Has Artificial Intelligence Become Too Real?

As the digital age has progressed, internet safety has become a much larger concern. FRONTLINE made the film “In the Age of A.I.” to discuss this issue, concentrating on Artificial Intelligence.  The film analyzes A.I. and the implications it has on our society, security, longevity.  A.I. is being implemented in more and more jobs every day, as well as other aspects of daily life.  A.I. has potential to be a great addition to humanity, but there is also an element of danger that comes with it.

These elements were first recognized when problems in national security and digital privacy arose.

Internet privacy plays a large part in how we as humans are monitored. This can be both a positive and negative aspect of artificial intelligence.  For one, A.I. collects personal information to put into their algorithms and better serve the user by knowing their preferences.  These algorithms help the A.I. to find what they need from the ads they are presented, the news they would want to read most, and other things as well.

A con to this could be how this information can be used to control the consumer.  These companies can use these algorithms to access more information than the consumer would care to give, and use that to present them with products that the consumer is most likely to buy, potentially extorting them into spending more money than they otherwise would.  This is just an example of how the companies can use personal information to get more out of their consumers for their own gain.

In the lens of national security, we have reached a point where mega companies are seemingly invincible.  For example, Facebook getting hit with a multi-million dollar fine for their use of AI inquired information is not the same as if the average citizen were to be fined the same amount.  Money isn’t an issue for them, and that makes it an issue of national security when there is no real way to keep them in check.

Alastair Mactaggart is a man who got about 600,000 people to sign a petition for the government to allow people to have a say in whether or not their data can be sold by companies.  This is big for online security and identity theft, because once that information is sold, there’s no telling what could happen to it.