The Age of AI

 




The Frontline documentary In the Age of AI was interesting and scary. I found it frightening because as a woman, our jobs could be at risk from AI. Women hold more of the jobs that are at the highest risk of automation because women are overrepresented in some of these occupations, like a cashier or a fast food worker, and also in large numbers in clerical jobs in offices, HR departments, payroll, and finance. I also found it important that AI can cause inequality because it's a form of automation and the machines will be in every sector of the economy.  


One thing that affects all of us is the use of AI in social media. Facebook, Google and Amazon have user preferences and can target an advertisement to users. So AI is a set of tools that helps to maximize an objective function which is to make more money. AI does so by using algorithms and these algorithms reach into our work and our daily lives. They're trying to personalize things to us. So AI seems to a great benefit because through AI, the world will get adapted to you without you even having to adapt yourself.   


There's also a danger because the entities and the companies that are in control of those algorithms don't have the same goals as we do. Human experience is a free source of data fabricated into predictions of human behavior. The model is to provide a free service like Facebook, and in exchange, they collect the data of the millions who use it. This collection of data puts our privacy at risk because if we post about our personal experience or our daily lives then they know where we are and what we like.


Another thing AI can do with collected data is manipulate our feelings. Facebook experimented with AI's predictive powers in a social contagion experiment. AI could help social media companies to conduct other massive contagion experiments showing that by adjusting their feeds, they could make users happy or sad. Google realized how valuable this data could be by applying machine learning algorithms to predict users' interests. It is terrifying that between the year 2000 and the year 2004, Google's revenue line increased by 3590% using data it mined from customers!


The most surprising thing that I learned from the video is that private corporations have built a surveillance state without our awareness or permission. AI has increased the ability of companies to scan the country. While the video is a little outdated, it was projected that over 600 million cameras will be deployed by 2020. Now, in 2026 it is close to one billion. That means companies can seealmost everything we do outside the home. Meanwhile, companies are researching and applying for patents to expand their reach into homes and lives like through the use of Alexa or Siri. 



My final takeaway is that AI provides a tool that will be most used by the people who control AI. AI can be used in good ways like helping cure diseases or it can be used in a negative way like taking away pjobs especially for women, and surveilling us without our knowledge. AI is great in the right hand but dangerous in the wrong hands. I believe there should be reasonable limitations on how much and for what purposes AI can be used.


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