I have always had an irrational fear of robots, animatronics or any machine that resembles a human. I am now realizing that this fear may not be so irrational. Before this lesson, I thought I knew what artificial intelligence was. I thought it was complex algorithms and machines that humans had created to make life easier and do some specific tasks faster than we could. After watching the documentary, it introduced a frightening reality. Artificial intelligence is developing at a terrifyingly fast rate, especially in the past decade. I was not aware that these machines are actually able to teach themselves and beat humans at their own games.
One of the most unsettling parts of the documentary for me was pertaining to the game Go. The game Go is so much more than a game in countries like Japan and South Korea, "it is how you learn strategy." Lee Sedol was the world champion for this game and is seen as a "national hero" in South Korea. He has probably played hundreds if not thousands of rounds of this game, yet he was beaten multiple times by artifical intelligence. Have humans been outsmarted by our own creation? Will this turn into some sort of Frankenstein situation? Of course, humans can always cut the cord and shut down the technology, but it has become such a big part of everyday life, I'm not sure if that is even realistic anymore. While there are positive aspects to AI, such as doing some jobs quicker and more efficiently, it can cause many people to be unemployed.
The documentary claims that "50% of jobs will be threatened in the next 15 years because of artificial intelligence." The film focused on self-driving cars and how it will affect truck drivers in the future. I was honestly surprised by how developed the self-driving car technology already is. It sounds like they could be quite common in the very near future. While truck driving is not the most glamorous career, it is one that is important to me. I actually come from a long line of truck drivers and farmers. My grandfather drove a truck for over 30 year, and have never known anyone who loved their profession more. While it is a simple job, it provided for my family. While self-driving cars would be a great advancement for technology, replacing people like truck drivers is taking away income from those who need it.
The documentary opened my eyes to the reality of artificial intelligence. While parts of it help society become more modern and advanced, AI is usually painted as the villain in the media. What should we as a society believe? We are pulled in different directions as we are told that artificial intelligence is good and we should support new inventions as we modernize everyday life, but then we look at the media and see that AI could put us out of our jobs and even outsmart the human mind. One of the best examples of this is Jeff Orlowski's 2020 film The Social Dilemma. AI/algorithms are portrayed as the villain as it deflects blame from the creators of mass media monopolies (pictured above). The film personifies the algorithm into three characters that are out to get a teen boy addicted to his phone sending him ads and notifications to keep him hooked and eventually sinking into a depression. The algorithm character is shown to purposefully keep the boy on his phone to basically sell his attention. When it comes to technology, we are the product, our attention span, looking at an ad for a product, how long we stay on it, that is what companies are buying. The film deflects blame from the platform creators that knew the negative effects of social media. The algorithms are not the problem, people are.
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