Have you ever tried chatting with Siri, Cortana, or Alexa and ending up laughing hard because of the silly answers, or perhaps being stunned at how smart they can be? Although we may not realize, artificial intelligence, like personal assistants, is already becoming part of our lives. There are many uses of Artificial Intelligence that make our lives easier, and they are actually a lot more common than we thought. However, there are also many drawbacks of such usage of technology
Artificial Intelligence improves social media and email by filtering messages and deleting inappropriate or racist content, as used by Twitter and Facebook (Mihajlovic). Google’s Gmail also claims that AI-powered filtering prevents 99% of spam from getting into the inbox (Manifest). Through AI, a lot of inappropriate messages can be prevented from being seen by the public. The drawbacks, however, are that some messages may be falsely considered as spam or inappropriate, creating trouble for the users. Facebook also has a system of detecting people who seem to have the intention to do self-harm, or maybe even suicide. The program was launched in November 2017. When the AI detects suicidal thinking patterns, it sends mental health resources to the person and sometimes also to his or her friend (Manifest). This, however, has the same problem of being wrong and violating people’s privacy sometimes, if it keeps track of all the messages and phone calls. Another common usage of artificial intelligence is how it makes recommendations. They gather the user’s preferences and buying habits and guess what the user might like. Some apps also keep track of the user’s listening habits to guess what music he or she may like to hear. It’s convenient, but may also infringe on one’s privacy. In addition, digital maps and GPS is used very common in our everyday life. For example, Google Maps offer directions based on the fastest route according to usual traffic. It makes looking for unfamiliar places a lot easier. Nowadays, a lot of people (including me, actually) do not even know how to read a map and get completely lost without the help of GPS.
There is also new technology coming up based on Artificial Intelligence. For example, self-driving cars are already being invented and tested in many regions. It was introduced into the modern world in the late 20th century (Wilson). If it works well, we may expect them to come on our roads in five to ten years. Artificial Intelligence is also able to make what we call “art”. They can draw beautiful pictures and make music without any human assistance. Although this seems stunning and perhaps convenient, a huge problem in this is unemployment. With the jobs of drivers, teachers, and even musicians and artists being taken away by artificial intelligence, it’s a problem how the people are going to live on. Although it’s true that there will be more jobs for coding and engineering, it creates many problems for relatively poorly educated people or people who do not specialize in that certain area. Even though it’s commonly believed that robots lack the emotions to create ‘art’, the work they create is already hard to decipher from that made by humans. Although it’s a huge development, I believe that it’s taking away the joy and process of making and appreciating artwork.
I accept artificial intelligence, for it’s inevitable for technology to advance, and we cannot do anything to stop it. However, artificial intelligence is already ruining parts of our ability to slow down and to appreciate the simplest things in life. To me, the society and all the people around me are looking for ways to make lives more convenient, ignoring the simple beauty. I understand how technology solves many problems, and I completely support that. However, when it comes to making robots try to play chess, draw, write essays, for the mere reason of mimicking humans, I object it. Chess is for entertainment, and art is for beauty. People are testing artificial intelligence on those things, ruining their original purpose and value. The drawing robots are simply turning all the beautiful arts into long numbers. No matter how smart they may be and how much I cannot decipher the music they make from that of Beethoven’s, I do not think they will ever understand emotion. Personally I think there’s no clear definition for emotion. It’s just something you feel as a living being. Robots transfer everything into simple explanation, but love, joy, and sadness is what they cannot understand. It’s hard to imagine how scary a society dominated by artificial intelligence can be. It may be true that artificial intelligence enables us to become more and more advanced. However, this idea is ignoring the majority of people in poverty around the world who may not have the ability to even make ends meet, let alone have more education. In addition, it’s hard to see why we have to purposely make us compete against robots. Humanity is developing just fine and we are already losing a lot of what we have had. We only live life once and personally I don’t think it should be for such competition. It’s a hard question what humans live for, but we should pursue happiness in our limited lives, while artificial intelligence is ruining our abilities to slow down.
In conclusion, although we may not have realized, artificial intelligence helps us with many aspects of our daily lives. I support the usage of such technology, but when it comes to new technology of substituting our work and entertainment, I think that it shouldn’t be encouraged. It’s inevitable that technology develops and artificial intelligence advances at an astonishing rate. However, humans should realize that in order for humanity to live on without losing the simplest ability like appreciating beauty, we should not go too far.
Works Cited
Manifest, The. “16 Examples of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Your Everyday Life.” Medium, 26 Sept. 2018, https://medium.com/@the_manifest/16-examples-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-your-everyday-life-655b2e6a49de. Accessed 1 Dec, 2019.
Mihajlovic, Ilija. “How Artificial Intelligence Is Impacting Our Everyday Lives.” Towards Data Science, 17 Nov. 2019, https://towardsdatascience.com/how-artificial-intelligence-is-impacting-our-everyday-lives-eae3b63379e1. Accessed 1 Dec, 2019.
Wilson, J. R. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Unmanned Vehicles.” Military Aerospace, 1 Apr. 2019, https://www.militaryaerospace.com/home/article/16709577/artificial-intelligence-ai-in-unmanned-vehicles.
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