Artificial intelligence can be defined as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks usually requiring human information, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. It is the responsibility of every scientist and researcher and their inventions, like artificial intelligence, to play a beneficial role in the lives of citizens. Hence, they need to ensure that all of the users (both adults and children) are benefitting from their research attempts. However, this might not be the case in reality.
Such a fact is explained holistically by Zeynep Tufekci in her Ted Talk session, where she entailed how artificial intelligence had made people more and more dependent on such software to help them out, and instead of relying on their own skill set, they’d always look out for artificial intelligence as a wheelchair to propel them forward and would be lost without it. However, this wasn’t even the worst case scenario, the sheer intrusion of applications like Facebook and Instagram, etc. to gather data to generate a greater pool of audience was no longer in control. She discussed how Facebook not only maintained our offline data but also kept our erased typed words and examined them later on as well. The hidden patterns for each other’s life and his privacy were no longer under his control.
I entirely second Ms. Tufekci’s argument; the persuasion architectures set in place by different networks to maintain user data only to sell it later on are entirely unethical. Furthermore, the extent to which each website gathers the user’s data and manipulates and stores it for its advantage and the influence it might have on each human is no longer understood by many, which I believe is one of the most dangerous and scary things that could happen in today’s world. She asserted the same by saying, “It’s like we’re not programming anymore; we’re growing intelligence that we don’t truly understand.”
Reference
Yudkowsky, E. (2008). Artificial intelligence as a positive and negative factor in global risk. Global catastrophic risks, 1(303), 184.
Barrat, J. (2013). Our final invention: Artificial intelligence and the end of the human era. Macmillan.
Tufekci, Z. (2018). Zeynep Tufekci: We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. En.tiny.ted.com. Retrieved 22 April 2018, from
