Age of AI

Society is undergoing a technological revolution, one that has been foreseen and predicted. Samuel Morse, the creator of the telegram in 1844, is also famous for an iconic quote as his words traveled across the country. "What hath God wrought?" A line more then fitting to describe the situation humanity finds itself in almost two centuries later. Technology has plenty of potential for good and protection, but equally enough potential for invasion and destruction. This post will briefly analyze some of the ways in which the advancement of artificial intelligence has become a tool of control, and how the threat of it has high influence on the boundaries of privacy we have, or lack there of.

One of the first things that people working closely in the industry are noticing is that the machines are quite dependable. Not just for gathering information, but general work as well. Some of these jobs include bank telling, phone operation, and even surgical operations. Some are even suggested that robots can take up to 20 million jobs by 2030, as many analysts are noticing specific trends over the past two decades. The Age of AI documentary highlighted the impact this could have on individuals, noting that this would potentially give governing bodies even more power over society. The ability to replace humans from positions that require a high level of attentiveness over things like finance and other personal information with machines gives the companies that own the machines a lot of freedom for experiment, which could include finding out things that are far to personal to be exposed publicly.

One of the other points that I thought the video did a really good job of getting across was that the AI could pose a threat to democracy. Many estimate that there will 150 billion networked measuring sensors, and that amount of data will double by 2025. Mundane items that surround us will be studied as used to understand how we think in feel as voters, and even as people. Because financial transactions are now performed by algorithms, other content related to it is also automatically generated. In other words, other jobs could be taken over by these algorithms, causing several companies to vanish as a consequence.