“The power of AI to solve problems and transform life should not erase the need for vision or human insight. The more AI advances, the more I feel that people will relinquish their human abilities to think and feel to machines. AI and its sub-components like big data will increasingly become the sole determinant in decision-making processes.
There is a divide between the big-data rich and the big-data poor as well as among the three classes of people – the creators of AI, those with the means to collect and own the data and those with the ability to analyze it.
It is imperative to start questioning AI and big data assumptions, values and biases and to effectively democratize the space. Conversations must be held and mechanisms must be put in place around accountability principles that apply across the board. We must also work to ensure that people gain enough digital literacy. … The failure to bridge this gap and make the right choices leads most not to notice the gradual corrosion of their autonomy, which leads them to a slow slide deeper under powerful people’s control.
“It is necessary to ask critical and objective questions about what all this means: Who has access to what data, how is data analysis deployed and to what ends? AI companies have privileged access. There is a divide between the big-data rich and the big-data poor as well as among the three classes of people – the creators of AI, those with the means to collect and own the data and those with the ability to analyze it.
“It is imperative to start questioning AI and big data assumptions, values and biases and to effectively democratize the space. Conversations must be held and mechanisms must be put in place around accountability principles that apply across the board.
“We must also work to ensure that people gain enough digital literacy to understand the gap between what they want to do online and what they should do, because the failure to bridge this gap and make the right choices leads most not to notice the gradual corrosion of their autonomy, which leads them to a slow slide deeper under powerful people’s control.
“Vices such as privacy intrusions, invasive marketing, gross biases, misinformation and the curtailing of human freedoms are among the many already creeping in.”
This essay was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional essay responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040”