Oh, government, how confusing you are. And, oh, how scarily accurate predictions about technology can be. And, can’t forget, oh, what slippery a slop(e) Generative AI is.
As the AI world functions right now, it is extremely competitive and the ability to compete relies solely on money and power.
Kate Crawford addresses this system of power in her book, Atlas of AI. On page eight she explains, “due to the capital required to build AI at a scale and the ways of seeing that it optimizes AI systems are ultimately designed to serve existing dominant interests. In this sense, artificial intelligence is a registry of power.” Crawford highlights, one, the fact that capital is required to build AI, and two, those who have capital dominate the field, interjecting their own interests in technological development, but mostly their own interests in profit. Much like the history of content explained by Kate Eichhorn in her book, Content, profit often preys on knowledge and privacy in online spaces.
Eichhorn gives the example of Facebook; Facebook conducted their own research on facial recognition by sorting through millions of tagged photos from their unsuspecting users. Eichhorn gives this example on page 18, where she further explains how the content in itself has no value, rather the endless production of content gives companies value through their ability to profit off data as they please. But, the platform still has millions of users; meaning, Facebook has successfully tricked users into believing the benefit of the site is greater than the harm.
We see similar cycles already emerging in AI platforms where they keep users as engaged as possible; even to the point of emotional manipulation. Karen Hao’s, Empire of AI, explores these negative tactics often used by AI programs to keep users engaged. Much like other content sharing sites, the more content AI receives the more data it has to benefit its own goals, no matter the harm to the users. In her book, Hao comments on the fact that these tech corporations make promises to change the future and deliver large amounts of progress to the tech world, but often, the involvement of billionaires brings regression to these spaces.
This regression is often not obvious to the naked eye, though, because it happens in other spaces. Take literally right now, AI seems to keep moving up, even AI superbowl ads! The tech industry, to the naked eye, is growing in large amounts. And, by no doubts Generative AI is growing exponentially. At the same time, people are largely split on AI to the point it causes controversy in academic, online, political, and social spaces (and more). And while AI continues to grow… the rest of America… not so much.
“These two features of technology revolutions—their promise to deliver progress and their tendency instead to reverse it for people out of power, especially the most vulnerable—are perhaps truer than ever for the moment we now find ourselves in with artificial intelligence.” – Karen Hao, Empire of AI.
Comments
3 responses to “Week Three – Eli Y.”
I’m so glad I’m not the only one incredibly disappointed by all the Superbowl commercial slop from this weekend! It is really disheartening to see how apathetic AI sourcing really is despite the positive spin people try to put on it. Human beings used as numbers for an input system is very dystopian and scary and something we are very much living through. It’s very violating knowing that every online interaction in some way is being used to collect data for AI in some way or another.
Corporations making empty promises is something that has been going on for years, so of course these big tech companies are going to follow suit. It is easy because they have been getting away with it for so long. People are going to be distracted with AI Superbowl ads (although I did not watch any of them and do not plan on it) and how lifechanging this technology is and will be, that they don’t even realize what is happening behind closed doors. As long as they are benefiting, would they even care?
I would question how much progression and regression apply with AI. On the one hand, AI is certainly an advancement in computing technology that enables human productivity in some capacity. On the other hand, can we say that the negative sides of it, especially from the perspective of an average person in society, are a genuine step backwards? I somewhat want to challenge that view. Remembering the example of the cotton gin, the cotton gin pushed technological capability forward, but it also made things worse for the oppressed in society. That being said, its implementation wasn’t quite a regression, but rather a change in how the existing relations of power and human value in society manifested themselves. It doesn’t seem to follow that AI regresses us, per se; rather, I think it makes the existing problems in society that long precede its existence far less difficult to overlook. The inequality and oppressive nature of power within modern society is conserved and on display in AI, and the existing relations contour the progression of its development. But I don’t think it will “regress” into some kind of feudalism. I think that it will entrench us more into the structure of existing society and that further compression upon the people makes inequality more intrusive and noticeable over time. Overall, I wouldn’t say that we are regressing, but I would say that we are sitting still while changing shape, exhausting all our potential attributes our current material world makes possible. I think there comes a point where we can’t possibly change shapes any longer, and that is when humans tend to begin moving in a direction.