Elon Musk on A.I.
With the rapid increase of breakthroughs when it comes to A.I. It is no longer crazy to suggest that one day computers will one day take over humanity. No I am not saying we will be living in the matrix by the year 20XX but within our lifetime we may see A.I. become more prevalent in our everyday lives. From self driving cars to computer programs that can replace working humans we are on the verge of facing a new issue of robots taking over. Elon Musk says Tesla autopilot has seen a “45% reduction in highway accidents” (Elon Musk). Most likely not as destructive as SkyNet and Terminators but just as disastrous, we could see a wave of A.I. taking over human functionality. My concern being that once we implement all these artificial robots to take over mundane aspects of human life we will slowly be taking the human part out of human life, we may create a world where everything is done by robots and if robots do everything for us, what will we do? Where will we work? Human life will not be the same if we create machines to do all our tasks and what if we do not like our simpler lives? My values behind my concern are human values. Humans have the right to live their life but if using A.I. is ultimately safer than human operation what’s to stop a law from passing that makes it illegal to drive your own car. Elon Musk projects his self driving cars will be 2 to 3 times safer than human drivers by the time it’s out of beta which is in about 18 months. Once we make something better than people than humans could become second class to the preferred superior machine, a machine that never makes mistakes and always completes its task on time. With humanoid robots being created at Boston Mechanics Lab we may see robots able to take over construction, delivery and even shops could become fully automated by A.I.. You know the safest way to remove human error from a workplace? You remove the human. We are possibly less than a decade away from creating machines to take over many of our jobs which would leave thousands of people jobless and make it even more difficult to find work than it is today. Ultron says “Everyone creates the thing they fear. Men of peace create engines of war. Avengers create invaders. Parents create children that will supplant them” (Avengers Age of Ultron) and we might just be creating our replacements. One reason this might be concerning to me is because a popular movie trope is A.I. realizing it’s better than the people it serves and inevitably takes over. I do not think this will happen but what I do think could happen is that we will see humans becoming less and less useful to society. When we create all these machines to be better than us we will eventually reach a point where humans aren’t on top anymore and we haven’t experienced anything like that since the dawn of human civilization. One way we can avoid this is by instead of creating A.I. that is superior to humans, create A.I. that works with humans to make us better. We need to step away from the idea of replacing and step closer to the idea of improving humans. We want these technological improvements but we are getting so caught up in what we can create that we never ask ourselves should we create this? The way to fix this is to focus on the real problem, people. We need to work on improving humans rather than the easier solution which is to just replace them with something better.
What is Surveillance Capitalism?
If the words you said appeared on your skin would you still say them? Most likely you wouldn’t say them, in fact you would be much more conscious of what you said. When it comes to internet surveillance it is almost as if someone is seeing everything you do online but that doesn’t slow us down. “activity is often carried out by companies that provide us with free online services, such as search engines (Google) and social media platforms (Facebook)” (Donell Holloway). My concern is that what is stopping these companies from holding our online data hostage? The answer is nothing. These companies have large data collections of almost everyone’s internet use which is often sold to third parties which is why we get targeted ads. In fact Mark Zuckerberg is currently being held on charges of collecting and selling everyone’s personal data and has just given his opening testimony in front of congress a few days ago. But what happens if Mark gives an ultimatum to get our data back. Technically when we use these applications we agree to the terms and conditions of the service which includes the collection of our data so he has the right to have it, but it is our sensitive information. It is almost a human right to not have our online information stolen which is the reason Mark is on trial. This is where my values are, I believe it is a human value to have our privacy. No one should be able to own parts of the internet nor should they be allowed to follow people’s internet activity trails and then profit from selling it. If I am going to be getting targeted ads from someone selling my data I should be the only person selling it. This is an issue because basically our whole life is recorded by the internet, what we post on social media to our bank accounts we live online just as much as we do in the real world. For someone to be able to track you online is just as wrong as someone tracking you in person, which is actually a crime it’s called stalking. It is more than just a concern but a human right to not be tracked and the sooner we make people aware of it the better. So how can we fix this? Ideally the internet should have a built in VPN, a VPN scrambles your internet trace making it impossible for companies to collect data on you, but since VPNs aren’t free we need to make people more aware of the issue. Too many people just accept that we are always being tracked on the internet but they don’t know it doesn’t need to be that way. The more people who become aware of this issue the more will take precautions to avoid it and when everyone is hidden from internet collectors like Mark Zuckerberg the more free we all become.
Citations
Donell Holloway Senior research fellow. (2019, August 16). Explainer: What is surveillance capitalism and how does it shape our economy? Retrieved November 01, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-surveillance-capitalism-and-how-does-it-shape-our-economy-119158
Elon Musk on Artificial Intelligence. (2019, October 14). Retrieved November 01, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H15uuDMqDK0
Peter Vigoda 