Student Spotlight: Avery Franklin, '26
Did you know that in the movie Terminator, the world was predicted to end in 1997 when a supercomputer became self-aware and tried to wipe all life from the face of the planet? Have you noticed the growing number of movies that are based on AI destroying the world: I-Robot (2004), The Creator(2023), and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning(2023)? This is no coincidence. Artificial intelligence, by definition, is the science of making machines that can think like humans. What is most alarming about artificial intelligence is its rapid evolution and limited restrictions. Around 78% of the US adult population believes that artificial intelligence is “bad”, and they aren't entirely wrong (Watson). AI is a revolutionary tool that can help with various topics ranging from studying for a test to space exploration. Given its current rate of evolution, AI is adapting from a simple chatbot on Quizlet to an imminent threat to the future of humanity. AI is essential to our future. However, it should have significant restrictions based on its exploitation of Americans' lack of awareness, invasion of personal privacy, and minimally restricted involvement in the medical field and the military.
AI’s role in society is a concern of many Americans. However, many are unaware of how AI has become integrated into everyday life. This integration is so subtle that people do not realize they are being taken advantage of. For example, 57% of Americans knew that a recommended music playlist was made by a form of AI and only 51% knew that AI was present when an email is sorted as spam. This shows how little Americans are aware of artificial intelligence. AI awareness varies based on education and how frequently people use the internet. A survey was conducted to observe how many people knew of AI’s role in society. It assessed if Americans knew that AI was responsible for different resources such as product recommendations or chatbots. 38% of frequent internet users answered all the answers correctly, while only 6% of rare internet users answered all the questions correctly. 51% of postgraduate degrees got all the answers correct; in contrast, only 14% of those with a high school diploma or less answered all of the questions correctly (Kennedy, et al). This general lack of awareness of AI integration into our everyday lives is alarming. Until we can understand all the implications of AI, we should carefully monitor its rate of development.
AI has made it easier to study for school and explore space but has also negatively impacted society by intruding on personal privacy with voice scams, facial recognition, and identity theft. AI uses computer-generated filters to scan faces into numerical expressions and determine their similarity. These filters are made by computer programs' deep “thinking” to process data. AI is mainly independent in this process but a human overseer can be used to reduce error (Lewis and Crumpler). This process can result in being able to track potential criminals in multiple places of the world by using their passports to identify their faces on a security camera. While this is a revolutionary improvement, the technology has led to inaccuracies and biases. These errors can lead to misidentification, which raises ethical questions regarding personal privacy (Howard and Bothwell). Many rumors are circulating on social media regarding certain ongoing voice scams. These voice scams, allegedly, use a loved one’s voice to convince the person of interest to give up money or personal information. According to CNN, Jennifer DeStefano received a panicked call from her teenage daughter begging for $1 million to pay off her kidnappers. Her daughter was never kidnapped and was safe. DeStefano didn’t lose any money but this terrifying experience is an example of how AI is being used for criminal activity. The growth of AI has made it easier for criminals to scam people and in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the US lost $2.6 million to voice scams alone. Voice scams are not the only thing criminals can use to ruin people’s lives. Deep fake videos and false social media platforms can make it seem like someone did something they didn’t. This can cause them to lose their credibility and relationships; they could even go to jail. In the effort to increase efficiency in social engineering, AI has advanced to find patterns in someone’s behavior or speech to convince someone else to give up their personal information or money (Skipper). These invasions of privacy have struck fear and confusion into the minds of Americans, making them tackle the question of whether or not AI is worth the risk. Though AI can be helpful at times by helping create a meal plan or offering fashion advice, a violation of human rights to privacy is wrong; so its intrusion into our everyday lives should be minimized.
AI is becoming more prevalent than the average American knows by introducing new risks in the workforce, such as in the military, intelligence agencies, and in the medical field. According to the US Department of Defense, the US is the leading global power attempting to make efforts to include artificial intelligence and autonomous machines in the military. AI’s capabilities include military intelligence and weapons guidance but also being a support system for teams in the field. AI is not only a computer program that can help with complex mathematics but can also learn from experience and predict outcomes. It handles jobs from payroll and accounting to recruitment and promotion of personnel (Vergun). As expected, some safety precautions have been placed on AI including its use in medicine and its ability for weaponization. The World Health Organization has developed ethical guidelines for the use of AI in the medical field, and a global effort has been put in place to limit its ability to weaponize certain weapons. There are many positive effects that autonomous vehicles and AI can have such as limiting human fatalities in the field and making soldiers’ jobs more productive. However, this led to many concerns such as the possibility of a future arms race for AI and the possible misuse of autonomous weapons (Marwala). AI has also revolutionized the medical field by detecting lung nodules and heart arrhythmias, so it should be a part of society but carefully regulated (Copeland). Optum, a health-services algorithm, in 2019 was used to determine which patients would benefit from extra medical care. While it produced accurate results, the results suggested the algorithm had racial biases. The designers of the system were told to keep race out of the system’s consideration but they also asked it to consider the future cost of a patient in the hospital. A similar program was created to identify melanomas in 2018. While the results were seen as more accurate than doctors' interpretations, the algorithm was seen as biased against black patients because it was primarily trained by analyzing light-skinned groups (Littman et al). These results were accurate and provided insight into medical errors but also discriminated against patients, which is why AI should not be a primary resource.
Many Americans do not understand the full extent of what AI can and will be able to do with its current rate of evolution. This is the reason its progression should be moderated cautiously or even scaled back to allow the general public to catch up with its advanced programming and be allowed to understand how prevalent AI is in our everyday lives. Wouldn’t you feel less connected with the world if you didn’t know what was happening around you? Wouldn’t you like to establish a sense of security and understanding about what is truly shaping society today? How will we be able to catch up with what’s going on around us if the world keeps changing? The answers to these questions are simple. Stop focusing on what the future holds and how advanced tech needs to be, and allow people to embrace and recognize the present. This “new artificial society” is old, but people are just now beginning to discover what truly holds society together. AI isn’t something new that has only been around for the past five years but has been a work in progress since the 20th century. Embracing artificial intelligence into everyday life is the future but this can only become a reality if we have a positive future to live in.
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