Have We Trained AI to Control Us?
Far be it for me to be a futurist alarmist (who's worked his entire career in technology), but as I recently watched the movie Social Dilemma on Netflix, I was struck by how much I already knew when I saw it.
Trillions of data points, given freely by users, to help someone else influence their behavior. Check. Yes. And? My friends are there. It's helpful. So what?
It strikes me that this is all fun and games while we have control over what's going on - while humans are in charge. What happens with the AI is completely in charge? When there are no more "dials" to be controlled by even the corporate overlords?
Stock markets won't judge the actions of CEOs and employees anymore, but instead judge only algorithms.
Is that day coming? In the movie The Matrix, the creators developed a simulation to keep humans placated. It strikes me that we may already be there.
What higher goals do we subscribe to as a society? Has tribalism completely made that impossible? (I must be in a dystopian mood today.)
Mayier Maimaiti cautions that “we are extremely in danger when it comes to companies putting their profits ahead of being human.” I think we’re pretty far along on this one, but are we past a point of no return?
Kjeld Lindsted says “We (humans) built it so it can only ever really do what we'd do anyway…algorithms aren't witchcraft and we do a disservice to ourselves when we talk like they are. AI (and humans for that matter) are just decision trees. They're easily explained.”
Yuval Noah Harari wrote “We are now creating tame humans that produce enormous amounts of data and function as very efficient chips in a huge data-processing mechanism, but these data-cows hardly maximize the human potential.” - I think this is apt, but am wary to consider the implications of all of humanity failing to “maximize the human potential.” In the words of Marty McFly, that’s heavy.
