Artificial Intelligence Introduced to our World

This past lecture in Interactive active media we dug deeper into its new inventions. Our class always revolves around five key points: Ideologically neutral media, the context of media, coded bias, what’s nature and culture, remediation, and what’s dystopian and utopian. This four-hour lecture consisted of a recap on last weeks mobile phones to AI and AI’s used for war introduced by our guest speaker Tsvetelina van Benthem.
At the beginning of each lesson, we start with a recap of the week before. We further discussed our relationship as humans with our technology. Our discussions consisted of neighborhood whats app groups, what’s in a phone, and AI. Neighborhood whats app groups were created by people in one community to keep an eye out on their area. In this group, people discussed things such as what they’re seeing that may seem out of place to keep everyone else cautious. Every time a stranger was seen it would be reported in this WhatsApp group. I think a majority of people in this group were mostly just paranoid. We also talked about how different parts of materials in your phone are from all over the world. One iPhone is touched 5,000 times before you touch it yourself. People in this factory work in such harsh conditions that the building is blocked all around the exterior to prevent suicide while at work. We also discussed new AI inventions such as the Robotic Seal. This was a moving and blinking pet seal that would love to be pet and react to you. This Invention was huge in the senior citizen community due to the low maintenance of the robot and the love it gave. (For more on last week’s recap see “Adapting to new technology”)
One of my classmates gave an excellent presentation on AI within the workplace. Different types of AI’s are algorithms, chatbots, self-driving cars, social and industrial robots, personal assistants such as Siri or Alexa,and facial recognition software. This presentation talked to us about how robots in the workplace may soon take over our daily jobs. Robots or AI, are more efficient in the workplace. Unlike people, AI’s don’t have emotions. Fights will never be started, gossip won’t exist, complaining or asking for a raise isn’t even possible. These AI’s will continue to do their jobs from start to finish. AI’s don’t need sleep or a lunch break. For example, In working conditions like driving a truck from one side of the country to the other can be done in one go. These AI’s won’t need sleep or to stop for a bathroom break. This is also alarming because of AI’s aren’t capable of making split decisions. Special coding has to take place before to secure the AI in an emergency situation. When coding the AI decisions such as, what to hit, how to avoid the situation, or even hitting a living thing has to be processed into the AI ahead of time. The question is, who makes the coding and do some bodies matter more than others? Thus meaning, making split decisions when the breaks go out in a self-driving car if there is someone in the street. Who will be hit and killed and who will survive? At the end of class, we even pretended to be the AI coders for a self-driving car. We were presented with scenarios like the breaks going out on the car and what we should do. These scenarios consisted of questions asking if we were the coders who would be killed during a self-driving car emergency no-break situation between 3 women athletes in the car or three heavy-set men legally crossing a crosswalk. These questions show us another reason why technology is never ideologically neutral.
Last, ended our lecture with the quest speaker Tsvetelina van Benthem from Oxford. She discussed Warfare conflicts and how AIs could eventually contribute during the wartime. Tsvetelinas goal was to focus more on the good than the bad. This would be protecting the citizens of the countries rather than the things that could go wrong. These machines would contribute generously to the lives of citizens. These AI’s codes would pre-set for any situation. This topic was very interesting. I never thought about putting AI’s into a war zone.
Each week we are introduced to some type of new inventions you wouldn’t even think of. Speaking about the advanced technologies intrigued me for the future. Will there be self-driving cars even through the pro’s and con’s that are already visible? Will we send AI’s to war to fight for our countries? Who will be working the jobs in the future? These are questions that go through my mind daily. So much new technology is being introduced to our world will we be able to distinguish the difference between natural and cultural? Will this world eventually become dystopian due to all of the new and thriving technology? Who knows, we might be able to time travel and see for sure in just a few years.

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