How artificial intelligence hurts people

In a new article by Dave Davies and heard on NPR’s Fresh Air program, artificial intelligence (A.I.) has come to a point where it is displacing workers rather than making lives better, and in many cases, actually turning against people, causing real harm to Americans. Listen to the complete program here:

“I don’t think people fully appreciate the extent to which things like benefits, who qualifies for nutrition assistance, who qualifies for public housing, are determined by algorithms now,” New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose told NPR. “And sometimes that works fine and some other times it doesn’t work so great. There was a case a few years ago in Michigan where an algorithm that the state was using to determine benefits eligibility misfired, and it kicked a lot of people off their benefits wrongly and that affected people’s lives in real, tangible ways.”

A.I. is also determining parole hearings through a black box process that no one is allowed to examine, deciding who leaves and who stays in prison.

“There are other kinds of bots and automation being used by governments in the criminal justice system, for example, to predict whether a given defendant is likely to re-offend if you put them out on parole. These algorithms are generally not open and inspected by the public — they’re sort of ‘black boxes’ and we don’t really know how they work and there’s not a lot of accountability for them. And so as a result, we end up with these mysterious machines making these decisions that affect millions … of people’s lives and we don’t really understand what they’re doing,” Roose said.

A similar phenomenon is happening on YouTube where people are being radicalized by A.I. to increase watch time.

“Maximizing watch time is the No. 1 goal of this algorithm. And so some of the ways that it’s learned that it can keep people on YouTube for a long time are by introducing them to new ideas, maybe to conspiracy theories, maybe to more extreme versions of something that they already believe, things that will sort of lead them down these rabbit holes. And so this has had an effect on politics. This has had an effect on our culture. And it’s resulted in some cases where people have been radicalized because the algorithm thought that radicalizing them would be a good way to keep them watching YouTube.”

Read the complete article on NPR’s website here:
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/16/977769873/the-age-of-automation-is-now-heres-how-to-futureproof-yourself
Related Amazon affiliate links:
T-Minus AI: Humanity’s Countdown to Artificial Intelligence and the New Pursuit of Global Power
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Dangers to Humanity: AI, U. S, China, Big Tech, Facial Recognition, Drones, Smart Phones, IoT, 5G, Robotics, Cybernetics, and Bio-Digital Social Program
Artificial Intelligence: 101 Things You Must Know Today About Our Future – Updated Edition for Post-Covid-19 World