COLORADO SPRINGS — Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work, and the expansion is becoming more evident through niche websites.
Certain websites are capable of generating specific content such as event fliers, books, and even drafting health insurance appeals. Experts say artificial intelligence has been around since the 1950s, but it started advancing rapidly in the past ten years.
“Eventually, AI will surpass human ability to do decision-making because it can look at so much more, so much faster,” said Pikes Peak State College Department Chair of Cybersecurity and Computer Networking Nathan Roskop.
However, the advancements are not without their own challenges and potential pitfalls.
“AI is not to be feared of in itself," Roskop said. "But because it can do things so much faster than humans can even think or blink, it allows bad people to take advantage of those things and find ways to take good technology and use it for bad.”
Roskop explains why it’s important to research if you see an app or a website that’s familiar to you.
“Let’s say you want to write a book," Roskop says. “You can ask AI, but you'll give it all of your ideas and have it try and refine it, but it’s taking that data and then it’s going to go use it for that bad company’s purpose. So, you really have to make sure you're dealing with a legitimate AI app or website that’s offering those AI services. I would start with the big companies. And then if there are some niche ones, if you absolutely need a niche one, look at it very thoroughly.”
Following the steps below can help you make an informed decision before using an AI website, according to Roskop.
- Checking a URL will let you know if a website is blacklisted or white-listed, which indicates good or bad domains. A couple of trusted websites to check URLs are Cloudflare and Sucuri, according to Roskop.
- Researching the site's popularity
- Check to see when the website was created
- Check to see if any viruses are associated with the link
Using this advice will help detect a potentially harmful website, but it’s not a fool-proof strategy as technology continues to evolve, Roskop says.
“It’s a lot harder now-a-days than it was in the old days for the consumers to know whether a website is a valid website," Roskop said. “Before you put in any information that is personal, I would make sure that you can trust the website. Unfortunately, even for people in the field, it’s not easy for us to detect.”
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