Introduction
Have you ever considered that artificial intelligence is gradually “invading” our lives?
Artificial intelligence has infiltrated every part of daily life, which people may not even notice, thanks to the rapid advancement of science and technology and the increasing demands of human productivity. It is now widely employed in a variety of sectors, including computers, robots, human body recognition, political and economic decision-making, and simulation systems, among others. In addition to computer science, artificial intelligence encompasses mathematics, information theory, psychology, and even philosophy. Artificial intelligence has long been a cutting-edge discipline in computer science. Because of the existence of AI systems, programming languages and other PC applications have evolved. It might be claimed that if artificial intelligence ceases to exist one day, human society would undoubtedly face a major problem, because modern people’s need for it is like a fish’s reliance on water. While the potential of this technology is infinite, like with other developing technologies, ethical and risk considerations are unavoidable when it is integrated into human existence.
This blog will cover the definition of AI, as well as the three primary ethical difficulties that exist in society, namely, unemployment created by the use of intelligence machines, prejudice in the criminal justice system and the black box algorithms of banks, as well as humanity concerns in AI. In addition, in the conclusion, some recommendations about how to live better with AI will be made.
What is AI
When it comes to artificial intelligence, we should be no strangers. In the past, many films and literary works have previously explored the philosophical problems of human nature by focusing on the theme of artificial intelligence in the future world. The classic science fiction film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, presents the story of intelligent robots breaking the three principles of robotics in a future society where automated industry is highly developed. They develop into self-sufficient individuals who attempt to disrupt human society.
However, the current level that artificial intelligence can reach is not as daunting as described in the movie. In fact, its application more embodies in making daily life more convenient, such as fingerprint and face recognition, intelligent search, automatic programming and language translation. As Healey (2020) said, artificial intelligence is a computer system used to accomplish tasks that humans need intelligence to do. Actually, it is the intelligence displayed by machines, not the natural intelligence demonstrated by creatures including humans.
There is no doubt that artificial intelligence has been integrated into a part of people’s lives. Some may say that advances in science and technology have hindered human evolution, but from my perspective, AI is like a new organ that modern humans currently evolved to make our lives more convenient. This organ can assist us with web searches through sophisticated algorithms, such as ads popped up on Twitter and Facebook, as well as commodity recommended when shopping on Amazon. It can also assist security personnel with face recognition authentication, and act as a qualified real-time translator. Beginning with the Turing test, in the course of decades of development, artificial intelligence has clamped down a lot of jobs that originally should be done by humankind, which has also led to a shift in the way the financial industry and healthy care operate (Fang et. al., 2019).
Ethic issues with AI
Artificial intelligence has made humans become cyborgs in science fiction, except that their machine parts are not going to replace any part of the body, but directly function outside the body. As the impact of artificial intelligence on human society grows, we can’t help but think about the ethical problems that these in vitro mechanical organs will bring.
Why exactly should we concern about the ethical issues with AI？Dystopic literature often presents a frightening scene, where artificial intelligence dominates society and war. Although AI now only serves the education, entertainment, medical treatment, and production of the masses, in order to ensure that the hell depicted in the novel will never appear in the real world, these programs must be trusted and understandable, and everything of them must be based on human and civil rights (Dignum, 2018). Therefore, developers must take into account the ethical aspects of human society when designing interactive systems. There are several main issues that we need to notice.
Unemployment
Since the first industrial revolution, the creation and renewal iteration of machines have continuously changed the labor pattern of human society. Machines equipped with artificial intelligence systems have increased the productivity of factories and promoted economic growth, but this is undoubtedly a threat to many groups who sell their labor time for profit. When machines can complete most of the labor work, the demand for manpower in the industrial chain will be reduced, which in turn leads to the social issue of a large number of people losing their jobs.
Aghion et. al. (2020) analyzed the data provided by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). His research of the impact of automation on employment in France from 1994 to 2014 concluded that for every additional robot, it reduced the total employment of 10 workers. Moreover, it is also found that uneducated workers are more likely to be negatively affected by automation than educated workers.
In addition, COVID-19, which has been going on for three years so far, also had a severe influence on workers from the production line. RDS Virginia, for example, a recycling company in Virginia, had bought 4 AMP robots for one of its factorya in 2019, setting them in the assembly lines in order to make sure there were no misplaced materials (Semuels, 2020).
These intelligent robots can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without any breaks and additional training processes. When covid-19 breaks out, these robots are perfectly unharmed, but humans have to stay away from the assembly line because of the risk of being infected by the virus. The company’s president, Joe Benedetto, said he likes equipment because it costs significantly less to operate robots than it does to retain human labor, and robots can work continuously every day. (Semuels, 2020).
In fact, although automation has provided many new jobs, its number is far less than that of the jobs that have been replaced by artificial intelligence. It is admitted that companies decided to use artificial intelligence to get the job done in order to maximize economic benefits and resource utilization, but with it comes the social problems caused by unemployment. However, the magnitude of the unemployment problem is also linked to local policies. Some government departments will provide financial compensation or re-employment opportunities for the unemployed group.
Bias
Bias does exist in AI system. Although AI has a complex computing mechanism and practical value, it is still a human-made product, and it will be subject to user intervention before application, for which reason AI may have bias on people in the calculation process. This process is not transparent, and no user will actually disclose the principles of computation that should be kept secret.
In the year of 2000, Northpointe started to use Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, also known as COMPAS, which is an artificial intelligence algorithm utilized in the criminal justice system, in order to make the pretrial and sentencing processes more accurate and systematic. This artificial algorithm is more accurate than human calculations. The crime score calculated by COMPAS can assist judges in determining the severity of sentence. COMPAS, on the other hand, has been criticized for perpetuating the systemic racial bias that exists in the justice system. The COMPAS scores of different racial groupings differ. Black offenders are nearly twice as often to be assessed as more at risk but not to re-offend nearly twice as likely as white offenders, regardless of their recidivism rates (Brackey, 2019).
Something similar has happened in the banking industry. Commercial banks can use AI to reduce loan losses, improve the security of processing payments, automate compliance-related efforts, and improve client positioning (Königstorfer & Thalmann, 2020). Apple Card, cooperating with Goldman Sachs, has been serving users for 3 years since 2019. It is able to work with Wallet, Apple pay and IOS application like these. David Hansson, a Danish software developer, claimed that his credit limit of Apple Card was 20 times that of his wife, though she had the same salary as him and even higher credit score (University Wire, 2019), which means the black box artificial algorithm of Apple decided that David should own 20 times credit limit than she had.
This issue had sparked a heated debate on social media. Many users also claimed that they found women had lower credit limits than men. In other words, gender discrimination exists in the algorithm of Apple Card.
In the screening process, the data provided for algorithmic decision-making is prone to bias. For example, data gathering favors high-income groups because they can provide greater economic rewards, and crime data is racially biased. The transparency and fairness of the algorithms are determined by the subjective research methods employed by the algorithm inventors and the individuals who make decisions based on the data.
Humanity
Quantic Dream’s interactive game Detroit: Become Human depicts a futuristic society in which androids resemble humans in appearance and actions. They also gave birth to feelings similar to human emotions, refusing to be enslaved by humanity, and eventually clashed with them. This has sparked a wide-ranging debate on the Internet over whether we should recognize robots as a new race and grant them humanity and legal rights when their appearance and thinking modes are infinitely similar to those of humans.
Now, the future is coming. Turing test is designed to test whether a robot has human intelligence. In 2014, a chat robot named Eugene Goostman surprisingly passed the test. In a 5 minute conversation, Goostman fooled over 30% of testers to make them believe he is a real human boy (Aamoth, 2014).
This is just the beginning of humanity’s journey into the era of AI interaction. If they can interact like humans, they are able to conduct tasks like customer service and sales. Human energy and endurance are limited, whereas robots can work indefinitely and incessantly, as well as build up relationships, resulting in larger economic benefits to society. some users, on the other hand, may trust a human service more than a bot because they can hold individuals accountable through accountability if something goes wrong. However, the censorship system of artificial intelligence is not yet flawless. If users are not satisfied with their employment, it is difficult for them to find channels to appeal and pursue their legitimate rights and interests.
Furthermore, if bad actors take advantage of the technology that makes AI more human, they may use it to hurt citizens, such as through frauds. Consider a parent who lives alone and receives a video from his son, for the reason that he needs money to pay his loan; however, the look of this son is created by AI face-changing technology, and the voice and manner of speaking are similarly replicated. It is difficult for the elderly in the digital divide to recognize the truth of this deception.
Conclusion
In summary, the impact of artificial intelligence on human life is continuous and far-reaching. In science fiction movies, we have already become the cyborgs. But in the process of benefiting humankind, artificial intelligence and its algorithms inevitably cause a number of ethical questions, the three most important of which are unemployment, prejudice, and human nature. The government should develop policies to alleviate the unemployment problem caused by artificial intelligence, strengthen the supervision of institutions that use “black box” algorithms, and improve the accountability system. In addition, users of AI should be careful about technology misuse so as not to cause adverse effects. With the joint efforts of all sectors of society, AI will continue to work to benefit communities.
Reference
Aamoth, D. (2014) Interview with Eugene Goostman, the Fake Kid Who Passed the Turing Test. Retrieved from https://time.com/2847900/eugene-goostman-turing-test/
Aghion, P., Antonin, C., & Bunel, S. (2020). Artificial Intelligence, Growth and Employment: The Role of Policy. Economie & Statistique, 510(510-511-512), 149–164. https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2019.510t.1994
Apple Card prompts gender bias inquiry. (2019). University Wire. Retrieved from https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/docview/2328952186?pq-origsite=primo
Brackey, A. (2019). Analysis of Racial Bias in Northpointe’s COMPAS Algorithm. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Dignum, V. (2018). Ethics in artificial intelligence: Introduction to the special issue. Ethics and Information Technology, 20(1), 1-3. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/10.1007/s10676-018-9450-z
Fang, F., Tambe, M., Dilkina, B., & Plumptre, A. J. (2019). Artificial intelligence and conservation (F. Fang, M. Tambe, B. Dilkina, & A. J. Plumptre, Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Königstorfer, F., & Thalmann, S. (2020). Applications of Artificial Intelligence in commercial banks – A research agenda for behavioral finance. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 27, 100352–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2020.100352
Semuels, A. (2020) Millions of Americans Have Lost Jobs in the Pandemic—And Robots and AI Are Replacing Them Faster Than Ever. Retrieved from https://time.com/5876604/machines-jobs-coronavirus/