Are You Scared Yet, Human?
From Amazon’s Alexa to improvements in cancer care, artificial intelligence is changing our world. But today leading tech figures from Silicon Valley worry about the future that’s being created. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, believes George Orwell's 1984 could become reality by 2024. Panorama has uncovered new evidence of AI being used by police in China to recognise the emotions of detainees in order to help determine guilt or innocence. China has vowed to become the world's AI superpower by 2030, sparking a new arms race with America. Both countries are pouring billions into cutting-edge military tech, including autonomous weapons. AI could usher in a golden age, but without urgent regulation, experts warn we could lose control of artificial intelligence, a prospect, they say, that should scare us all.
The latest BBC Panorama, about artificial intelligence, is quite disturbing. AI is apparently already being used by China to do things such as track its citizens, work out who they're meeting (and shouldn't be, according to the authorities), track and identify Uyghurs from their facial features, identify the emotions of people detained by police in order to determine whether they're likely to be guilty, even of as yet undetected crime (wasn't there a futuristic film about that not too long ago?). One AI expert raises the prospect of tiny flying lethal weapons being developed that can be released by plane, are as difficult to counteract as mosquitoes and enter buildings to kill particular individuals.
One China expert from the London School of Economics (who looks Chinese) says that China is only interested in coexistence. But whites "coexisted" with blacks during apartheid and segregation, Nazis "coexisted" with the Jews, etc. There is surely a risk that a non-democratic regime could harness AI to dominate not only its own citizens but those of other countries too.
Though citizens of democracies may not face too much risk of their governments tracking them through their smart phones, the increasing dependence on smart phone technology to the exclusion of traditional means seems foolish to me.
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