The Age of Artificial Intelligence

I recently watched a documentary on PBS's Frontline titled "The Age of AI." It's incredible how much conversation is going on around artificial intelligence and its far-reaching impacts on businesses, privacy, and national security. After viewing this insightful program, I’ve reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of this emerging technology. This discussion feels particularly relevant this week with Apple’s recent phone release, featuring its own version of AI called "Apple Intelligence." Here are my thoughts on the subject.

I see challenges ahead as more and more AI technologies are added to our daily lives. Every company today is looking at how disruptive AI technologies can be used to make their operations and products more efficient. Our every move online and on our phones is being collected and sold to advertisers. Also, AI is only as good as the data it's built with. As we have discussed in this class, the internet is full of false information and humans building these databases are going to make mistakes. But in the documentary, one of the biggest downsides I learned about was that many of these new technologies will replace humans in the workforce. For example, robotics and drones will replace factory line workers and delivery people. And as "the workplace of the future" will need new skills for jobs, people will have to go back to school for training and many Americans won't be able to afford to do that. Jerry Kaplan, a computer scientist interviewed for the program stated that "without a doubt, AI will continue to drive the inequality of wealth and opportunity in this country. AI is automation and automation is the substitution of capital for labor."

I was surprised to learn in the documentary how much AI China is already using and how little privacy its citizens have. I think there is a risk that as we feed all our data behaviors to AI (on phones, our web searches) there will be people, governments, etc. that could use this info to harm us. Or, like in China, know our every single move using technologies like face recognition which would be a huge invasion of privacy in this country. They were very oppressed during COVID, with the Chinese government limiting everyone's movement. The documentary talks about China/US relations in the context of sharing technology. In the last few years since our relations have "diverged" our openness to share technology with them has also stopped. "If AI technology was oil, China would be Saudi Arabia." I think it will be interesting in the next few years how our government creates legislation to protect us from people misusing our data while competing with China to have the best tech. There are reports just this week about Biden proposing legislation against giving US cars access to Chinese "connected car" technology.

AI clearly makes our lives easier and more convenient but I definitely think there is some work to be done to also make it secure for our privacy and safety.