Age of AI Blog #10

 

    The creation and development of artificial intelligence has been a huge topic of debate these past handful of years, especially with the creation of Chat GPT and the like being used for every day tasks like asking for information to having students use it to write their research papers for them with the utmost accuracy. It is also being used to automate jobs, track what users are doing and observe us, and using the information we give it to learn and expand it's informational net.

    I did not know much about artificial intelligence prior to watching Frontline PBS' Age of AI Video, let alone what can constitute as artificial intelligence and that it is being used in so many more ways than what I imaged. From targeted advertising, data tracking and so on, it doesn't come as a surprise that many folk are worried about what were to happen should artificial intelligence evolve to a level that we can no longer guess what it will do or control what it does.

    After watching Frontline's video, I learned that many companies are using some kind of artificial intelligence for one use or another, be it targeted ads on Instagram or Amazon, YouTube's video algorithm, and so on, each one personalizing your experience tailored to you without you having to do anything. And like what Harry Cripps said in his interview at 1:05:00 in the video, I'm starting to understand that it is entirely possible that people would become obsolete if artificial intelligence was to make its rise in power, leaving the poor in the dust and having the wealthy strive while their automated systems take care of them in almost every way.

    The future will soon become controlled by the immensely wealthy who have access to what artificial intelligence, and can have it do what they want, with the main goal for the algorithm being "to make more money." the fact that those who control the algorithm likely wont have the same goal as you when the artificial intelligence is serving you is also a bit scary, as you need to 1) be aware of that problem and 2) have to make sure that you control your intake of media, as you will likely not know what is targeted to you by what the algorithm recommends or if it is pushed content from the people in control of the algorithm. It also seems that every website or social media app has some kind of artificial intelligence being added, like the recent addition of the snapchat bot that came in one of the recent updates.

    Which brings up my concerns with all these artificial intelligence additions. One that has been bothering me is the fact that some of these bots just seem out of place. Why did snapchat add in a bot? the whole idea of the app is to share your experiences with people and converse with them, but adding this bit that literally asks you to talk to it was a bit off putting to me. I never really know what an artificial intelligence wants, and always have the worry that someone or some group of people will mess with it the same way that Reddit users messed around with Chat GPT to get it to think it was sentient and make it go against the code that it has written. Pretty worrisome when you can get a super computer that has instant access to everything on the internet to break the rules that were set by the creators of the program.

    At the same time, there are absolutely some beneficial uses for these algorithms that have been used and passed around, but having some more restraint in how far we go with these artificial intelligence algorithms would be a wise choice. I don't think anything like Terminator or I, Robot will happen (not anytime soon at least), but I would still like to be cautious about it.

EOTO 2 What I learned Blog #11

 

    One presentation I found interesting and is also quite prominent in current media, be it the News, Instagram, Facebook or twitter, is cancel culture. It's a topic that has been talked about far and wide while also being one of the more controversial things being discussed.

    But what is cancel culture? I did not have a great idea until it was presented by the group, and learned that it is when a group or culture of people team up to ostracize, boycott or in some cases harass someone who has done something the group deems unacceptable behavior. 

    I also learned that this behavior can be beneficial if what the person being shunned has done something that warrants some kind of punishment, as positing on the internet pretty much allows you to say whatever you would like to with little to no consequences. At the same time, it can also be used in ways that could be considered bullying. The presentation covered that people often times misuse the cancel culture group to cancel people that they simply don't agree with. This can be someone stating who they voted for being targeted for their political views (which is nothing new, yet still a problem), many tried to cancel Johnny Depp after the false accusations pit against him, and people will sometimes even try to cancel for the most minor things, like liking left Twix over right, or maybe not liking a Taylor Swift song.

    The term "cancel culture" came up sometime around the late 2010's, and is sometimes called "call-out-culture" as it is a less negative sounding term, given that cancel culture gave itself a bad name as of recent years. Having effects on mental health is one of the big problems that cancel culture has given itself. It also effects mental health of both the canceller and canceled. 

That sums up a good portion of what I learned about cancel culture during the presentation.