blog 10: Living in the Age of AI

Living in the Age of AI

The Threat of AI

After watching the documentary "In the Age of AI" I was frightened to see just how advanced technology has come, and how much it has penetrated our society. Automation, the substitution of capital and labor, has become very powerful globally. I was particularly unnerved to learn that with the expansion of AI, about 50% of jobs currently occupied by humans will be threatened by automated devices in the next 15 years. These jobs mostly include those held by women, such as cashier work, clerical work, and human resources positions. This will perpetuate current inequalities in the work place, however it is not only minorities that are at risk. AI is projected to penetrate every part of our economy, including positions in law, finance, HR, and many other sectors. 

As AI is programmed based on prior human knowledge and experience, it is highly efficient compared to the work that one human can do effectively. This will become problematic if AI is able to penetrate careers that people can not do as efficiently. AI, as helpful as it may be in some aspects, is a threat to human interaction, human employment, and the healthy operation of our society.

AI and the Loss of Privacy

In addition to threatening job security, AI is going as far as to threaten our privacy. AI has become very powerful, as it has been programmed to understand who is smart, who is not, who is racist, and even who is gullible. This advanced understanding has led to AI tracking people's digital exhaust to target specific people's habits and interests. This has led to something called surveillance capitalism, which has claimed private human experience. 

Large companies, such as Google, have taken advantage of this technology to collect very specific data from individuals and to sell it for their own profit. On one hand, this has helped them to efficiently target advertisements to specific individuals that fall into the target demographic of products and services. However, this is a complete invasion of individuals' privacy, and most people are unaware that their private information has been harvested for the benefit of large corporate entities.