The world as we know it fifty years ago is not the world we live in today. The digital world is changing rapidly, and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more dominant every day. Artificial Intelligence allows machines to model and improve the capabilities of humans. Think about self-driving cars or smart assistants like Siri or Alexa but platforms like Spotify and Netflix also use AI to predict what music or film recommendations you would enjoy as well. The use of AI and the possibilities the technology has are very promising but there are also some important downsides that need to be thought trough before implementing AI everywhere.
The first problem with AI is that when you replace human jobs with AI models, you delete the human aspect of the job. For example, AI is capable of doing the same things a judge does when convicting someone of a crime. AI can weigh various factors and determine whether or not a person is guilty, just like a judge would do. However, who determines if the decisions made by the model are ethical and just? A second problem that occurs when you would implement AI in more places is who would be responsible for the mistakes that the machine makes? AI is a self-learning algorithm and sometimes even the programmer itself does not understand the decisions the technology makes. Would it then be fair that the programmer is still responsible for all actions made by the model when they do not understand the actions themselves? These are only two downsides of the use of AI but there are many more that need to be thought through before just simply implementing AI in every place that it might be useful in.
References:
Harris, D., Glover, E., & Sawtell-Rickson, J. (2022, September 19). What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How Does AI Work? Built In. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence
Who Am AI to Judge? (2019, January 23). EGF. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://egfound.org/2019/01/who-am-ai-to-judge/
Very interesting article. I also read a lot about the potential downsides of AI and I think it is very important to indeed take these consequences into consideration. The article posted under the required readings of week 6 :
Jobin, A., Ienca, M. and Vayena, E., 2019. The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Nature Machine Intelligence, 1(9), pp.389-399
provides a lot of inside on this matter. I think that the implementation of AI could be very beneficial in a lot of job areas, however, the adoption of some regulations and guidelines are essential to ensure that it works out. As you mentioned, a potential downside that stresses numerous people out is that the implementation of AI could result in the automation of some jobs, which would mean that people lose their jobs and become unemployed. In my opinion, the implementation of AI could only be beneficial if it would either ensure that it takes over aspects of the jobs that gives people the ability to fulfill more meaningful work, or that the government is able to ensure that people whos jobs are fully automated are reschooled/reskiled and do not encounter financial disadvantages because of that. I’m very curious how policymakers are going to handle this effectively