Humans versus Robots
Are we on the verge of a Hollywood dark utopian reality?
There really isn’t a question of digital privacy anymore. Unless you’ve managed to do a full Ron Swanson (Parks and Rec anyone?), your entire life is on the internet. And I mean that! Have you ever typed your social security number into a job application online? Do you have a mobile banking account? Have you signed a document using your trackpad? Literally everything in our lives is out there on the internet. Lots of it is safeguarded, sure, but still. It’s out there. Meaning that anyone with the right skill set can access it.
Fortunately (or unfortunately?) this data isn’t often inspected by living breathing humans. All of this work is done via algorithms; the heuristics that make the internet work. Algorithms make our lives infinitely easier; you need to answer this really specific psychology question? Just copy and paste it into google! You’ll have the answer in under a second. But algorithms also come with their own slew of consequences.
To start, algorithms are often biased. As Justin Reich of MIT puts it, “algorithms [are] primarily designed by white and Asian men- with data selected by these same privileged actors- for the benefit of consumers like themselves…the harms of new technology will be most experienced by those already disadvantaged in society”. It’s true. Algorithms are capable of discriminating against individuals by zip code, name recognition, and more. This makes it even harder for disadvantaged people to thrive in a world that is increasingly online. A company can rule out an online applicant just by seeing information about where they live, and make the fundamental attribution error.
In addition, algorithms are extraordinarily efficient. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, we have more information than ever before at our fingertips, thanks to algorithms. On the other hand, algorithms are so good at their jobs, that they put people out of jobs. The result is the dehumanization of the work force. I’m constantly reminded of that scene in the 2005 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Charlie’s dad is let go from his job at the toothpaste factory after a new robot is introduced that can do the job with extreme efficiency. What happens to blue collar workers if their jobs become automated? The automation of the labor force just further increases the gap between societies wealthiest and societies poorest. The question that corporations ask is “is efficiency more valuable than people’s livelihood?” The answer in most cases is yes.
Newsflash: corporations do not care about you. They exist solely to make a profit. This is also evidenced through targeted advertisements on social media (one of the main things data is used for). Our devices are capable of monitoring our behavior, to predict what our spending habits might be. Once this data is collected, we’re shown ads for something we might want. (I’m gonna be honest here; I’m one of those people that runs an Instagram account for their cat. But after making the account, the number of ads I’ve seen for cat related products has skyrocketed. Coincidence?). Although Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon are the largest offenders, countless other corporations participate in this advertisement schema designed to get you to buy things.
There’s one thing that algorithms haven’t gotten quite right yet about replicating: human creativity. Artificial intelligence exists that will paint you a picture, but there is something inherently human about the act of creating. There is something extraordinarily pleasurable about consuming media that was created by another human mind. And I don’t think that algorithms will ever be able to fully replicate this.
So we have two points from which to diverge. Either automation kills the labor force and only the elite members of society (something that honestly, billionaires probably dream about), or we become a society of artists, while automation does all the boring stuff for us. In reality, I think that we’ll probably end up with a combination of both outcomes. The real solution revolves around diversity and inclusivity in the creation of automation. Algorithms have the potential to solve so many problems with the world, if we could only figure out how to bridge the gaps in between disadvantaged groups, and media moguls.
