Your Brain on A.I.

In our modernized, technology-dependent and Baby Boomer-infuriating society, Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. Whether or not you worship Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. Thanks to our free market, artificial intelligence has permeated itself through nearly every tech-related aspect of our lives. Siri. Map directions. Self-driving cars. Facebook tagging. Youtube Autoplay. Search term predictions. So yeah, it’s improving our lives — what’s so controversial about it? Well, the whole Zucc situation was caused by Facebook’s complete disregard of user privacy, using their vast database to share the personal data of 87 million people to Cambridge Analytica for advertising purposes. This brings up a major question: do we want convenience at the expense of sacrificing privacy? Most of us have inadvertently agreed by using these sites and not looking at the ridiculously long user license agreements.

Algorithms used in social media and other conveniences can be viewed as the basis of AI. Because of Google, YouTube and Facebook’s high user engagement, their search result and suggestion algorithms can be hugely influential to people’s opinions. Even programmers don’t always know what data their algorithms use to generate results. As a consequence, algorithms can racially discriminate, target underprivileged people, or target those facing mental illness for advertising — all outside the responsibility of companies. As data scientist Cathy O’Neil puts it, “Algorithms are opinions embedded in code.”

Another facet of AI is Machine Learning. This basically means that a program can use data on its own to improve performance, without the need for programming. Uber and Lyft use machine learning to improve wait times and increase efficiency, virtual assistants use it to understand your voice, and Tesla uses it in their self-driving cars.

So if you ever try to rationalize dropping any course taught by Walker or Morsch, just relax and know that whatever education you get (or don’t get) will become meaningless when Teslas and those Boston Dynamics robot dogs roam the earth.