Blog #9: The Age of AI

The video we watched The Age of AI was very interesting and definitely relevant to the advancements of AI we see today. I find artificial intelligence to be a little frightening. I think this is mainly because we do not know that much about it still and it is advancing extremely fast. I think AI can be really great if used properly or really bad if not. 

One of the first things said was that women disproportionately hold the jobs that are at the highest risk of automation. I found this interesting because I have some experience with this. I was a cashier for a few years and when I first started it was always the typical cashier or customer service job. I am no longer a cashier, but it is not the same. At my current job, we rarely have actual registers open, everything is self-checkout. I never understood the argument of how it takes jobs from people but now I do. Since there are no cashier-operated registers anymore really, there is no need for multiple cashiers at once. In my experience, females are the ones mainly impacted by this as the video stated. 

Something else the video mentioned was that AI is a driver for increased inequality because it is a form of automation, which is a substitution for capital of labor. I thought this was interesting and I agree. With AI available for use in the workplace, there is less need for as many employees, in turn taking work away from people. I think it's scary that AI is becoming so advanced that it can take over HR, insurance, finance, and more careers. This is also a huge threat to people's financial stability which is already shaky for most. This is something that should be discussed and questioned more before continuing to move ahead with it. I don't think it's worth taking away people's livelihood. 

The video also talked about our data. Everything we do is tracked and computers are looking at it to better serve us. I agree that this can be really good but also scary when you think of what the companies are doing behind the scenes with all that data. Unfortunately with the extreme increase in technology also comes an increase in problems. Many people, myself included, don't realize how many things they agree to or how often their data is being shared. Technology can be scary when you don't know its full capabilities or what the creators of this technology are doing. The video talked about the Facebook incident where data from 87 million Facebook users was collected and harvested without their consent. This was a huge case because it was one of the first of its kind. I find it scary that everything we do is collected but what are we to do when almost everything is online now. As we navigate technology we must be smart with it and aware of what we are doing and putting out there.