Age of A.I.

The Age of Artificial Intelligence

What is A.I.? 

The dictionary definition of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. 

Artificial Intelligence has a learning, "deep" mind that mimics the neural networks of the human brain. Artificial Intelligence can keep a vast amount of data that humans cannot fathom and can teach itself to become more advanced. 

Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of our daily lives. It has gotten to a point where I do not think most humans could live without it, even though the exponential growth of artificial intelligence began only in the 1950s.  The new digital age has great promise, but we have opened our eyes to the line where personalized service meets exploitation. 

Positives 

A.I. holds great potential for prosperity. It has helped the world grow, advance, and enhance throughout the technology timeline. It is continuously being developed to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.   

Artificial intelligence can make new discoveries that can help advance humans further than we can imagine. In the video, In the Age of AI ,they show the world's most complex board game, AlphaGo. 

They showed one of the best AlphaGo players in Asia playing against an A.I. machine, with the human only winning once while the A.I. outsmarted him in the other matches. This was incredibly exciting and scary for those who know the game and know the strategy and skill it takes to master this game. The A.I. was able to produce new moves that no one had ever thought of before. It is crazy to think about how so many things that took humans decades to learn and develop can be solved and advanced by A.I. in seconds. This holds many positive attributes toward discovery and innovation.

Negatives

It will deepen inequality and create a big economic tear in society. It will take away jobs and leave the owners with all of the money. This leaves the majority of our middle and lower class without jobs or a source of income. It will create a struggle between capital and labor, and changing how we wish to distribute capital from artificial intelligence will make a difference in society. We have seen this occur in many factories and even in our everyday lives. Machines have become more advance to take over the manufacturing that humans used to produce. Machines have also taken over everyday jobs such as checkouts at a grocery stores. 

A.I. are tools and will serve whoever controls them; if they use it evilly, it is a danger to society. For example, computer scientists are like people who have suggested nuclear war. It is so easy for these technologies to fall into the hands of those with bad intentions.  

Security and Privacy 

It is no secret that artificial intelligence knows a lot about our personal lives. This has become so common that we have become desensitized to the concept that they could be using our information for better or worse. We have come to assume that artificial intelligence has improved our quality of life, so therefore it will always have our best interests at heart. Although this holds some truth, we have to open our eyes and understand that artificial intelligence can and will be used to take away our privacy. Once our privacy is taken, those who hold that information have ultimate power and control over us, whether we are aware of it or not. 

Algorithms reach deeper into our lives, and that should make us more uncomfortable. These computers are trying to personalize the world to you, but this is when you need to be aware and still have control over your world before the companies try to control you. Social media users are really not users because social media platforms are using us. Using us to get ahead and make a profit off of manipulating us and our content.

Surveillance capitalism is a private human experience that is claimed as a free source of raw material fabricated into predictions of human behavior. Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School, describes the disturbing picture of how Silicon Valley and other corporations are mining users' information to predict and shape their behavior in her new book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism." 

There are a lot of businesses that are able to predict what we will do. They try to spin A.I. in a positive light by saying that behavioral predictions are taking the uncertainty out of life. A.I. is learning as much about you as it can. Whatever we search, we leave a digital trace or digital exhaust, and those algorithms are used to predict users' interests. Companies know where you have been, gone, going, and basically everything, with your permission.  

One of the first companies to do this was... Google. I know, right? Our trusted default browser that we search anything and everything on. Google's revenue increased 3590% from 2000-2004 after giving into surveillance capitalism and going against its "Don't be evil" motto. Google boasted about two things: 1. Now they knew that they could use cues in the online environment to change real-world behavior. 2. Celebrated that they can do this in a way that bypasses the users' awareness. 

Another example that conducts micro behavioral targeting in our everyday lives is Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. These were developed to help improve user experiences and create a fast and intimate way to live with A.I. What we do not think about is how these devices are used to understand more about you in real time. They are always listening and know every single intimate detail about you, down to each breath you take. It is a complete invasion of privacy that you allow into your life. 

Finally, China has developed Sharp eyes, putting a camera on every corner of the street- watching everywhere, frequent security expos. This will create a total surveillance state and promote the collective punishment of an ethnic group. China is promoting its tech to other countries to squelch political uprisings and resistance and make an all-encompassing "bamboo curtain" with shared A.I. This will divide the world into two artificial intelligence superpowers: a Chinese and American tech sector. 5G networks have become the high-speed backbone for the rise of A.I. The U.S. fears that 5G- the Chinese government could have backdoor access to U.S. information, making A.I. a better tool for totalitarian governments versus democratic governments.

Overall, technology has become a means of control versus freedom. Some keys to combatting this are awareness, clearing our history, and limiting the amount of information we give out so freely. We cannot be careless with our privacy and must take control before the artificial intelligence can control us.