The Age of AI

    In the time of the present, AI is being talked about by everyone and their mother, and is being used by people all over the world. The video "In The Age of AI", a very well done documentary, divulges into the history, dangers, and implications for the future with the rapid growth of AI. The new, rapidly growing technology has been considered as the "new oil" of the world, meaning everyone wants to capitalize on it use it for profits. In this scenario of "new oil", China fills the role of Saudi Arabia, as it is on the way to becoming a total surveillance state. Essentially this could/would create a technology war because the more data there is, the better the AI will perform. Potentially creating a world of two AI super powers, which is cool to an extent, but very terrifying.

    AI began as a thing known as "deep learning" when a team called AlphaGo created a program that used thousands of recorded games of Go, learned the game, and taught itself to play and adapt. A notable cool mention is that his technology was created based off the human brain and its neural pathways. After some time, AlphaGo took on the world's greatest Go player, Lee Chang-Ho, and revolutionized the world in a single move, "move 37". Move 37, a move that was unfathomable by the human intellect, yet when it was produced by AlphaGo it was considered brilliant. This matchup consisted of five games, AlphaGo took four and Lee took one. 

    As remarkable as it is, AI spells danger for essentially everyone except the 1%. Every industry is looking at ways to utilize this disruptive technology and use everything new available to try and become more efficient. "In The Age of AI," the produce an inequality graph which showed that in the 1980's the working class (a blue line) started up high on the graph compared to the upper class (a red line). As time marched on the blue line crossed with the red line around late 90s-00s and has only continued to separate. AI will only exacerbate this and be very harmful for society, as the rich will get richer, and the middle class and poor will struggle harder. It is essentially the ultimate tool of wealth creation, as it is able to track user presences and conduct ad targeting. Companies like Google and Amazon utilize these because they are simply the best and this will allow them to make more money. 

    The video discusses shortly of the evolution of nature during industrial capitalism, turning land into real estate, creating labor and jobs which allowed the country to flourish. The parallel being the potential change to surveillance capitalism which would eliminate private human experience as businesses want to know what we will do now, soon, and later. The only difference being the latter having bad implications for the future of society. For example, a man shares his story of a dinner with his friend who works with Google; long story short he asks what's all this fuss about Google data tracking, expecting a "don't worry about it it's nothing." To which his friend replies "you'd be horrified how much we knew about you." It really makes you wonder how much Google and these other companies know about you, especially down to the minute details. 

    It is later stated that Googles business is learning everything about you that they can, what you like, who your friends are, your private thoughts, all for the purpose of turning the maximum profit. This is shown in-between 2000 and 2004, when Google's revenue line increased by 3,590% after they figured out they could see everyone's data allowing them to exploit it. Even scarier, little things, such as typing a paragraph versus typing bullet points in a message to a friend, are huge in predictive value, for example, companies can force you to see that is similar to something you have already bought or something you've expressly liked, so you are more likely to buy it.

    

    While it is very terrifying, there are definitely some positives to this new technology. I have exploited some of it myself, for example I have used ChatGPT to help guide some of my work and it allowed me to provide a better outcome. There will definitely be a lot of advancements in technology and medicine with AI, but the importance is to utilize it the right way and not allow companies that only see $$$ to get their grime filled hands on it. It is important to keep the middle class and the poor class protected, and not allow the rich to simply get richer at the expense of the prior.