Blog Post #10 - AI

AI as we know it today is growing at a rapid pace. The future is full of exciting new technologies that will benefit us in many different ways, but these technologies can hurt us as well. There will be consequences as a result of large-scale automation, people will lose jobs and we will be forced to face mass unemployment. The choices we make in how we use AI will be crucial to our survival as a species. 

Looking on the good side, AI would increase efficiency, one reason being, a machine can work 24 hours around the clock, but a human cannot. A machine can also calculate more accurately and faster than a human making it a good tool in banking industries. They can run simulations free of bias unlike humans and their tendency to judge others based on certain characteristics. Ultimately, after the technology is installed, AI will become cheaper to maintain than human workers, faster, and smarter. This can have wonderful effects, it will make a lot of people rich and hopefully will help provide crucial healthcare services. In fact, AI can be applied to many industries including but not limited to, transportation, finance, agriculture, education, and surveillance. All could have tremendous benefits to our society but at least more myself, one sticks out. 

Surveillance has always terrified me, especially when in the video they noted that 500 million cameras would be put up all over the world in the next few years, which really scared me. I’ve never liked the idea of being watched, even when I’m just minding my own business. We should have a natural right to privacy and shouldn’t have our moves watched wherever we go It was even scarier to see that in China, people were being scanned on the sidewalk identified by their faces. With this technology, militaries will be able to identify someone with face-scanning technology and potentially kill them with a drone. To me, this is my worst nightmare of how the world could turn out. 

There is hope though, if we make the correct choices on where we apply and limit AI, we will have a better chance at seamless coexistence. Mass unemployment will become one of our top issues looking toward the future and how we confront that could make or break our society’s survival. AI has brilliant potential but with great power, comes great responsibility.