Blog #5

 

Living In An Age of A.I.

Just as the title suggests we are currently living in a technological boom, and this increase in technology is accompanied by the expansion of Artificial Intelligence, better known as A.I. BuiltIn defines A.I as "a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence." This definition is put to justice in the documentary In The Age Of AI. This documentary goes through the evolution of AI, its current and potential uses,  and how it affects us as a society. 

One of the things that concerned me during the film was the possibility that our world would soon become fully automated and thus jobs would be delegated to A.I. systems rather than humans. The world is already integrating this kind of technology in A.I. self-driving cars and face identification. The use of Face ID in China is already normalized, even our own cell phones use that technology. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics in March 2021 the unemployment rate was at 6.0%. The COVID-19 pandemic took a huge hit on many people, many had to be laid off from their jobs and could not afford basic needs. Imagine if A.I. was to have the same effect by taking those jobs, except this time there would be no chance of them getting their jobs back.

One positive that could come out of A.I. that the film mentioned is that it can expand our minds. A.I. has the capacity to think farther beyond the human mind can at the moment and come up with things that are far in our future. With technology like this hopefully, we can use it for the betterment of our society and everyone in it rather than the destruction.