magine a world in which everything you do and say is recorded, restricted, and even pre-determined by digital systems.
It’s not science-fiction; this is the world in which you’re living.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is swiftly turning from an innovation buzzword into very real, very powerful tools. These tools can be used to problem-solve and provide for the benefit of all. They can also be used to trap and enslave us, consolidating power in the hands of an elite few.
So, what do you need to know about our AI reality?
1. AI is transforming global industries.
Every week, new case studies emerge showing companies worldwide innovating with AI for the benefit of society. From diagnosing patients to increasing crop harvesting yields, directing ocean clean-up operations and streamlining critical disaster responses, impactful AI is everywhere.
AI can collect and analyze vast quantities of data at incomprehensible speeds. This makes its positive potential boundless. Accelerating medical research and scientific discovery, optimizing design and production processes, enhancing societal participation by historically underserved and disadvantaged communities—all of this is possible through AI solutions.
2. Your personal information is being used to build manipulation machines.
Not all AI is good. Every second of every day, your personal data is invisibly scraped and processed by profit-driven corporations building individually and societally manipulative AI systems.
No private detail is off-limits: age, gender, skin color, religion, sexual preferences, friends and family, likes, dislikes, habits, routines, online searches, purchases, and much, much more. Big tech companies—including ones that you might never have even heard of—know it all.
Right now, reading this on a computer or smart device, you are being stripped for parts.
Those parts are feeding a behemoth of prediction and curation algorithms that decide, for better or worse, what you will be told or granted access to. Behind the scenes, AI is defining and limiting everyone’s place and treatment in society.
3. We are at a tipping point for freedom and human identity.
AI may be all around us, but only a handful of people really have control over what it’s doing to us.
AI can be a force for good, but algorithms built on flawed and biased data-sets are also polarizing society, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, fueling violence and narrowing criminal justice decisions. Our fundamental freedom of choice, as well as the health of democracy and society, are at risk.
More disquietingly, perhaps, in AI a new form of life could be emerging. As machines get ever-more sophisticated, we risk losing our grip on this ever-evolving technology, and even removing human intelligence from the equation.
No-one knows if artificial general intelligence (AGI) is fully realizable, but the possibility forces us to urgently question and even define our human identity. To make sure we’re heading in the right direction, we need to be developing AI within the right ethical frameworks today. What is it that makes us uniquely human?
4. Human-centered AI regulation is possible.
As AI advances, policymakers and regulators across the globe are increasingly grappling with how to harness the positive potential of this always-cutting-edge technology whilst increasing competition and preventing negative effects.
The charge towards comprehensive legislation is being led by the European Union. Having long focused on trust and ethics in AI policy, the EU is now preparing in 2021 to deliver robust, human-centric AI regulation which emphasizes fairness, safety, and accountability as the core of human rights-based technology governance.
Governments must proclaim the rule of law, not cede to rule by machine.
5. We all have a role to play in what happens next with AI.
AI experts rarely discuss the full extent of the technology. It’s true limits remain unknown, as do the extent of the consequences. Film and documentary are vital tools to bring honest expert reflection to audiences. Difficult questions must be addressed to drive forward a positive collective AI future, but often this is only possible through the lens of a camera.
AI now permeates every aspect of our lives. Its expansion in use and power puts our humanity on the line. To shape a human-centered AI future, we all need to be part of the conversation—it is not about what we can do with this technology but what we should do with it.
a global affairs media network
Who Writes the Code Controls the World. Five Things Everyone Should Know About AI
November 11, 2020
I
magine a world in which everything you do and say is recorded, restricted, and even pre-determined by digital systems.
It’s not science-fiction; this is the world in which you’re living.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is swiftly turning from an innovation buzzword into very real, very powerful tools. These tools can be used to problem-solve and provide for the benefit of all. They can also be used to trap and enslave us, consolidating power in the hands of an elite few.
So, what do you need to know about our AI reality?
1. AI is transforming global industries.
Every week, new case studies emerge showing companies worldwide innovating with AI for the benefit of society. From diagnosing patients to increasing crop harvesting yields, directing ocean clean-up operations and streamlining critical disaster responses, impactful AI is everywhere.
AI can collect and analyze vast quantities of data at incomprehensible speeds. This makes its positive potential boundless. Accelerating medical research and scientific discovery, optimizing design and production processes, enhancing societal participation by historically underserved and disadvantaged communities—all of this is possible through AI solutions.
2. Your personal information is being used to build manipulation machines.
Not all AI is good. Every second of every day, your personal data is invisibly scraped and processed by profit-driven corporations building individually and societally manipulative AI systems.
No private detail is off-limits: age, gender, skin color, religion, sexual preferences, friends and family, likes, dislikes, habits, routines, online searches, purchases, and much, much more. Big tech companies—including ones that you might never have even heard of—know it all.
Right now, reading this on a computer or smart device, you are being stripped for parts.
Those parts are feeding a behemoth of prediction and curation algorithms that decide, for better or worse, what you will be told or granted access to. Behind the scenes, AI is defining and limiting everyone’s place and treatment in society.
3. We are at a tipping point for freedom and human identity.
AI may be all around us, but only a handful of people really have control over what it’s doing to us.
AI can be a force for good, but algorithms built on flawed and biased data-sets are also polarizing society, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, fueling violence and narrowing criminal justice decisions. Our fundamental freedom of choice, as well as the health of democracy and society, are at risk.
More disquietingly, perhaps, in AI a new form of life could be emerging. As machines get ever-more sophisticated, we risk losing our grip on this ever-evolving technology, and even removing human intelligence from the equation.
No-one knows if artificial general intelligence (AGI) is fully realizable, but the possibility forces us to urgently question and even define our human identity. To make sure we’re heading in the right direction, we need to be developing AI within the right ethical frameworks today. What is it that makes us uniquely human?
4. Human-centered AI regulation is possible.
As AI advances, policymakers and regulators across the globe are increasingly grappling with how to harness the positive potential of this always-cutting-edge technology whilst increasing competition and preventing negative effects.
The charge towards comprehensive legislation is being led by the European Union. Having long focused on trust and ethics in AI policy, the EU is now preparing in 2021 to deliver robust, human-centric AI regulation which emphasizes fairness, safety, and accountability as the core of human rights-based technology governance.
Governments must proclaim the rule of law, not cede to rule by machine.
5. We all have a role to play in what happens next with AI.
AI experts rarely discuss the full extent of the technology. It’s true limits remain unknown, as do the extent of the consequences. Film and documentary are vital tools to bring honest expert reflection to audiences. Difficult questions must be addressed to drive forward a positive collective AI future, but often this is only possible through the lens of a camera.
AI now permeates every aspect of our lives. Its expansion in use and power puts our humanity on the line. To shape a human-centered AI future, we all need to be part of the conversation—it is not about what we can do with this technology but what we should do with it.
