Adam Conover Talks About Problems with A.I. in New Video
Artificial Intelligence or A.I. is a very hot topic at the moment and has been for a while. It used to be a term relegated for things in science fiction and now it’s popping up everywhere. Companies love to use A.I. as a buzzword to promote their guitar amps, search engines, cars, vacuum cleaners, and just about everything else. Meanwhile, artists, writers, and many other human workers have less than kind things to say about it. I swear, I can’t go to any corner of the internet and not hear or see something that doesn’t talk about A.I. in some capacity. The comedian Adam Conover recently talked more about the problems with A.I. and I think it’s worth checking out.
Regardless of whether you are on the A.I. hype train or not, it’s important to recognize that there are good uses for it and then there are problematic uses for it. It’s also important to recognize that there are major problems with the technology itself and how it’s being used. Many times, A.I. technology is not being used ethically and that’s a big problem. A.I. is being used to hurt humans in various ways, create inferior products, and more, all while we as consumers are being told that the technology will improve our lives and experiences.
Conover has previously talked about A.I. and some of the problems with it including its name on an episode of his podcast Factually! which I highly recommend, and more recently he took to YouTube to discuss it some more. The video is under 20 minutes and highlights a lot of the problems and implications that come with A.I.. He talks about how Google and Microsoft had technology ethicists point out that there are ethical problems with A.I. and then those ethicists were fired. He covers how Tesla flat out lied about using A.I. in videos. That’s just a small sample.
I don’t want to be a complete Debby Downer and do concede, like Conover, that there are useful applications of A.I. such as collision detection in cars and adaptable video game characters. I think that like most things, A.I. can be used to help people and help the world; it just takes education and understanding to find the best spot for it in our world and not just try to use it everywhere.