of financial applications - like early detection of fraud in financial institutions, auditing, anti-money laundering and AI-managed portfolios - education (for changing the way of learning of people, the use of AI in media, such as in The Associated Press’ use of automated insights; producing earning reports stories; personalised learning; written language translation and speech translation technology to convert one language’s spoken words into another). Together with positive applications, however, many risks derive from AI, such as: lack of transparency, bias and discrimination, privacy concerns, ethical dilemmas, security risks, concentration of power, etc. Circumstances influencing the nature of effects of AI on growth and employment depend to a large extent on institutions and policies.