Time to Welcome Our Benevolent AI Overlord

 

Wanna know how nanobots are gonna make us healthier by analysing our every poop? Or how our shopping habits are gonna make us the happiest generation in decades? Or how all of this is going to help China take over the world? Look no further because Amy Webb explains it all.

In The Big Nine Amy Webb introduces AI to us in a new light. The algorithms are never wrong. The machine is objectivity embodied. AI is smart in ways you don’t understand. Buuuuut, the algorithm writers can have unintentional biases that they are not aware of. They bleed into the synthetic data they create and consequently, they are found in the AI trained with that data. The machine created by white, privileged, and educated men will serve, first and foremost, white, privileged and educated men because it understands their habits the most. As for AI intelligence. Well. Maybe it’s smarter than humans but only within set measurable parameters. And hilariously, did you know that machines can also cheat and take shortcuts? Me neither. I guess flawed people will produce flawed machines.

After Amy Webb gives us a rundown of AI’s capability and limitations, we get two contrasting trajectories—the consumer-driven economy in the US and the authoritarian government in China. Neither bodes well for humanity. In the former, the stockholders’ demand for visible profit far outweighs universal needs in environmental conservation and medicine. In the latter, control over society and individuals take precedence over democratic values and personal agency. Which has the potential to be more empathetic to our humanist self? Definitely not China. But you gotta admit. It’s a system that is more efficient. It’s faster. It’s smarter. And soon, it’ll be everywhere. So it’s no wonder that in two of the three futuristic scenarios set forth by our futurist author, China takes over the world.

I know firsthand that AI can be useful. I am grateful for autocorrect. I see my parents use voice recognition so that they don’t have to squint as they type. But I detest the readymade responses that appear when I reply to emails. And I hate that amazon recommends me books to buy based on what I have bought, when sometimes, I just want to surprise myself. And why is it that we want a machine programmed to show empathy when we can’t even be empathetic to each other as human beings? So my attitude remains much unchanged despite all this new information about AI and futurology. Wary. Cynical. But just a bit optimistic despite myself.