The Future is Technology: Good or Bad?

Technology has the biggest chokehold on society today. If you look into a person's life, the majority of what they own will be technology. This is scary to think about because technology is gaining more intelligence every day. Data is collected every second just because you clicked on a certain website. This can be scary and exhilarating all at the same time. As technology advances, we can discover more and help society function at a faster rate. We have overcome the limitations of our minds and created something amazing. Although it is amazing there can be consequences to this creation as well. 

With the development of artificial intelligence, technology can do more than we ever imagined. As mentioned in the video, 40,000 women die from breast cancer a year. Artificial Intelligence is going to be able to help predict if a woman is going to have cancer or will in 5 years. Additionally, autonomous cars are being created which we thought would never happen. Self-driving will solve traffic fatalities because 90% of deaths are because of human error. Artificial intelligence has barely touched the reach of what it is expected to accomplish. 

Privacy is something artificial intelligence does not have. Your information is out there and all someone has to do is look you up. As Professor Smith has mentioned multiple times in class, we have given Apple our fingerprint and face print. We have truly given away our identity to technology. It is easier than you think to hack into a system and steal information. No matter how many promises companies make about being secure there will always be a backdoor that someone can find. This is the future so buckle up and learn how to protect your data. 

Artificial intelligence has many downsides for the working class. For example, 50% of jobs will be somewhat or extremely threatened by AI in the next 15 years, Kai-fu Lee predicts. To think that technology can so easily take our jobs is terrifying. In the video, it mentioned that white-collar jobs are easier to take than blue-collar jobs. A machine is unable to perform a hands-on task that is required from blue-collar jobs. However, accomplishing more hands-on tasks is probably something we can see AI doing in the future. In addition, Kai-fu Lee mentioned that offshoring is responsible for 20% of job loss. The majority is because of automation or productivity growth. 

Technology is replacing many jobs that hardworking people need to survive. However, we do not think twice about continuing to create more technology. Why is this? It is because we gave the technology a place in our lives it has not earned. We allow it to stay and dictate how we live and this is starting to cause problems. It is time that society looks at AI for what it truly is and stops coming up with excuses to keep it around. We can still have AI in our lives because it has beneficial purposes but not to the extent it is right now.