Blog Post #11: Age of AI

    The documentary "In the Age of AI" was a deep dive into the effects of AI in the world.   After watching the documentary, it made me think about the different impacts that AI has on the planet. After watching this documentary, I remember one story that stuck with me: the story of the game Go. The fact that a machine could beat the best player of Go through machine learning has implications that are truly scary and impressive at the same time. After watching the entire documentary, it was organized into different parts about different advancements in AI. There was one of these big stories that I remember the best, and that is because this story was very interesting. This part was The Surveillance Capitalists. This part interested me because it is very concerning and shows a global change in AI. 

   The Surveillance Capitalists was a section of the documentary that was all about how the private human experience is claimed as a free source of raw material to predict human behavior. This means that large companies and ad companies are using data from online to predict how people will behave online. One of the first people that is talked to in this part is Pedro Domingos, who wrote a book called Master Algerims, and he spoke about the fact that everywhere you create data and some computers are taking that data and learning everything about you. This is terrifying; everything you do online is being kept as data for large companies such as Facebook and Google to use as they please. One thing that is said in this story is that we think that we are using social media, and we never consider the fact that social media is using us. That line sent chills down my spine the first time I heard it because it's true we never really think about the fact that when we are using social media, it is also using us. It is taking the data of the thing we search and look at and use it for one reason or another. 

    The documentary then goes in about the different big companies that have been a part of this idea of surveillance capitalism. The first company that came up was Google, and how when it began as a company, the creators disliked advertising. They believed that advertising would lead to the distortion of the internet. There was no want in the creator’s mind to ever sell the data they had been collecting. That was until they realized the value that would come from them selling and collecting this data. They realized that they could use machine learning algorithms to learn users' interests and then use that surplus data to come up with fine-grained predictions of what a person would click. When Google realized this and started to use this, there would be a 3,590% increase in their revenue line, and that was just from 2000 to 2004. Google kept this a search from the public for a long so that no one would know what they were doing. Now, Google was not the only company that did this; Facebook would see what Google was doing and follow it. Roger McNamee, a major investor in Facebook, talked about his worry about how large companies like Google and Facebook have been casting out wide nets for data. He talks about how this new way of predicting behavior takes the uncertainty out of things like marketing and how we gave tech a place in our lives it did not earn. The overall model of these companies is that they provide a free service, and in exchange, they collect the data of the millions of people who use it. 

     The documentary moves into a part about how Facebook realized that they could use cues in the online environment to affect real life. They showed this through different social contagion experiments that they ran. The big one talked about was done during the 2010 midterm elections and was trying to see if they could get more people to the polls. They offered users the "I voted" button on their accounts if they voted. They claimed to have nudged 40,000 people to have voted due to their experiment. This is one of many sketchy things that companies are doing; the other is a form of corporate surveillance which private companies have built without our permission or awareness. This comes with the introduction of technology like Alexa or Google Home. These things are putting surveillance in rooms where there would not normally be, though these companies say that they are not using these to target ads but helping AI improve the user experience.

    The only saving light in this part of the documentary came from a man named Alastair Mactaggart, who was a Real estate agent in California. He began campaigning for a California ballot initiative that would make a law to give consumers control over their Digital Data. of course, the big companies that this would affect, like Google, Facebook, and AT&T, all opposed this. He needed 500,000 signatures to get this law on the ballot to be voted on, and he ended up with well over 600,000. After it was on the ballot, polls show that there was an 80% once for this new Privacy Law, and this made politicians in Sacramento pay attention. MacTaggart and the politicians negotiated, and this is when the new law would come together and be able to be sent to Senate. Once it got to Senate, it passed unanimously. Now that the law is in place, people in California have the right to ask what information companies have and the right to ask companies not to sell their data. There is also the third-party opt-out, in which people can hit once “don’t sell my information,” and it will go to every website. 

     This part of the documentary stood out to me because it hits so close to home. I speak for most people when I say that social media and the internet are a big part of my life, and I use them daily. I wrote this blog post on the internet. The idea that companies like Google and Facebook are selling our data is not something new to me; I have heard that for a very long time. What is new to me is this fleshed-out version which goes in-depth on what is really going on. Like I said earlier, at one point, one of the Interviewees said we think we're just using social media, but we never considered the fact that social media is also using us. That is a terrifying thought to have, and then after hearing everything about Google selling data for revenue. You never realize how precious your online exhaust is until you hear the fact that it increased Google’s revenue line by 3,590% that is crazy. 

      Overall, the advancements being made in machine learning have terrifying implications. At one point in the documentary, a great point was made that A.I. are a tool, and it will serve those who use them no matter the user's motivations. This is the scariest part of the whole thing that AI is able to learn so much about us, and big companies can use that information for anything.