Living in the Age of AI

 Within watching this video its starts with the game Go and how a computer beats the best Go player.  Go is complicated so people did not see this coming. This brought me back to a video a friend had me watch of a computer called Deep Blue. 

 

Deep Blue is a chess computer and almost the father of IBM Watson. The computer Deep Blue was so good at chess it gave Gary Kasparov trouble and he was thought of as one of the greatest chess players in the world. Deep Blue would win some games with him and would soon be shut down. The computer came a long way and learned how to play chess.  For a computer this is tricky considering onpassant moves and how different pieces interact. Knowing this and having a friend here at HPU who has a tattoo of the last movie by the computer to win at Go has given me knowledge about computer AI. Seeing that deep learning and deep mind being the Go computers clearly show they have taken a few ideas from the predecessor Deep Blue. 

 

From there China declared that they would lead the world in AI and technology by 2030. As a whole it is kinda scary considering for a while they were so far behind in technology that it is crazy. What makes it even more terrifying is the fact that China recently adapted a social credit system where their cameras track you in person and online. Everything you do is tracked by the government and they give you a score. This score determines your life. If you can get a mortgage, what train you can ride, and things you can do. This is something straight from black mirror. If you watch the video linked here you see how conditioned it makes people, the people rave about how its great and all is well and have great scores. The government shouldn't be able to make you say anything as we went over this in class. This starts to become a prior restraint if you can’t criticize the government without fear of being at some sort of penalty, it’s a real problem. 

 

Then learning from the AI video for this blog that China's facial recognition is good enough to be used as payment. This makes China seem like a natural disaster by possibly becoming a dystopian future issue as it already is with the social credit. Then there is automated driving and using AI to check for breast cancer. Automated driving is something that worries me because my grandfather once told me how technology works because he has never owned a piece of technology that has not malfunctioned at least once. Thinking about self driving cars, I can see future issues arise although they may be minimal. I do think it can solve a lot of problems, but I worry for times it doesn't work properly. Within the breast cancer screenings with AI, I think this is a good application because I know humans that were failed to spot breast cancer early and seeing any cancer early is a life changer. So having an AI that can look and be like a second set of eyes is useful. 

 

From there the video follows Wired magazine and I enjoy their content as they have Adam Savage of  Myth Busters tasked as a blogger and youtuber.  Wired media, had their view on tech come from tech is the best to being more informative of what is the pros and cons is a big step. I wish the media did this but sadly, they do not. Kai Fu lee talks at Wired then gives some insights on how AI is bad. He points out that 50% of jobs may be phased out due to AI within the next 15 years. The rest of the video talks about automation in the work industry and that goes into detail about things we have discussed in class like Amazon’s Alexa and Facebook taking user’s information and trying to be great at facial recognition. What I was expected to be brought up in the video at that point is that Zuckerberg can speak fluent Mandarin because of the potential draw with China. Facial recognition is a problem and poses threats to our privacy by tech used for all sorts of means. It worries me because stealing an identity will get easier and easier with technology, like deep fakes and as such it may change the game of stealing an identity. It could get easier with facial recognition or it could get harder I couldn't tell you. 

 

When thinking of the evolution of AI I think there should be a line drawn in the sand. A box of limitations and a set of parameters and rules. If we do not do so now it may possibly be too late. I think AI will get out of hand and the question is when? Technology grows at an exponential rate. It is amazing. All that AI needs is it to learn about itself and make a move like in Go where it's brilliant and we haven't seen or expected it. Despite  all the time trying it will become something we can't control or handle.  AI has worried me for a while and I think it will not go away. I see AI being an issue to ourselves, the government, and the world. The question is what happens from here?