Age of AI

    The Frontline PBS documentary "In the Age of AI" touched on the affect of automation on the economy, surveillance capitalism, and how AI can be misused. Quite honestly, watching this documentary was so disheartening that I did not want to write a post about it, I didn't want to think about it more.

    During their coverage of the impact of automation in our economy, the documentary mentioned that most people blame offshoring, which is where we manufacture our goods elsewhere and then import them,   for the majority of job losses, when automation is the real culprit. They defined automation as being the substitution of capital for labor. The people with the capital win and AI is only going to escalate the issue of inequality and loss of opportunities. I thought it was interesting that women actually hold the majority of the jobs that are most at risk for being replaced by automation and that automation is increasing mortality rates and health problems, particularly in people who lost their jobs to automation.

One of the investment bankers interviewed for the video said that every company on Wall Street was using every kind of disruptive technology in order to make their companies more efficient. I really liked how he described of what that really means: he said that for those companies "efficient" meant how could they do things with less workers, in other words to save money. Everyone is impacted by or at risk for job loss because of this increase in automation to relatively the same degree, no matter what race, age, or gender.

    Next, the documentary focused on AI in surveillance and the implications that has on our privacy. They described the principle of companies using surveying and collecting data on us as "surveillance capitalism." According to them, surveillance capitalism essentially determined that our private human experiences are free, raw source materials that can be "mined" just like any other resource.    

    One thing that really surprised and disturbed me was that companies like Facebook go to women's health apps to buy the data they have on women's periods! I assume this is because based on the hormonal changes during menstrual cycles, women can exhibit different behavioral tendencies like cravings, sentimentality, and impulsivity, all of which could be taken advantage of for advertisements. 

    I was also frightened by the extremes to which AI is being used in China to monitor their people. I can't imagine the daily fear of being detained simply because a machine decided they are likely to become criminals. Having your life choices and your personal identity decided by AI is terrifying.

    My main takeaways from this documentary are that, for automation, we have to crash at some point and with this increase in automation and subsequent job loss most people likely won't be able to bounce back and for AI surveillance, without responsible regulations on surveillance, we stand to be at risk of the position Chinese citizens are in.