In the Age of AI

After watching “In the Age of AI,” I think the most frightening part to me was how not a lot of this information surprised me. It’s kind of defeating to think about because it’s not like we can really turn things around or reverse back to the way things were before major technological advances. However, there were a few things shown in the video that really struck me that emphasize the significance of our digital trails. The first one is a chart with the title, “US Productivity and Median Household Income.” When looking at this, it’s evident that US productivity continues to increase while the median household income stagnates behind. It illustrates how automation is the substitution for human labor, and that’s terrifying to see on a graph because most people probably don’t even realize it’s happening and really affecting them. 

Another statement spoken in the video that’s still in my mind is about our predictive value. There are countless digital systems that track where we are, what we eat, what we think, and so much more. Everything we do online has immense predictive value and enables the describing, explaining, and predicting of human behavior. In the video, they broke it down in an explanation using Facebook. Facebook provides a free service to us so we can connect with friends and create content for others online. In return, they collect information on us – and just one like, comment, or scroll, is enough to give them more predictive value.

 

I do think it’s beneficial for governments to have technological power and strong surveillance so criminals and the bad guys out there can be stopped, but I also think it’s going too far. Everyone deserves their privacy and it feels like there’s a continuous violation of it. There are definitely positive aspects of artificial intelligence, but the more complex it gets, it’s more and more threatening to our daily human operations.