Life with Artificial Intelligence.
“If the product is flawless, then the Consumer is satisfied, and the society is stable.”
Lino Aldani. Onirofilm, 1960.
Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) entered our lives, it has appeared that it is not bad or good terminators, advanced “liquid” enemies of humanity or robots from Star Wars. AI is not a technology or a computer program. It is a process of continuous analysis, optimization, and again, analysis of developing an increasingly accurate model. What model? These are patterns of customer behavior, manufacturing process, illness, political views or many other variables. The goal (model) can be anything, as long as there is enough data. The term “artificial intelligence” was born many years ago. Nowadays it was revived. “Artificial Intelligence,” of course, sounds more mysterious and more interesting than “processing large data arrays to look for dependencies and relationships,” which AI itself actually does.
There is no reason to believe that artificial intelligence will soon become self-sufficient and will build models itself. It is not expected that soon AI will search for something independently and recognize the missing data, draw conclusions and optimize itself. It has not even learned to drive a car yet! Nevertheless, AI is already able to influence us, more precisely not the AI itself, but its owners, those who use AI.
First of all, let’s figure out what AI is. Why did some software’s work come to be called “artificial intelligence”? After that, we will consider how the using of AI to analyze data could help some people influence other people.
The fact is that until recently we could have predicted the results of the work of any program! Even the results of calculations of complex mathematical models of physical objects were to some extent known in advance because the models contained a finite list of algorithmic states, a limited set of possible results, a restricted list of influences. It was a selection of options. People have always considered such activity “non-intellectual.”
We added the word “intellect” at the moment when we realized that a computer program not only performs complex calculations. “Intellect” appeared when the word “guess” became applicable to the computer program.
“Guessing” hides under a not-entirely explainable result of the human brain processes. Intellectual activity is a mix of reasoning, knowledge (information), emotions, and what we call “guessing,” i.e., compensating for the lack of information. If a person has guessed, this means that he consciously and unconsciously processed a certain amount of information and obtained a result that, at first glance, looks unexpected.
So, the concept of AI means that computers can “guess,” that is, identify implicit or hidden connections and get results (conclude) that not based, as it seems to a person, on incoming data. The only thing that AI cannot do is compensate for the lack of data, and the concept of “guessing” is not entirely applicable. Without the necessary data, the output will be erroneous. Therefore, there should be a lot of data!
The main question today is not the capabilities of AI – they are limitless – but, who owns the data about the people of the planet? How are AI dependencies and patterns used and in whose interests? Who uses artificial intelligence to influence people and how? The picture that emerges seems disturbing.
Food for AI
Information on the Earth was always collected and stored. But our information processing capabilities were limited. Hardware performance and the amount of data was growing more massive too. Meanwhile, the explosive growth in the volume of data unsuccessfully called “big data,” fundamentally changed the situation. Term “Big data” means it is possible to add additional information to your check: how many minutes you spent to make a purchase, how many times you turned your head, etc. A seller can add your photo and shopping history. Why is it stored? What if it means something! It is done because information about us from thousands of sources and about millions of other customers can allow identifying more accurately your desires, even unconscious desires and, as a result, manufacturers enable to sell you a second winter coat instead of a scarf! Also, taking into account your habit (from big data) of vacationing in tropical countries in the winter, the seller will be able to sell you a sombrero in the transaction!
AI needs information. The more data that is collected means, the more accurate the model. How and who collects data about us?
These data are born at our every step, every movement of the computer’s mouse, during a telephone conversation, at our every action or inaction. Governments, telecom operators, hospitals, banks, shops and restaurants, Internet companies and thousands of organizations collect data about us.
It is hard for a person to solve the “Einstein puzzle,” where there are only five variables. AI identifies the dependencies in the matrix million by million, and we sometimes do not even know what these dependencies are. For example, a well-known fact: a computer system of a supermarket correctly determined that a 15-year-old girl was pregnant by analyzing her behavior in the store. It shows that a lot of information is collected about us and the effectiveness of the analysis is exceedingly high.
“Comrade” Edward Snowden told us a few years ago: we are being watched, our every step is recorded, collected and analyzed. Now we can clarify: they record ABSOLUTELY everything, collect EVERYTHING that is POSSIBLE, and their analysis is VERY EFFECTIVE. The word “watch” no longer fits with what is happening — instead, somebody is recording the movie of our life, where we play ourselves. The owner of the film can recognize this movie and, of course, sell it. With the help of AI, someone can convince us to change our wardrobe but also “correct” our thoughts, and change the plot of our movie. At the same time, it will seem to us that this was our own, conscious choice. Are we becoming more manageable? By whom?
Who is the director?
Reflection on artificial intelligence inevitably leads to questions: who owns our data? How and by whom is the data being used?
Four companies in the world have such a large total market capitalization that only five countries in the world have a higher GDP. These are Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. Such a fantastic result can only be achieved by offering us to post our photos and videos (for free!) or by making an electronic shop window for selling books and a search engine to find these books. Apparently, these four giants especially successfully collect data about us. Five years ago, on the Forbes list, these companies ranked 68, 525, 1071, and 15 places, respectively. In these past five years, they have found out all about the consumers and rose because of this a total of one and a half thousand positions in the Forbes rating! If we add IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle to our list, it will turn out that all the oil sold and unsold in the world would not have produced as much profit as these computer giants have generated. The IT-giants’ real treasure is knowledge, not hardware cabinets with microchips!
Google knows what we think because we ask it questions. We introduced the phrase “ask Google.” Google is our principal advisor. We fully believe in the answers from Google. We do think that these answers are from the objective world’s mind. In reality, these answers are paid for. Google is an advertising agency that sells advertising space and gives answers in the “Google’ payments order.”
How we feel, what our mood is, with whom we communicate, and what we are interested in – Facebook knows everything. We tell Facebook everything about ourselves through our photos, reposts, and likes. Facebook has invaded our hearts and minds! After a few hundred clicks, Facebook can determine the color of our eyes! Our preferences in food, politics, and sex were determined much earlier. We believe that our social networking page is only ours. But it is not. AI and the directors of Facebook selected it for you, just as the chain of videos on YouTube were selected for auto viewing.
Until recently, Amazon knew everything about us as consumers of goods and services, except for what we eat. The situation has since changed with Amazon’s invasion of the food market, i.e., its purchase of the Whole Food Market, it has solved this problem. Amazon’s business looks destructive to potential competitors — Amazon’s highest level of efficiency allows it to reduce prices to the levels unacceptable for its rivals while Amazon’s high reputation brings down the competitor’s shares. Amazon buys so many firms and companies that the takeover process has even got its name “to be Amazoned.” If the giant implements the idea of “delivery on the day of the order,” we may say “goodbye” to offline trade. Amazon knows more than what we want as consumers. The most significant part of the information of the entire globe lies in the Amazon Data Centers because Amazon controls almost 40% of the global cloud-computing market.
It is easy to assume that Apple knows all the above, plus something else – because we have iPads and iPhones in our hands!
Amazon controls more than 40% of all online sales; Google controls almost 90% of search advertising, Facebook manages nearly 80% of mobile social traffic. Google and Apple control 95% of the software market for mobile devices. It is an ocean of information about anything!
Social networks of all countries collect information about their users. Whether in one country or another, scandals arise over the illegal transfer of user data to governments, buyers and hackers.
We realize that owners of data know everything about us, but they have information about us only since our conscious age. Why have we become what we are? How did we grow up? Companies went to the roots – to children.
Google has gone the farthest in collecting our data. In 2017, Google’s laptops (Chromebooks) accounted for 60% of all computers in US classrooms, has increased market share from 5% in 2012. Chromebooks are cheaper than similar devices from the world of Windows and Apple. The main thing is that, according to experts, teachers, and students, Google software for learning is absolutely free! At the same time, experts estimate that the corporation must spend about $1 million a year to support only 113,000 Baltimore students with such software. By the way, in the autumn of 2018, there were 56.6 million students of primary and secondary schools in the USA. The costs are huge! However, Google does not charge any money! Even among teachers, such philanthropy is suspicious. Google does not hide its goals: “it’s important for us that teachers and students have experience working with our products.” Is a real target the collection of information about students?
Something similar happened in the 1990s when SUN Microsystems similarly increased its profits: SUN installed its computers at universities for free. In the following years, SUN sold thousands of computers to companies whose managers used SUN computers when they were students.
It is possible, in the 2020s Google will ensure its prosperity due to the students who studied on Google’s education products and at the same time piled up information about himself in Google’s database. SUN computers have disappeared from the offices. Pay attention, it may be impossible to remove Google from the heads of a new generation. Does Google want to control the younger generation?
Why collect data?
Companies around the world collect our data for analysis, to determine our preferences, and to identify our inclinations.
Owners of the data can use the results of their analysis in two ways only:
- To help us, help organizations and companies, help humanity.
Helping humanity is a noble mission, which is always set upon initial research of anything! Research in the field of nuclear power gave us heating and light; the Internet provides free and friendly connection of all people; Facebook has become a platform for an exchange of advanced ideas and identifying the best ones. However, these are inevitably accompanied by a nuclear bomb, hackers, fake accounts and trolling.
Analyzing data using AI will help us navigate into the ocean of goods and services, select options quickly, will warn us about an approaching illness, for example. Living with an AI assistant might be healthier and more pleasant at a reasonable price.
This version of using AI is discussed at conferences and in the media. “AI is cool!” – That is what is usually said there. Especially if AI has not yet fired you and you are not included in the number of nearly half a million laid-off employees of stores, advertising, and news companies, banks, etc. However, AI helps to reduce costs, prevent accidents, and works effectively in information security systems.
- Affect us for their benefits.
I think that the ability to influence us is the primary goal of data owners and it is dangerous to people. AI can help data owners to achieve this goal.
The above companies are gigantic machines of influence! These are media companies that provide outstanding information technology products for free, and earn by selling our attention, our digital “I.” The knowledge of our preferences, secrets, and fears allows these companies to make the process of persuasion incredibly effective. Finally, our mind, our heart, consumer habits, and sexual preferences come under their control – what more do corporations need for thrift?!
It is necessary that we do not worry! For that, we have to be provided our personal, convenient, almost real world.
The effect of 25 frames has long been discovered. In the movie we do not notice this frame – the consciousness does not have time to react, but the subconscious mind realizes it. Numerous experiments proved that the viewer perceives the information laid in frame 25: if there is a drink in the frame, then at the end of the session you will feel thirsty. This technology is prohibited as a technology of direct impact on the subconscious of people.
Consider this: why is your Facebook page different from that of your friend’s? What technology does help Facebook offer you products and advertisement which different than products and advertisement for your friend? The page is your virtual reality, slightly (so far!) corrected by Artificial Intelligence. It is as if no one is hiding anything from you, not forcing, but they are affecting for you selectivity, knowing your AI-decrypted, conscious and subconscious desires. AI has already become as the 25th frame!
Impact Technology
AI for people is the technology of the “25th frame in the 21st century.” We already live under the pressure of artificial intelligence, under the inconspicuous and comprehensive influence of people owning our data.
Now we have come to the main point.
Artificial intelligence can be not only a driver of progress. It is also a tool for influencing millions of people: influencing our tastes, political views, and the education of children and shaping their worldview.
For civil rights, this is no longer just political censorship; it might be the correction of our political behavior.
Unlimited financial opportunities, plus absolute knowledge about each person, open up endless possibilities for data owners, such as computer giants, governments, etc. Media monsters inspire fear: what would happen if the desire of, for example, Google does not coincide with the wishes of people who do not work for Google? Out of curiosity, are the personnel of these firms just office workers or have they already become manipulators of users’ consciousness?
Amazon has been fooling around America for more than a year with a choice of location for its second office. After the year, Amazon did not choose the cities with a high number of students, lower taxes, cheap life, and good transport accessibility. No! Amazon has selected a financial center of the country with the highest taxes and prices, overcrowded, with traffic problems. It also chose an additional place not far from the District of Columbia as well, which is not far from the home of one of the leaders of Amazon. Why? Because it is difficult to influence the decisions of the government from far small cities like Dallas or Atlanta. Amazon already wants to have this influence on the political life in the USA, as we can see!
In the story of Lino Aldani the desire to make a perfect world leads to the creation of a virtual world and the only attraction of citizens was a helmet of virtual reality. Life outside the helmet stops worrying them.
Digital dictatorship may come one day! We might vote for those who know more about us. But it will not be our own choice! It will be the result of a skillfully guided impact of “AI 25 frames” on us.
This dictatorship is extremely difficult to fight because the battlefield is within us. For our head, hearts and stomachs, there is a struggle of all artificial and natural intellects. Unlike the previous centuries, the adversary knows in advance everything about us, including unconscious habits and diseases that we still do not know. The upcoming digital dictator will not be overthrown!
What is to be done? Confront the “AI 25 frame” universal hypnosis!
Protect our data, our privacy, our rights to personal information and personal life. We need laws to protect our integrity. We have to require transparency and explainability of the applied AI-algorithms. No one should have the right to use the information about me in any way without my consent. My “digital life” must be protected even if it requires revision of the structure of the entire Internet!
Giants are flourishing! The head of Facebook deftly responds to questions from incompetent politicians about password leaks, equally successful both in the United States and Europe. Amazon’s bored leader wants to build a city on Mars and a new office in New York. Google prompts free. Does not concern you!
It is necessary to protect our data and take control of its usage. We have to vote for people who understand the possibilities and dangers of modern technology. To ask why, with comparable revenues for the same period, Walmart paid $64 billion in taxes and Amazon $1.4 billion. Perhaps after specifying taxes, Amazon will think about the Earth, and not about Mars. Colleges and universities have to prepare specialists in the field of confidentiality and personal protection. Try to think for yourself, and not entrust it with Google.
Otherwise, there is a danger of being in “1984” with a virtual reality helmet on the head and under control of AI.
Литература.
- Rachel Premack. Teachers love Google’s education products but are suspicious. Why is a megacorporation giving them a perfect tool for free?
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-classroom-free-ed-tech-teacher-reaction-2018-11
- Kathleen Walch. Artificial Intelligence Is Not A Technology
- NCES National Center for Education Statistics
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
- Scott Galloway. How Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google manipulate our emotions.
- Zeynep Tufekci. We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
- Google Strategy Teardown: Google Is Turning Itself Into An AI Company As It Seeks To Win New Markets Like Cloud And Transportation. Research report. CB INSIGHTS.
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/google-strategy-teardown/
- Building Ethics Into Privacy Frameworks for Big Data and AI. IAPP.
- Jon Christian. Here’s What Experts Think of Stephen Hawking’s Posthumous Predictions About AI, Gene Hacking, and Religion.
https://wordpress.futurism.com/experts-stephen-hawking-posthumous-predictions/