In The Age of AI

 In The Age of AI

    When we watched the Frontline documentary In the Age of AI, there were a lot of things I learned. Some of these things startled me and I am concerned about while others I think have potentially a lot of benefits to them in the future. The biggest things that stood out to me that I viewed as pros/benefits were that AI in the future will make connivence for little things so much easier. This was represented in many different forms such as ordering and paying for food, driving among many more. I think the future of self driving vehicles is something that has a lot of promise that definitely can make our highways safer and reduce the number of fatalities in this country. There is also a lot of evidence to support that AI will make cancer research more equipped to look for a cure and help to end deaths from that perspective too. One of the biggest concerns people have about AI is that it will take away jobs that currently are being done by humans, but there is a lot of conflicting data on this that suggests that while those jobs will be replaced, instead other jobs will be created that were not previously, causing a balancing act to occur. 

    There was also a lot in the documentary that made me scared about the future of AI. It was shown that in a very complex game, a machine was able to defeat the world's best player multiple times. This innovation shows that AI has the capability to at the very least rival and may even be at a higher level than human intelligence. It is also concerning as an American how China, who appears to be our greatest rival in the present and the future, will have the same AI technology as us by 2025 and will surpass us by 2030. China has also been able to use AI to turn their country into one that is full of complete surveillance with no privacy. This becomes even more frightening when the lack of privacy is paired with the social credit score concept that is also being rolled out in China too. The AI technology allows the government to track what is going on, and then use anything you may have said or done to be used against you to keep you in line with the narratives of the regime. 

    Overall, I view AI as more of a concern than one of promise and hope. While there are some potential, future benefits, I think that the future has more bad in store than good as of right now. That is not to say that it can't change, if our government was behaving as they are supposed to, AI could be a huge force for good, but unfortunately it appears much more likely to be used against their political enemies unjustly.