(Probably not)
What do you think is the future of AI?
Right now, it’s being used as a tool to streamline menial tasks involving coding, information gathering and interpretation, and surveillance. The genius of the developers and companies lies in how and what tasks they chose to introduce this tool into. They knew the power is in the hands of the public. The ultimate implications on the masses have always been there. The negative possibilities looming over the technology since before the technology even existed. I believe the films that depicted hyperbolic premonitions of an apocalypse driven by an artificial intelligence has played a role in our distrust of this technology. The allegory being that anything which makes us useless to the capitalist and industrial ecosystem, makes us obsolete to society in general. And also there’s the danger of relying on information that will slowly be more and more distorted towards benefiting the machine and disregarding any humanity. But most people took the stories at face value.
So, how did they combat this collective negativity? They made it into a product. They sold it to the individual first. But this also came negatives. People using it for scams, disinformation, and delusional behaviors and showing us how this technology can be used to distort our reality. The beautiful thing is, the future of this technology isn’t as certain as as the corporations who invested in it believed. They underestimated our foresight. Their future is now another subcultural war between those who believe that progress should be unchecked and those who believe that we need to consider its consequences.
Like always, those with the money believe that money equals power- and that this power, and the individual consumer will help them win this battle. They might be right. And the world might be looking at an era of mass joblessness in any area having to do with information. Millions of people working in accounting, coding, graphic design, marketing, entertainment, analytics, customer service, etc., will have to enter the trades and physical labor industries. Maybe there will be a trade off and they will start paying janitors, plumbers, fieldworkers, cooks, and waiters as much as the white collar jobs that AI will replace. Or maybe we’ll find a way to force politicians to ban AI from certain sectors to preserve the humanity of those industries and livelihood of those workers. I don’t know, but thanks for the question, and thank you for reading.
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