Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence in 2020

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by Clarena M. Renfrow


 For the last several years I have been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence.  How will it impact our world?  How will impact it me and my family?  My students?  The future?  So many questions that are as of yet unanswered.  Nobody really knows.  Not really.

I started investigating where we are with it.  How is it being used and what the hopes are for its' development?  I learned a great deal, but more questions were raised.  What laws are guiding AI development?  With all the different companies developing AI around the world, how will AI be regulated?  How far should AI go in controlling our lives?  What are the ethics of its' development?  Are we dancing with the devil and don't even know it?  

Let me say that I am not someone who is against AI.  I believe that it can do a great deal to help humanity from security in our homes, to helping us find cures for disease.  It can assist in educating our children, exploring space, and perhaps help us figure out how to solve global warming.  We have many questions and issues that need solving and AI could be a great tool for this.  What lingers in my mind though is that while good people develop and use it for good, people with nefarious intentions will use it for evil and the in between can be a slippery slope.   Without sufficient laws, criminal behavior goes unpunished.  Data collection, for example, can be used for good or with malicious intention.  

Data collection and analyzation regarding medicine, diseases, hunger, poverty, sustainable energy, and pollution, etc. can be done faster by AI than any human.  AI can be instrumental is assisting us to solve big problems using big data.  That is really exciting!  There are currently small AI robots that we can purchase for our homes that are used for security monitoring, helping the elderly and disabled, cleaning our homes, monitoring air quality, communications and so much more.  We also have Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod (to name a few) in our homes as AI assistants.  Personally, I have a roomba, scooba, and an echo in my home and really like them.  They are useful tools.

AI is also used to collect data about you.  It tracks your online behaviors, purchases, location, where you live, work, and anything else it can find.  You don't even know that it's happening and/or didn't read the fine print when you played a game online that says you are giving them access to your social media.  Then AI is used to learn about your friends.  Big companies do this mostly to sell you what they determine you want to buy.  That's why when you buy a pair of shoes, the next thing you know all those same style of shoes are in advertisements you see online.  However, it is also used to change the reality that you see online to manipulate you for some purpose.  Of course, we know that techniques like this were used in our last election to get us to vote in a certain way with information that wasn't all factual.  This disturbs me greatly.  Where are the laws to protect us from this kind of manipulation?  How do we know what to believe?  This is the United States of America right?  How many of you have read the book, 1984 by George Orwell?  If not, you should.  There are a lot of comparisons to our modern day situation in the world.  I urge you to investigate for yourself not only about what's happening in our country, but around the world, especially in China.  Shouldn't our personal privacy be respected?

My purpose for this blog is to provoke you to investigate AI, machine learning and robotics for yourself and then think deeply about it.  Ask yourself the tough questions.  We all need to be aware of what we are doing and giving away online and not succumb to the convenience and entertainment we perceive.  We must make sure that AI is used for good and not manipulation, tracking, crime, and other evils.  How is it currently being used in the military and what are the plans for the future?  Don't we have enough killing machines now?  We must insist on laws that govern how AI is used because the decisions we make now will not only effect us, but our children and grandchildren.  We need to decide what kind of world in which we want them to live. 




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