You know those moments when you feel like you are living in a simulation? I get them after I've briefly mentioned out loud that I am in need of new workout shorts to a friend. Soon after doing so, I open up any of my social media platforms and right in the middle of my feed I see workout apparel advertisements. Every time that this happens to me, I say "Wow, my FBI agent knows me so well."
In The Age of Artificial Intelligence was a Frontline Documentary introducing a few of the ways that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has and will impact our future. Throughout the documentary the term "deep learning" was used. Deep learning AI mimics the neural patterns of a human's brain. It is used to collect data on what we do, how we act, how we respond to events, and much more. In the first section of the documentary, an AI machine played the world's best Go player. Go is a strategic game popular in Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asian countries. The game has as many possible moves as there are molecules in the human body. The AI computer and the best Go player played five matches. The first match, the human won, but AI beat the human in the four games following. Just like a person, the more interaction an AI computer has, the better its abilities will be overtime. This is where the documentary introduces the concept that "the more data, the better AI can work."
I learned that in China, you do not need a credit card in order to purchase grocery items. Their currency is facial recognition. There are no cashiers in grocery stores. While it is awesome that you don't have to physically swipe your card, this highlights one of the many major negative implications of the rise of AI: unemployment. AI is smart. It finds ways of doing things that the human brain wouldn't think of doing. It makes things more efficient and can learn and adapt faster than the human mind can. Now imagine that you were the manager at a factory and had the choice of hiring one of two applicants. Applicant one was much faster and smarter than applicant two. Obviously, as the manager you have to make the best choice for your company. You would go with the employee who is faster and smarter because they will improve the performance of your factory. BUT what are the ethical implications we have to look at?
To apply the previous analogy to a real-time situation, autonomous vehicles are soon to take over the world. With 90% of accidents caused by human drivers, autonomous vehicles are the key to a safe road-way. I can't be the only person who speeds up really fast to get away from driving next to enormous 18-wheelers on the interstate. The number of horror stories I have heard about 18-wheelers have told me not to take any chances driving near them. In order to make the road-way safer, a company has been working on a few contracts that allow them to deliver in-home appliances to the people/places that order them using their autonomous 18-wheelers. A positive of autonomous delivery vehicles is that the driver won't make any mistakes and cause an accident. But a major negative is that the trucking industry will need fewer and fewer drivers in the coming years. Every industry has some form of use for AI. While that will benefit what we can get out of that specific industry, AI is projected to threaten 50% of jobs in the next 15 years. As a rising senior, this worries me. What if I finally land a great, well-paying job and a few years later I am laid off because a computer doesn't take a bathroom break?
The final yet a highly relevant, topic is Privacy. As Americans we have the right to privacy according to Griswold vs Connecticut case. While this case was about the use of contraceptives between married couples, it resulted in every American citizen having the right to do what they please within their own home without subject to search. If the first, third, fourth, fifth, eight, and ninth amendments all relate to the privacy of each American individual, how will AI impact our society? In China, AI is everywhere. The Chinese has access to an AI program that can recognize the face of a random person in under a hundredth of a second with very little error. The programs that help organizations and firms market their products are also invading our privacy within the home. Product like Amazon Alexa's or Google Home's are always listening for certain queues. If microphones and camera's are always on waiting for the owner's signal to do something, does the device collect other data? Does it hear arguments within the family, does it hear me read my credit card information, or does it take pictures when I am in the shower? Truthfully, I do not know, but it is certainly possible. Once this data is collected, who is gonna use it? The companies that use these devices have explicitly stated that the devices do collect data, but not for advertising purposes just to improve the in-home AI tech. Other privacy issues related to date collection can be linked to Facebook. Facebook offered a free app where you can upload all of the information about yourself that you want. Facebook then sells this information to other companies so they can advertise to you. This was a huge invasion of privacy, and in California, users have the right to deny companies from doing this.
All of the data collected by the apps on our phone, the devices in our house, and the sites we use on our computers collect data. This data is used by companies to make suggestions for you. When you type three words of your question into google, AI is coming up with multiple suggestions that will help you find an answer quickly. AI will also look at all of the things that you like on Instagram or Facebook, and will start placing those ads, products, people, and/or pages on your timeline so that you continue to use those apps. Based on the trail that you leave behind on a site, AI can theoretically predict what you were looking for.
So is AI good or bad? I guess it is a good thing in the medical world because it can be used to detect disease or cancer early on. It is a good thing because it can make the road-way safer. And it is a good thing because it can make searching for and obtaining products or information easier. Though, AI is also a bad thing. If used inside the home it can infringe on people's privacy, and it will eventually take jobs away from millions of people. Overall, AI is a good, helpful form of technology that comes with many negative implications.
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