Blog Post #10

citation

Artificial intelligence is one of the current threats to society as it is a new form of technology with unimaginable power with very little oversight. Technology is a very important part of society as it makes life easier, but with artificial intelligence comes other issues that society has yet to face. 

citation

In class today, we watched a Frontlines documentary about AI. The documentary started by talking about the 2016 game in South Korea where the champion of the Chinese go game played Google AI. Everyone in China was watching because they thought they had it in the bag. The AI was referred to as Alpha Go and used deep learningto study the game, learn the rules, and come up with moved humans have yet to think of. In face the computer pulled a move and everyone was shocked. The computer won four games and the champion won one. This was the start of artificial intelligence vs human intelligence. 

citation

Artificial intelligence is also referred to as automation and it is taking people's jobs and ultimately harming society as these robots do not pay taxes and contribute to society like humans do. Over the years, productivity has been going up while pay has been going down. Unlike the common misconception, offshoring is not causing jobs to decrease, but rather automatic which is going to lead to the death of the middle class. 

citation

For example, Washington D.C.'s number one job is a cashier, but cashiers are being replaced by automation (self-checkout) taking jobs away from people who contribute to society. In fact, automation is disproportionally taking jobs from women. There is now a requirement for people to have new skills, but people who have already graduated college and who did not study technology while in school, do not have the financial ability to go back to school and learn these new skills that are required to oversee automation. Inequality is commonly talked about in society, but not the fact that AI is driving this inequality.

citation

AI is the ultimate tool for wealth accumulation. For example, Google was failing as a small company, but they realized they could track how people interact with the computer and use it to predict their actions. They kept this a secret from users until 2004 when they revealed from 2000 to 2004 they had a 3,590% increase in revenue because of this. Behavioral prediction is getting rid of uncertainty and allowing organizations such as Google and Facebook to influence real-world behavior. In the 2010 election,
Facebook influenced 3,040 people to vote and as elections have been getting closer each year, these tech companies can sway an election by encouraging people to vote and encouraging them to vote a certain way. 

citation

Governments are already taking advantage of AI. In China, they have cameras at every street corner where they are identifying their citizens to keep track of jaywalking, but ultimately to show that the government is always watching resembling 1984 a little too much. In one territory in China where there was an uprising years ago, they are using AI to identify people who look like terrorists and reeducate them again touching a little bit too close to Big Brother in 1984. 

citation

There have been some consequences for the disruption of privacy such as a privacy policy enacted in California that granted people the right to know, the right to say no, and offer a third-party opt-out to users, so not as much of their personal information is online, but this is only a bandaid on this much bigger privacy problem. Facebook has been fined billions of dollars and Mark Zuckerberg has apologized in front of Congress multiple times, yet there still has yet to be any real change. People who started these tech companies or worked at these organizations at the beginning are leaving because they are concerned about the power these companies have. Documentaries such as The Social Dilemma are bringing awareness to the privacy issues that are at stake with AI, but there is still much work to be done.