A.I.: The Future is Now

In the past 50 years, computer technology has been advancing at an exponential rate. Cellphones today are 100,000 times more powerful than the computer used in the Apollo 11 spacecraft (which is almost impossible to imagine). In class, we watched FRONTLINE PBS' documentary film In the Age of AI which focuses on one of the latest technological advances, artificial intelligence. With the growth of AI and automation, the world, and people's place in it, is changing. 

History & AlphaGo 

Famous game between Lee Sedol & AlphaGo

AI has been around for longer than most people think. The first artificial intelligence program was the Logic Theorist, and it was made in 1956. However, what put AI at the forefront of today's technological realm was AlphaGo's feat in 2016. AlphaGo is an AI program developed by Google which took on the world champion of Go, Lee Sedol. At this point in time, no one believed that a computer could come up with moves intuitive enough to beat a human at the game, but AlphaGo showed just how powerful AI has become. The program not only beat Sedol 4 out of 5 times, but it also came up with a move no human had ever thought of before (it was move 37 of game 2). This moment woke the world up, and several companies and governments jumped on the AI bandwagon following the event. 

AI Today

Now, there is a race to have the best AI technology between the West (America) and the East (China). Historically, America has been ahead of China in the technological sector, but China has advanced and reformed itself dramatically since the late 70s. They are now on an almost even playing field. At the time of the release of the documentary in 2019, there were 18 unicorn AI companies in China (unicorn companies are those who are worth $1 billion or more), and they are located in the best place in the world for AI implementation. 

https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/tip/4-main-types-of-AI-explained

China is the best place because there is about 4 times the amount of cellphone users as the US. This meaning there is tons of information and data being created and exchanged every day. AI thrives off of data; the more data it has, the better it performs. However, this doesn't mean that people all around the world don't use AI on a daily basis. You can find AI programs in cellphones (used for voice recognition), online stores (used to predict what customers like/dislike), and factory warehouses (used to increase shipping efficiency). However, AI can also be used in more negative ways. 

Negative Effects

In my previous blog post, I talked about China's social credit system. Perhaps one of the most startling, and alarming, things to learn is how the Chinese government has embraced AI and uses it to enforce this credit system. The technology is being used to essentially spy on everyday people in order to give them a numerical score representative of their "trustworthiness." 

Cover of Kai-Fu Lee's book

There is a serious lack of privacy today in China, and AI has contributed to this fact. AI engineers are aware that things like this could continue to happen elsewhere, and they also know that AI poses serious risks. Kai Fu-Lee, one of the world's experts in AI, warns at the end of the documentary that maintaining safe environments for citizens with government use of AI technology is a complex issue that will need to be handled carefully as time goes on. 

Takeaways

Overall, I think it is amazing that humans have created machines capable of imitating the human thought process. AI has made life easier for us, but it also creates new dangers which could alter life as we know it. Already automation has taken jobs away and privacy issues have grown, and it's scary to think about the numerous ways things could go wrong if AI is misused. However, the negatives are avoidable. I hope that more people take the time to learn about what is affecting them and world leaders listen to the experts like Kai-Fu Lee.