The Economist’s Special Article on AI

These spying capabilities can be extended to governments, so authoritarian governments, such as China, will be deploying these technologies as rapidly as they can. So it is really critical that we hold on to our democracy because once it falls, technology will make it supremely difficult, if not impossible, to bring back democracy. Once IoT and AI are embedded everywhere, it will be impossible to hide, to plan, to do anything.

The other thing the article was upfront about was the reason companies were rushing to deploying AI, aside from not being crushed by the frontrunners:

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“In private, many bosses are more interested in the potential cost and labor savings than in the broader opportunities AI might bring…That is certainly not good for workers, but nor, ultimately, is it good for business…Some companies may not actually eliminate existing jobs but use technology to avoid creating new ones. And workers who keep their jobs are more likely to feel spied on by their employers”. The Economist, March 31st – April 6th, 2018, “GrAIt Expectations”, p. 5.

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So all of that talk about using technology as a complement to human skills is just “a whole lotta wishful thinking.” As long as we have shareholder value as the primacy of business, there will be greater emphasis on cost cutting than on the human complement. We would have to first change our value system to demand a broader perspectives for businesses than just the profit making bottom-line.

This article is a very interesting reading, especially all of the various ways AI can be put to use and perform so much better than humans. It seems that there is nothing that it cannot do…except: