While artificial intelligence has been discussed for many years, the reality of the impact it has had and will continue to have is becoming more and more apparent. Although the power of predicting our behavior has some positive implications to improve efficiency and provide us with information we may want, the downsides are very concerning.
One driving force behind AI is for companies to make more money off of us. While this wasn’t news to me, the idea of “surveillance capitalism” is still a disturbing one. It claims our private human behavior as information that can be used to make predictions about our human behavior - for companies to make money based on our (no longer) private behavior. The entire business of companies such as Google is to know as much about us as we can so they use it to sell us things or ideas (or to sell our information to others who can then use it to make money).
Specifically, they use data from our searches to determine what kinds of ads we will click on. What we search or post; when we search or post; what we like or don’t like; who are friends are and other information. It's all there for the mining by a few powerful companies to have the ability to influence our behaviors.
In the US, the government may not be looking at all of this data directly. However, a “corporate surveillance state” now exists and private companies are in charge of collecting and reviewing data. As the power of AI increases, so does the ability to use all of this data to control and influence our world. For example, what started as a way to sell us more “stuff” can now be harvested to target and manipulate voters. The results of Presidential elections can be changed by just influencing a small number of voters in key states and it is being done in front of our eyes without most people realizing the impact on our decisions. Are we just puppets being manipulated?
There have been efforts to make the use of AI more apparent - and company’s efforts to gather and use it more transparently. This gives us some hope that we may be able to make better decisions about protecting the information we share online.
While this is challenging enough in the US, it is worse in other countries. For example, in authoritarian countries such as China, they are using video surveillance and AI to process real time data. AI systems are being used in China to predict who is a risk to the state in the future - and to remove them for “reeducation” camps. Making one region of China (Uighur) has been described as an “open air” prison. China is spreading its technology to other countries who are also potentially using it to monitor their citizens.
While the internet may have once been viewed as a way to spread information and democracy, it seems like technology may provide authoritarian governments with the ability to control people. Rather than seeing engagement with countries like China as a good thing, many think that technology is no longer something we will want to share with them.
While there is still hope that these new AI technologies may still be a force for good, there is also a risk that, if mishandled, it could lead to disaster. Current use of AI is not aligned with improving society. Democracy may be threatened by the power of AI, even in the US. Can’t take these concerns lightly without thinking about possible outcomes.
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