The Uncertain and Scary Future Ruled by AI

    After watching a documentary about AI by Frontline on PBS I learned some interesting, but also scary things about the future of our technology. Some of it I already knew, but a lot of it I never knew or never took into consideration before. 

    One of the first things I learned, but already sort of had an idea of was that AI has led to job loss. I had heard of this for years, but I never realized the extent of it. Automatization has led to the loss of over 60 million jobs in the US alone. That number is supposed to grow too. I also did not know this, but women are disproportionately at a higher risk of losing their jobs to automatization. This is because many of the jobs women have like clerical jobs are the easiest ones to be replaced with a machine. 

    Job loss is not the only risk though. I also learned from the documentary that automatization is leading to a decreased standard of living. There has been a 10-15% decrease in living standards for all races and income classes in places where automatization has stolen jobs. People are also at a greater risk of mortality in 20 years following their job loss. The children of parents who have lost their jobs to automatization have been found to have a worse education. Those children are more likely to repeat a grade, to drop out of school, to be suspended from school, and to have a lower educational retainment So automatization could affect entire generations of families, which is really scary. 

    What is even scarier is the threat to privacy that AI poses. Everything we do online today leaves a digital trail of data. That data can be recorded, tracked, and analyzed. And with the help of AI, tech companies like Google can track everything you do and make predictions about you. This makes you a target for specific ads, but also a potential target of leaders. It has been proven that targeted online messaging has influenced real-life behavior. This is called social contagion and it is terrifying. Just by adjusting someone's feeds on any media site (like Twitter, YouTube, or even a news channel), that person can be influenced to do things in real life. It can be as harmless as getting people to vote, or as dangerous as starting riots. And the worst part is the tech companies that are using these AI algorithms are doing it in a way where consumers will never know it is happening. 

      There are a decent number of positives to AI for industries, but for everyday people are at greater amounts of risk all the time. Companies like AI because it makes things cheaper and more efficient for them. They can get rid of their human workers who are more prone to mistakes and take a long time to complete tasks and replace them with robots who can do things faster and without human error. But I think we should avoid using AI. It not only causes people to lose their livelihoods but could also lead to them losing their lives. And AI has too much power in our personal lives, watching our every move online and even in person. It is far too much risk without a good enough reward, so I would advise people to start fighting back against the rise of AI or one day our entire lives could be controlled by a robot.