Story by Opinion Editor Grace VanHaitsma

In the horror-comedy film M3GAN, Artificial Intelligence is pushed to its limit as M3GAN, a lifelike AI doll, goes from a friend for lonely child Cady to a serial killer. Though the movie has gotten a lot of praise and attention online for its funny, campy moments, there truly is something scary about the AI doll at the center. 

M3GAN is not the first movie about the dangers of AI, nor will it be the last. As our society relies more on technology and AI becomes a part of our everyday lives, it makes sense for Hollywood to capitalize on this and turn it into horror. When we are just going through the motions, it is easy to not overthink the role AI and technology plays in our lives. But when we put more thought into it, how much we rely on AI is kind of scary. Work that was once done by humans can now be done by robots, and this is not likely to change anytime soon. 

In addition, people are now relying on things like AI to do homework. ChatGPT has recently gained popularity as a way for students to write papers through using AI. However, this can be faulty as AI is not perfect and this often showed as the students’ papers didn’t make sense. I understand the busyness of being a college student and not feeling like you have time to write a paper, but it is sad to see so many students rely on AI to do their work for them.  What is truly dangerous about AI to me is that when used enough, humans almost become useless. I believe that people are meant to take care of themselves and have responsibilities.  If AI is overused, this becomes unnecessary. In M3GAN, we see how AI could become a danger to parenting if something like an AI doll existed. We have already seen the dangers AI can do to academic integrity, as well as privacy. While technology is helpful, we should never let it rule us. Our decisions and actions should still be our own, not made by AI.